{"id":977,"date":"2011-05-21T16:20:59","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T23:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/?p=977"},"modified":"2011-05-22T01:15:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-22T08:15:20","slug":"5212011-quote-of-the-day-why-study-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/5212011-quote-of-the-day-why-study-math\/","title":{"rendered":"5\/21\/2011 Quote of the Day &#8211; Why Study Math?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I just came across the following video from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/weusemath.org\/\">WeUseMath.org<\/a>. The site aims to answer the question &#8220;When will I use math?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"580\" height=\"327\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aYIv4jggQJc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s quote of the day is from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_H._Bailey\">David Bailey<\/a> (at 4:52 in the video).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s worth doing. It&#8217;s something that, I&#8217;ve never heard anyone say, &#8220;I wish I didn&#8217;t take so much math.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I cannot recall anyone I know expressing regret for taking\u00a0<em>too many <\/em>math courses, but I have heard people express regret for taking <em>too few<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m reminded of the following quote from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Graham_(computer_programmer)\">Paul Graham<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But while you don&#8217;t literally need math for most kinds of hacking, in the sense of knowing 1001 tricks for differentiating formulas, math is very much worth studying for its own sake. It&#8217;s a valuable source of metaphors for almost any kind of work. I wish I&#8217;d studied more math in college for that reason.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/college.html\">Undergraduation<\/a> [March 2005]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The video also reminded me of the following quote from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steven_Landsburg\">Steven Landsburg<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you enjoy mathematics, and have a knack for it, you cannot go wrong by taking math courses no matter where you think you&#8217;re eventually headed. Top-ranked economics Ph.D. programs almost always prefer to admit students with strong math backgrounds over students with strong economics backgrounds; I&#8217;m told the same is true in biology and I suspect it&#8217;s the same way in many other disciplines. In the economics department where I teach, we frequently admit math majors with few (or even zero!) economics courses on their transcripts; we would never admit an economics major with\u00a0inadequate\u00a0math training.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebigquestions.com\/the-book\/\">The Big Questions<\/a>, p. 240 [2009]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fortunately, with all the free courses available on the internet, it&#8217;s now possible to take more math (for free!). Check out the OCW Consortium\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ocwconsortium.org\/\">site<\/a> for information on available courses.\u00a0For another example of mathematicians faring well, check out the Wall Street Journal&#8217;s 2009 article,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123119236117055127.html\">Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just came across the following video from\u00a0WeUseMath.org. The site aims to answer the question &#8220;When will I use math?&#8221; Today&#8217;s quote of the day is from\u00a0David Bailey (at 4:52 in the video). It&#8217;s worth doing. It&#8217;s something that, I&#8217;ve never heard anyone say, &#8220;I wish I didn&#8217;t take so much math.&#8221; I cannot recall [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-math"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1sCC6-fL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":989,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions\/989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}