Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

Whether it be regarding religion, poker, investing in stocks, the two point conversion, or a multitude of other fields, I am constantly being attacked for my contention that great knowledge and/or talent in logic/science/probability/math is a much bigger help than most people want to believe. It may not be 50% of the required skills or even 20%. But just as lifting weights does in most sports (only recently acknowledged), math type thinking is often enough to give you the edge over someone whose skills are otherwise slightly superior to yours.

There are three reasons I can think of why so many disagree.

1. The mathematical analysis that could be conducted is not always obvious. But it is almost always there. Who on this forum doubts that I wouldn't be a giant favorite playing nine ball against 98% of those players who have equal mediocre shot making skill to mine? I would recognize that if I had only a 30% chance to make a ball I should probably play safe instead. They might not. Playing tennis against an equally horrible player I would know better than he whether to try for a winner or just get the ball over the net. Two examples of numerous endeavors have a much greater mathematical component to them than the average person realizes.

2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.

3. The very very best in math/logic etc. do not seem to show excellence for the most part in other fields.

Until now I have felt the need to deal with #3 by arguing that these math geniuses usually don't excel in other fields only because they have little desire to. There are obvious autistic savant types where this isn't true. But I've always contended that Richard Feynman types could be good at almost anything.

But I want now to abandon that stance. Because it is not clear cut. And the quirkiness that so many math geniuses exhibit gives people the excuse to disbelieve my overall contention.

This gives me the freedom to say to you. "Fine. Obsessing over math type thinking may have a downside. But what about those who are a notch below these people? Guys who took two year of calculus two years of physics, one year of statistics, and aced all of them. And then went on to major in economics, law, business, or medicine. You don't think they have a big edge over the rest of you? You think their people skills are diminished because they know how to do differential equations, figure out poker odds, and still subscribe to Scientific American? If you do I have no sympathy for you when they beat you at whatever you are doing.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

Most people value related experience over intelligence or knowledge, because it's something that is easy to quantify. Furthermore, the guy who would be hiring you to be an NFL coach (or whatever) would be unqualified to judge your abilities at all.

The average person is likewise incapable of judging you on those terms, so they come up with excuses to judge you poorly on theirs. They don't realize that making better decisions means anything at all, because they're too busy pumping sunshine up their own asses about how great they are at being just like everyone else.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

Above average ability in math and logic (which I feel comfortable claiming for myself, and nothing further) is absolutely a benefit in medicine, IMO. This may not be as contentious or obscure of an application as you were looking for, but I think most people would underestimate how important it is.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

You should stick to this point I think, that people who are in the top 10% in math skills will have an advantage in many fields that can overcome some lack of experience and desire. Talking about people like Feynman obscures your point since people like him are so rare to begin with and it is hard to say if they have any advantage in cross fields over people who are just good at math.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.


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Have you ever directly told us how to go about learning "the stuff that needs to be learned"? It seems to me you do that piecemeal, but why not outline a systematic approach?

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

People like to do what they are good at. Math is frustrating because it constantly introduces things you are bad at until you can convince yourself of the concepts. It incessantly exercises the brain in the methods of deep understanding by pushing the limits of what an analogy is. Where does the Laplace transform take you? How do you picture the world of ideal probability?

Math makes enemies because it is difficult. Math makes enemies because it is so successful. For every high school student exclaiming 'when will I ever use this stupid math?!' there are dozens of scientists, businessmen and engineers who apply it daily. Social progress is made at the heels of scientific progress. Scientific progress is cumulative by definition. Today we still wage war over nothing. Math embodies the truest form of applicable logic. Math transcends time.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.


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Have you ever directly told us how to go about learning "the stuff that needs to be learned"? It seems to me you do that piecemeal, but why not outline a systematic approach?

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I paid $20,000 per year to be told that information. I'll need some compensation.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

Finally a high falootin post I like!

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

The last Math class I took had the most talented professor one could want, in a mathematical sense that is. He was respected in his field, but I cannot imagine hime even attempting ANYTHING else. He would literally stand in front of us, looking mortified, and stare at his shoes while reciting the book. If you caught him alone he could speak with you, but not in a way that could be called helpful.

What I'm getting at is that alot of thes geniuses are so socially inept as to preclude them from what endeavors that may depend on networking. If you can't deal with people, then alot of life will always be foreign.

Cam

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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Finally a high falootin post I like!

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In that case, shouldn't you change #2 to

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2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented or too poor to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.


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$20K/yr sounds a little low. Is that adjusted for inflation? Do you know that you know "what needs to be learned" when you can figure out whether or not you got your money's worth?

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

I generally agree with what you're saying and I too am interested in how to make the most persuasive case for it. I've never really bought the 3ish arguments about lack of social skills except in the most extreme examples. I think you can find the same kind of extreme examples in most all fields. There are such extreme examples among great Artists, Writers, Actors, Musicians, Poets, Mystics, and Billionaire Business People. Social ineptness is not that hard to find once you look for it.

However, this view can be taken too far. For example, it would be a Fallacy to conclude that the Math-Science skilled would automatically be able to give expert opinions in Fields which they Have Not Studied in depth. Furthermore, not All Principles involved in other fields of study relate well to Math-Science concepts. A Math-Science Expert whose thinking is so dominated by concepts of Math-Science that he cannot adapt his thinking to Principles Foreign to Math-Science may actually be at a disadvantage when attempting study in the Field governed by such Principles.

For example in the Field of Art, what are the Principles that govern opinions on a good work of Art? What Principles are applied by the great Actor? Or Poet? Or Mystic? While some math-science concepts might be brought into play in these fields, they are not the Fundamental Ones which govern the field. A Math-Science expert who cannot adapt his thinking to these Principles will never be able to give expert opinions in the Field no matter how much he tries to apply his Math-Science expertise. Math-Science allows us to do many things well. But it is not enough to do All things well.

Matters can be even worse for the Math-Science Sophomore. He may not only fail to adapt his thinking to Principles that Govern other fields but he may make Sophomoric attempts to apply Math-Science concepts to them. He has studied enough Math-Science to know how powerful and important it is, but he does not have the in depth knowledge to realize its limitations.

This is worse than just being limited by his Math-Science Myopia in grasping the Foreign Principles of alien Fields. He will end up butchering his study of the Field with Sophomoric Math-Science Misapplications. His analogue in 2+2 land would be the guy who can never learn to be a good poker player because he just has a hunch that This Time 2-7 offset is going to flop a full house. Not only does he not learn probability but he misapplies his intuition. The same kind of thing happens when the Sophmoric Math-Science Myope fails to grasp the Principles of an Alien Field and then compounds his shortcoming by misapplying Math-Science to it.

PairTheBoard

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

Either way it's an investment. You can either read all the diaries of Euler and Fourier on your own time or spend a truckload of money on a degree. Doesn't matter what path you take to get there you end up in the same place - math is hard, which gives it scarcity, which gives it value.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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For every high school student exclaiming 'when will I ever use this stupid math?!' there are dozens of scientists, businessmen and engineers who apply it daily.

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your ratios are off. Do you see why?

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

my dad is a lawyer, and he says he uses algebra pretty often.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.


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Have you ever directly told us how to go about learning "the stuff that needs to be learned"? It seems to me you do that piecemeal, but why not outline a systematic approach?

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The specific stuff that needs to be learned is logic, (syllogisms, fallacies, truth tables) probability, including permutations and combinations and basic statistics, and some algebra, especially turning word problems into equations. Calculus, physics, and similar things are very good things to learn as well but for most people only because it helps train the brain.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

The American Myth is that anyone can acheive anything through hard work and determination. It's not that Smart People Get Ahead. This was so ingrained in the culture that they used to write articles about how weird it was that Microsoft's hiring process was designed to get smart people. It doesn't help that Bill Gates is America's Nerd, but for every statement of how smart he is there are three about what a kook he is. America doesn't like smarts.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

You're right about the importance of math in other fields. Please, preach this gospel elsewhere too - on here is fine, but this idea needs exposure among people other than those inclined to read a science, math and philosophy forum on the internet. Is there any way you could use your wealth and/or fame to get the message out?

The good that could be done by having a ready, and lengthy, answer to the question, "When am I ever going to need this as an adult?" is almost beyond imagining. Prove to an 8-year-old that math really is practical, and there's a decent chance you've just meaningfully improved his whole life.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

Not quite on topic, and most of you guys probably already know about this, but check this website that MIT has if you're interested in learning some math on your own. MIT is in the middle of a huge project where they are putting up tons of course-material online. Lecture videos, notes, homework assignments, etc. A lot of it is extremely well done IMO, especially when you consider it's free and available to anyone.

If you've never studied higher level math before it might be good to wikipedia or google notation a bit, because as far as I can tell a lot of the basics in abstract math are assumed in these courses, but once you get past that hurdle there is a huge wealth of information at this site.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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The specific stuff that needs to be learned is logic, (syllogisms, fallacies, truth tables) probability, including permutations and combinations and basic statistics, and some algebra, especially turning word problems into equations. Calculus, physics, and similar things are very good things to learn as well but for most people only because it helps train the brain.

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Thank you.

So if you can solve any problem that might show up on the math and analytical reasoning portions of the ACT/SAT/GRE then you have learned "the stuff that needs to be learned"? I can do that and calculus and physics and some other stuff and still feel inadequate.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.

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This is it, mostly. 1) is just an excuse they use, and they know it. 3) May play a factor in those people who are greatly challenged in logical/statistical thinking, but not the rest.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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1. The mathematical analysis that could be conducted is not always obvious. But it is almost always there. Who on this forum doubts that I wouldn't be a giant favorite playing nine ball against 98% of those players who have equal mediocre shot making skill to mine? I would recognize that if I had only a 30% chance to make a ball I should probably play safe instead. They might not. Playing tennis against an equally horrible player I would know better than he whether to try for a winner or just get the ball over the net. Two examples of numerous endeavors have a much greater mathematical component to them than the average person realizes.

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You're right; I don't doubt that you would not be a huge favorite against 98% of pool players with comparable shot making abilities to yours.

Addressing what you presumably meant to say, this argument is silly. The math involved in this brand of superficial analysis isn't terribly difficult or involved; the far more challenging aspect is being able to make estimates of things like having that 30% chance to make your shot. All the math savvy in the world will not save you from garbage in, garbage out. It is a pretty exact analogy to hand reading in poker.

I think you could make an argument that skill in mathematical reasoning generally corresponds to ability to keep long deductive threads together. That is a skill I could see translating fairly widely.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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The specific stuff that needs to be learned is logic, (syllogisms, fallacies, truth tables) probability, including permutations and combinations and basic statistics, and some algebra, especially turning word problems into equations. Calculus, physics, and similar things are very good things to learn as well but for most people only because it helps train the brain.

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Thank you.

So if you can solve any problem that might show up on the math and analytical reasoning portions of the ACT/SAT/GRE then you have learned "the stuff that needs to be learned"? I can do that and calculus and physics and some other stuff and still feel inadequate.

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That's a sign that you desire more knowledge on the subject; this is a very good thing. I think you're overestimating the average person's knowledge of math.

This problem stems from inflation in the communication arts. Communication skills are incredibly important regardless of field but it is easy to forget that they are always highly specialized for the field of interest. For example, the communication skills of a technician will be wildly different from the communication skills of a religion researcher or a journalist. Without going on a rant ripping on the concept of an 'english degree', I would argue that the value of semantic skill - writing well without saying anything of interest - is far overdramaticized by the current education model at least in the United States. Rhetoric is worthless for a good three quarters of communication applications. Yet it is taught with incredible force while math is considered a 'secondary skill'. This is a flawed model that gives people in general education the idea that math is not valuable.

Temporarily ignoring my daily interactions with engineers and businesspeople, I'd say that more than half the people I talk to would have no idea how to integrate a function and couldn't define orthogonality if asked. While that says nothing about the mean it does at least say the median falls in a depressing place. People don't care about math, and they don't want to hear about it. They're programmed this way by general education.

It sounds to me like you already know what's worth knowing. I would strongly recommend linear algebra as it is the junction point for applying math you already understand to higher dimensional (and thus 3 dimensional real space) applications.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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The American Myth is that anyone can acheive anything through hard work and determination. It's not that Smart People Get Ahead. This was so ingrained in the culture that they used to write articles about how weird it was that Microsoft's hiring process was designed to get smart people. It doesn't help that Bill Gates is America's Nerd, but for every statement of how smart he is there are three about what a kook he is. America doesn't like smarts.

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Very nice post. (and very true)

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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I would strongly recommend linear algebra as it is the junction point for applying math you already understand to higher dimensional (and thus 3 dimensional real space) applications.

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Thanks for the suggestion. By linear algebra do you mean something other than what is taught to engineering students? That is my background, so I can do basic matrix operations and such.

I think my unease comes from not knowing what the mathematical landscape looks like. Even if I had a map, I might not be able to tell where I am, where I have been, where to go next, or how to get there.

Even the place names seem to depend on who you ask. A while ago Bill Chen commented in the Books and Publications forum about connections between game theory and control theory. I know something about the latter, but little about the former, so that sounded like an interesting connection. Unfortunately, he didn't respond to my question about it.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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Not quite on topic, and most of you guys probably already know about this, but check this website that MIT has if you're interested in learning some math on your own. MIT is in the middle of a huge project where they are putting up tons of course-material online. Lecture videos, notes, homework assignments, etc. A lot of it is extremely well done IMO, especially when you consider it's free and available to anyone.

If you've never studied higher level math before it might be good to wikipedia or google notation a bit, because as far as I can tell a lot of the basics in abstract math are assumed in these courses, but once you get past that hurdle there is a huge wealth of information at this site.

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I love that link, and its always a good idea to put it up from time to time.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.


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david, while i agree with the point of your post strongly, it evident that a similar critcism to the one above could be made of your general argument.
it could be argued that you may have a strong psychological need to believe the value of math is greater than it actually is because it is your strength. i see this constantly in your posts, that you praise the skill set you possess. sure, mathematical and logical acumen are incredibly useful in almost all areas of life, but you seem to just conclusively believe that it would make you better at something than people "slightly superior" to you without any kind of empirical evidence.
this is just as frustrating to me as the general dismissal of the use of math by the general public because it's the same basic (flawed) assumption: that you know better and there's no sense in actually proving it because the other people (be they quants or the math-phobic) clearly just dont understand.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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2. There is a strong psychological need to believe I am wrong among those who are either too lazy or untalented to learn the stuff that needs to be learned in order to apply it to these endeavors.


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david, while i agree with the point of your post strongly, it evident that a similar critcism to the one above could be made of your general argument.
it could be argued that you may have a strong psychological need to believe the value of math is greater than it actually is because it is your strength. i see this constantly in your posts, that you praise the skill set you possess. sure, mathematical and logical acumen are incredibly useful in almost all areas of life, but you seem to just conclusively believe that it would make you better at something than people "slightly superior" to you without any kind of empirical evidence.
this is just as frustrating to me as the general dismissal of the use of math by the general public because it's the same basic (flawed) assumption: that you know better and there's no sense in actually proving it because the other people (be they quants or the math-phobic) clearly just dont understand.

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The fact that the it benefits me if my theory is true doens't make it not true. And the reason I believe it is true, aside from any bias, is simple observation. The more you look at endeavors and who is good at them, the more you realize that it is the math saavy who are more likely to excel at them. Of course it is important when making this observation to not be misled by the fact that 90% or more of the best are not math saavy.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

Seriously. Lay off the random capitalization.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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Seriously. Lay off the random capitalization.

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It's not Random.

See how I emphasized the word Random there?

PairTheBoard

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

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Seriously. Lay off the random capitalization.

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It's not Random.

See how I emphasized the word Random there?

PairTheBoard

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LOL....now I don't know What to think!

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

A lot of people hate and/or suck at math. Such people work at jobs where math is not necessary for them to perform their duties, thus they feel that math is unnecessary and pass that on as fact to others and their children.

However that does not discount the fact that had those individuals had stronger math skills, they could perform better at their job.

I've never been gifted at math but after a few years with poker as sole income and now back in college finishing my undergrad computer science degree (as someone once put it, math with computers), I can see the effects of math where I never noticed them before.

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

thoss is greater than pokkermon is greater than thoss is greater than 5lk

Re: Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented
 

The question is not whether God exists. The question is whether we concern ourselves with, or are utterly indifferent to, the sanctity and ultimate transcendence of human existence.

of course we should surely concern ourselves with such 'sanctity and ultimate transcendence' whether or not God exists.