Math without applications in mind is literally pointless and this is coming from a math major.
>>7659517
I hope your wife/best friend is an engineer then so your life won't be wasted on chalk scribbling for muh ego
Not having a suitable application at the moment doesn't mean there isn't one.
History is full of cases where the true value of a given theorem wasn't realized until much later.
>>7659535
But still, your value of the math hinges on it being applicable in the future.
Suppose you could know that a certain field of mathematics could never be applicable. Would you value it?
>>7659535
helps to get an early start
there are many instances of math discoveries being made, then rediscovered years later when a problem needed a solution. just work it out together
>>7659517
it is not pointless. At the end of times, everything that there is to know will need to be known.
>>7659541
if you are asking if math has intrinsic value, yeah, i'd say so.
>>7659517
It's fun though.
>>7659535
This. Whether theory precedes application or vice versa is irrelevant.
>>7659541
>could never be applicable
This is more or less impossible to know in advance. Take number theory as illustrative.
I should think teaching "pure" math without applications at the introductory level to laymen is uncontroversially valuable. Better, more logically rigorous thinking translates to better society and better public policy. If someone already understands proof, implication, contraposition, necessary vs sufficient, precision, counterexample, etc. say, a math researcher, and further study won't improve them in the broader context of society or yield any applications, it really reduces to what exactly you mean by "value." This isn't an objective term in itself.
>>7659517
>paintings are pointless stop painting
Your mewling ingratiation of yourself to the rest of the sciences disgusts me; they are already helplessly dependent on Math herself, if not us, for their own work, and so there is no need for Math to qualify herself to them, nor any need for any of us to white knight on her behalf by pedastalizing her less interesting qualities.
On the contrary: in addition to teaching the above low-hanging fruit and thereby to earn a living, we can amuse ourselves with more interesting things for their own sake. For example: finding ebin pentagons with which to tile the plane xD
t. a much more autistic math graduate
Yes, these noneuclidean geometries will never come to any practical use.
>>7659661
Painting is more useful than pure math. People intrinsically value art and will put it in museums, use it in advertising, or just buy it to display.
If you math can't be used to make a cool gadget then fuck off and die. You're a waste of space.
Meh, depends on what you call applications.
I think a notion stops being pointless when it answers/enlightens a question that can be formulated without it.
For example, convex analysis is very useful because many real-world problems (in CS, physics etc) and math problems (in geometry, functional analysis, PDE) can be formulated as the optimization of some convex functional.
However I also think that algebra and logic are useful because they make many underlying mechanisms in the way we think and do math explicit, and that is important too.
>>7659517
>math major
So, an undergrad.
>>7660181
This. Undergrads commenting on the state/status of society is about as meaningful as a dolphin talking about a bicycle.
>>7659661
>le mathematics is an art
>>7659517
>undergrad in applied mathematics
>saying pure math is pointless
why, is real math too hard for you?
>>7659517
fellow math major here. Agree.
>>7660489
This. Even though I like both. This thread is typical of the dick waving between applied and pure math majors. Also both are equally hard. Don't be that guy.
>>7659517
Really awesome claim about the purpose of human existence.
I didn't now that they added philosophy to the math major requirements.
>>7660559
It always has been a requirement. I don't know what shit school you graduated from.
>>7660560
I'm at Uchicago where it is a requirement, but I was just making a point that he'll never even be close to having the philosophical understanding to make claims about what's "useless."
>>7660561
You're correct. He's making a baseless assumption. Also UoC makes you guys take some upper division philosophy classes. I know the foreign students hate that requirement.
>>7660562
You can get away with not taking much of any real philosophy through the core in all honesty, but it means you definitely should have gone to a different school.
>>7660571
Serious Mathematicians and Physicists take those classes to understand the material world and the logic in scientific discoveries. Too many students I meet at top schools rather just get the degree and bug out. Which to me is a waste of talent.
>>7659517
i agree and disagree. there's no point to becoming a math major;you could just learn it urselv
>>7659541
No. On the contrary: Number theory is a shit-tier field now that it has applications, for instance.
>>7659517
>implying math itself isn't pointless in the big picture
It's just counting.
I agree with your viewpoint my fellow fedora but restricting any subject to it's "tangible" applications restricts the freedom of creative processes.
>>7661391
>hurr everyone is ramanujan
No, instruction is far more efficient. Unless you go to some shit community college in the US or something.
>Math without applications in mind is literally pointless
Sorry for this perspective (physics PhD) but what in life is not pointless then?
Making money so you can ensure you'll have no issues popping out babies into this world is not having a point.
If the math I do gives me as much pleasure as a songwriter has in writing a song, then that's the best result of whatever comes from it.
Something like developing an algorithm that's faster than the last one and thus makes more money for your company is not a goal you sould place higher than the satisfaction of doing math.
>>7659695
There is an audience for pure, recreational math for the sake of math itself. It's smaller than that of those who enjoy art, but diversity is a good thing :^)
>>7659517
Why I changed my major. I love the riddles and puzzles of pure math. I hate the number crunching jobs a math degree gets your though.
>>7659523
>I hope your wife is an engineer
>>7663270
Math degrees show (to employers outside stem) that you are good at problem solving and following specific sets of instructions, good for positions such as software quality assurance, especially if you pick up some CS courses and are a good programmer
Is there even such a thing as useless math?
>>7659695
> intrinsically
> museums
> cool gadget
Brainwashed.
>>7663304
There is, but no one is paid for doing it (think of the collatz conjecture)
It's a /sci/ meme, that if math can't be directly applied to the world it's useless.
Almost all math research going on right now, is - at least over some corners - appliable to the real world.
>>7659517
Thinking tactics/strategy without a battle/war in mind is literally pointless
>>7663335
If you had millions of strategists with all the time in the world, why would they not develop strategies that would only work in weird situations?
>>7663329
>Take any natural number n. If n is even, divide it by 2 to get n / 2. If n is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1 to obtain 3n + 1. Repeat the process (which has been called "Half Or Triple Plus One", or HOTPO[6]) indefinitely. The conjecture is that no matter what number you start with, you will always eventually reach 1. The property has also been called oneness.
>The Collatz conjecture is a conjecture in mathematics named after Lothar Collatz, who first proposed it in 1937. The conjecture is also known as the 3n + 1 conjecture, the Ulam conjecture (after Stanisław Ulam), Kakutani's problem (after Shizuo Kakutani), the Thwaites conjecture (after Sir Bryan Thwaites), Hasse's algorithm (after Helmut Hasse), or the Syracuse problem;[1][2] the sequence of numbers involved is referred to as the hailstone sequence or hailstone numbers (because the values are usually subject to multiple descents and ascents like hailstones in a cloud),[3][4] or as wondrous numbers.[5]
Can any unknown proof or disproof be proven useless or useful?
How can you measure the usefulness of any unknown proof or disproof, isn't this a even harder thing to consider than this particular conjecture?
Isn't this useful if it is provable?
And how many researches are paid to prove and measure the usefulness of a unproved conjecture? Not many?
Then what separates math researchers from /sci/ is just intelligence, not usefulness. Then what /sci/ call useless is actually just Hard, and they want to do what is Easy, while calling it Useful.
