My brother has a PhD in pure mathematics. Sometimes I get in trouble (yes, hyperbole) with him because, while I’m pretty decent at arithmetic and I like numbers, he knows so much more about either than I do. For example, I recently said that 57 was a boring number (I tried to connect it to 17, which I like, but was thinking of 19, which is fine) and learned quite a lot from both him and some lemmings.
Another time I told him that I thought there was debate about whether 2 was prime and I subsequently got quite a lecture on the nature of primality.
Point I’m trying to make is, give at least some math graduates at least some credit.
I suppose it depends on what you value. Language is more of a creative venture while math is more of a technical one. “Credit” is also somewhat of a nebulous term.
majors? you mean bachelors? PhDs get PhD respect. Bachelors get Bachelor respect. It’s not the subclassification of study, it’s the level. if you only have a bachelors, you get less respect than a masters and so on.
Of all the numbers to call boring you picked the Grothendieck prime.
2 is unambiguously prime. The best motivation for the definition of primality I know is the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every integer greater than 1 can be uniquely decomposed into a product of primes. That’s what primes are, and the uniqueness constraint is why 1 is not prime.
as if math graduates could do that sort of addition in their head
My brother has a PhD in pure mathematics. Sometimes I get in trouble (yes, hyperbole) with him because, while I’m pretty decent at arithmetic and I like numbers, he knows so much more about either than I do. For example, I recently said that 57 was a boring number (I tried to connect it to 17, which I like, but was thinking of 19, which is fine) and learned quite a lot from both him and some lemmings.
Another time I told him that I thought there was debate about whether 2 was prime and I subsequently got quite a lecture on the nature of primality.
Point I’m trying to make is, give at least some math graduates at least some credit.
Is the amount of credit I should give them less than, equal to, or greater than the amount of credit I should give English majors?
I suppose it depends on what you value. Language is more of a creative venture while math is more of a technical one. “Credit” is also somewhat of a nebulous term.
I don’t know, once math becomes Greek letters and mathematician names it sort of seems to circle back around.
That’s a really excellent point.
Didn’t they just talk about circling back, not back into itself?
Don’t you drop a dimension from this deep conversation!
majors? you mean bachelors? PhDs get PhD respect. Bachelors get Bachelor respect. It’s not the subclassification of study, it’s the level. if you only have a bachelors, you get less respect than a masters and so on.
Gotta add context for readers.
Of all the numbers to call boring you picked the Grothendieck prime.
2 is unambiguously prime. The best motivation for the definition of primality I know is the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every integer greater than 1 can be uniquely decomposed into a product of primes. That’s what primes are, and the uniqueness constraint is why 1 is not prime.
Are you my brother?