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In my teacher's office hours, I expressed some disappointment that she was going to skip one of the "application" sections, which are my favorites. I complained that math is useless if its never applied to anything. And I tend to quickly forget math unless I see it applied to real world applications because it helps me visualize the math in a way that pure memorization can never achieve.
I was surprised that she disagreed. She told me that "back-in-the-day", non-applied mathamaticians looked down upon applied mathamaticians as the working class. She told me that she was about halfway inbetween the 2 opinions, although the sections in the book she is choosing to skip tell a different story. She referred to math as "mental msturb...ion" (I would hope this word is censored in the forum). It's not hard to see her point. I get that warm fuzzy feeling too, every time I struggle for a half hour on a problem and finally figure it out. But that said, I have to admit I would have zero interest in math if math could not be applied to solve real world problems. If 2 dollars + 2 dollars didn't equal 4 dollars, I wouldn't even have an interest to know simple addition.
I was just interested in the opinions of others on this issue. Is pure non-applied math useless?
I was surprised that she disagreed. She told me that "back-in-the-day", non-applied mathamaticians looked down upon applied mathamaticians as the working class. She told me that she was about halfway inbetween the 2 opinions, although the sections in the book she is choosing to skip tell a different story. She referred to math as "mental msturb...ion" (I would hope this word is censored in the forum). It's not hard to see her point. I get that warm fuzzy feeling too, every time I struggle for a half hour on a problem and finally figure it out. But that said, I have to admit I would have zero interest in math if math could not be applied to solve real world problems. If 2 dollars + 2 dollars didn't equal 4 dollars, I wouldn't even have an interest to know simple addition.
I was just interested in the opinions of others on this issue. Is pure non-applied math useless?