[Liberator]

Knowledge for it's own sake doesn't feed starving people, figure out new and better ways to light up a home at night or get me to my destination faster and safer.

Knowledge for it's own sake is a Red Herring perpetrated primarily by researchers who want the fat grants and cushy lifestyles with no expectation of output.  You could take a dump on a blank piece of paper, use it to write some equations and then claim it's a break through in modern mathematics.  Nobody would know the difference for weeks or months or years if they're sufficiently complex and by that time you are in some tropical paradise sipping pina coladas and banging the check in clerk.

In case you can't tell, I'm not a big fan of "science" that doesn't have some kind of usable output that I can comprehend.  Pure math belongs on the shelf and the pointy heads who practice it should be put to work on a physics or chemistry problem so they can actually benefit someone other than themselves.

[General Battuta]

Why is knowledge for its own sake somehow taking away from applied knowledge?

In fact, when has applied knowledge ever been able to proceed without advances in pure fields? (See cryptography.)

Aren't you a supporter of manned spaceflight?

You could take a dump on a blank piece of paper, use it to write some equations and then claim it's a break through in modern mathematics.  Nobody would know the difference for weeks or months or years if they're sufficiently complex and by that time you are in some tropical paradise sipping pina coladas and banging the check in clerk.

Nope, that's simply false.

Get an education.

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah, and while we're at it, uhm... Liberator, philosophical disagreements aside, I don't know who or what your sources are, but I'm afraid you're sorely misinformed about the lifestyle of the typical academic.

[General Battuta]

Seriously.

Anyway, to understand is to be human. If we limit ourselves to satisfying practical concerns we aren't much better than another ant hive.

[Liberator]

When hunger and thirst stop being in the top 3 reasons that people go to war, then I might change my tune.

As for my educational status, you find me somewhere I can get the ridiculous amounts of money it takes to go to school and not have to work 40 hours a week to live and I'll consider it.  I realize millions of people do it every day, but all but one of them is not me.  I've held 3 jobs in my life longer than a week.  At each one I've not made a living wage at any of them, nevermind enough to live and go to school.  I know I may not seem it, but I'm the bottom of the proverbial barrel job wise.  I don't have the confidence to pursue a career type job and I don't have the education to back me up if I were to get one.  I have some skill in computer science, but not enough to get by.  I am an uneducated idiot with the skills of a low grade moron.  If you need me, I'll be cleaning out toilets with a toothbrush somewhere.

[General Battuta]

I don't want to turn this into a personal debate. But if you're going to make sweeping statements about a field of human endeavor that consumes very few resources, you'll be called on your knowledge of that field.

Anyway, this is all immaterial to the point of the debate, which is 'is math beautiful', which is in turn related to how we can better teach math to kids. And I think you'll agree that getting more kids proficient at math is a good aim; it means more engineers and physicists.

[Spicious]

Knowledge for it's own sake is a Red Herring perpetrated primarily by researchers who want the fat grants and cushy lifestyles with no expectation of output.  You could take a dump on a blank piece of paper, use it to write some equations and then claim it's a break through in modern mathematics.  Nobody would know the difference for weeks or months or years if they're sufficiently complex and by that time you are in some tropical paradise sipping pina coladas and banging the check in clerk.

You wouldn't know. Other academics with expertise in that or a similar area of mathematics could fairly easily go through the working and find holes in the reasoning if they're there. Not that they would get paid on a per paper basis.

In case you can't tell, I'm not a big fan of "science" that doesn't have some kind of usable output that I can comprehend.  Pure math belongs on the shelf and the pointy heads who practice it should be put to work on a physics or chemistry problem so they can actually benefit someone other than themselves.

Are you aware as to how much theoretical knowledge goes into technological advances?

When hunger and thirst stop being in the top 3 reasons that people go to war, then I might change my tune.

Why don't you do something to fix that? Why is it always someone else's responsibility to fix the world for you?

As for my educational status, you find me somewhere I can get the ridiculous amounts of money it takes to go to school and not have to work 40 hours a week to live and I'll consider it.  I realize millions of people do it every day, but all but one of them is not me.  I've held 3 jobs in my life longer than a week.  At each one I've not made a living wage at any of them, nevermind enough to live and go to school.  I know I may not seem it, but I'm the bottom of the proverbial barrel job wise.  I don't have the confidence to pursue a career type job and I don't have the education to back me up if I were to get one.  I have some skill in computer science, but not enough to get by.  I am an uneducated idiot with the skills of a low grade moron.  If you need me, I'll be cleaning out toilets with a toothbrush somewhere.

Try Australia; probably New Zealand and many parts of Europe for that matter. If your method of cleaning toilets is indicative of your work habits, that would be your problem.

[General Battuta]

Ironically, suicide kills many more people each year than wars, suggesting we should focus on making people happy instead of peaceful.

[redsniper]

What if war makes me happy?

.....

[NGTM-1R]

What if war makes me happy?

.....

That would appear to be an acceptable tradeoff.

[Ghostavo]

In case you can't tell, I'm not a big fan of "science" that doesn't have some kind of usable output that I can comprehend.  Pure math belongs on the shelf and the pointy heads who practice it should be put to work on a physics or chemistry problem so they can actually benefit someone other than themselves.

Every mathematical problem that gets solved will eventually have a real world application. This has been the historical trend.

And, let's not forget, the mathematical prowess of a civilization determines how fast other knowledge fields advance.

[Mika]

Are you aware as to how much theoretical knowledge goes into technological advances?

This is an odd statement. Looking at the history of Physics, there's plenty of examples showing the opposite. Knowledge of why it works came after the first system was implemented. Emphasizing theoretical knowledge is also a little bit worrifiying trend as it downplays the role of having sharp eyes. I don't dispute the original point, though, but would like to add that theoretical knowledge and technical advances are complementary.

And, let's not forget, the mathematical prowess of a civilization determines how fast other knowledge fields advance.

What do you mean by that statement?

[castor]

I still want to know how life has improved by Mathematics as a product of it's own existence, not in the use of some other discipline such as chemistry, physics or engineering.

So, what exactly do you consider an improvement? If you only value things that make life possible or "more efficient", and scrap everything else as useless, there won't be any reasons left to be alive.

[Ghostavo]

And, let's not forget, the mathematical prowess of a civilization determines how fast other knowledge fields advance.

What do you mean by that statement?

If the math is already done, you don't have to wait for mathematicians to solve certain types of problems in order to progress through those fields. And with sufficient mathematical background, one can go through the implications of an hypothesis much quicker. Hence, mathematical prowess is one of the indicators of how fast one can advance in relevant fields. I didn't mean to imply it was the only one, if that's what you are suggesting.

As a practical example, the math behind black holes was mostly done by the time physicists proposed their existence.

Also, regarding "theoretical" vs "practical" knowledge, it's kind of pointless to make that distinction. Specially when most research can be dependent on its results to see which is which. As an example, there's the computer science problem of P vs NP. If the answer is P != NP, then the practical application of this doesn't seem to be much (at least compared with the alternative), and it's what most researchers lean towards. However if the answer is P = NP...

[Snail]

Math is cool.

[captain-custard]

ive gone back to skool again and i didnt realise how much i had avoided maths in the last 25 years of my life , and although the math i am having to learn and re-learn is fairly basic , ( stress based calculations , trig etc ) i can understand why ppl dislike math , if you brain doesnt go that way instantly it can all be very boring and tedious.;; all of the maths i am doing has practical applications but that doesnt always help

[Manunkind]

I don't think anyone's brought up the following point yet.

Kids hate math because if you screw up the tiniest detail in math, it's all over. No one will care that you've done everything prior to that screw-up correctly, you'll get an F. It's just incredibly frustrating.

[Kosh]

ive gone back to skool again and i didnt realise how much i had avoided maths in the last 25 years of my life , and although the math i am having to learn and re-learn is fairly basic , ( stress based calculations , trig etc ) i can understand why ppl dislike math , if you brain doesnt go that way instantly it can all be very boring and tedious.;; all of the maths i am doing has practical applications but that doesnt always help

We can thank evolution for that. Knowing how to use an integral to find the area under a curve wasn't exactly useful when we were being chased by lions.

[General Battuta]

I don't think anyone's brought up the following point yet.

Kids hate math because if you screw up the tiniest detail in math, it's all over. No one will care that you've done everything prior to that screw-up correctly, you'll get an F. It's just incredibly frustrating.

Most classes should give partial credit.

[Sarafan]

I think you're all wrong and that the real reason is that teachers dont have the "right" approach like this: