Another Obnoxious Post About The Math Knowledgeable and/orTalented

[gumpzilla]

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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.

[m_the0ry]

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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.

[soon2bepro]

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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)

[uDevil]

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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.

[vhawk01]

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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.

[LooseCaller]

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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.

[David Sklansky]

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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.

[arahant]

Seriously. Lay off the random capitalization.

[PairTheBoard]

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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

[arahant]

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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!