What is it like to be a mathematician?

Re:What is it like to be a mathematician? by michael_nielsen on Sunday October 13, 2013 @02:15PM (#6543534)

On a related note, there's a good in-depth answer to the question "What is it like to understand advanced mathematics?" here:

http://www.quora.com/Mathematics/What-is-it-like-to-understa...

I'm not a mathematician, but was a theoretical physicist for more than a decade, and the Quora article accords well with my experience in understanding mathematics.

(Fairly) readable examples of some of the points made in the above article may be found in Terry Tao and Scott Aaronson's comments about how to think intuitively in high dimensions:

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive-crutches-f...

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Re:What is it like to be a mathematician? by Strilanc on Sunday October 13, 2013 @06:52PM (#6544442)

That is definitely good and in-depth.

(I had to use the web dev inspector to remove the overlay trying to force me to enable scripts and sign in, but it was worth it.)

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Re:What is it like to be a mathematician? by codezero on Sunday October 13, 2013 @09:59PM (#6545003)

You can also add ?share=1 to the end of any Quora URL to remove the overlay.

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Re:What is it like to be a mathematician? by DoublePlusWill on Sunday October 13, 2013 @07:56PM (#6544615)

There's a link on that overlay to "close and continue reading" if you get out your microscope. ;)

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Re:What is it like to be a mathematician? by broken_symlink on Monday October 14, 2013 @05:30AM (#6546204)

For me that only shows the top answer.

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