How many pages of math research is published each year?
Think of all those journals. It would be impossible to keep up to speed in all areas of math, even if you just read journals all day. How much of the research published is actually interesting or important? Are there just too many mathematicians these days, all doing mediocre research just to make a living? Instead of working on the big problems in math, they find a really boring and obscure area to research, where they can find new theorems, because nobody else cares to do so?
Is this what academia is like? Should the number of academics be cut by 10 so we only have brilliant minds doing actual interesting research?
Please enlighten me, grad students, and researchers.
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Anonymous2009-12-01 17:27
There's "useless" research in all sorts of fields besides math.
However, the amount spent on research is a fraction of that spent on defense and other pork, so don't f e e l b a d a b o u t i t
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Anonymous2009-12-01 17:40
your thinking is flawed, that "boring" math research might be of use someday either directly(formula x is found to model y) or indirectly(expanding an area of math). Also, real problems are insanely difficult to solve that's why most mathematicians look at only specialized chunks of real problems and that's why their work seems meaningless. For example in physics we talk a lot about blocks and springs and frictionless surfaces and pendulums. It seems useless but it's all a simplification of a really complicated real world model.
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Anonymous2009-12-04 19:07
mathematical research in algorithms and complexity was around decades before computers were invented
that said, i wish academics would restrain themselves to publishing more significant findings
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Anonymous2009-12-04 23:59
>>4
the thing is they're forced to publish or else they get fired
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Anonymous2009-12-08 8:47
We should just hire 10000 korean gold farmers to deduce everything there is in zfc and move on.
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Anonymous2009-12-10 5:24
>>6
Given that there is a countably infinite number of deducible statements in zfc, that will be rather time-consuming.
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4tran2009-12-10 8:57
>>7
If it's countable, then we're good! The power of brute force knows no bounds!
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Anonymous2009-12-10 13:46
>>8
Given that zfc is incomplete (Gödel), the power of brute force does know bounds. It isn't possible to find out whether a statement in zfc is provable in, disprovable in, or independent of zfc using brute force.
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Anonymous2009-12-10 14:10
face it, whoever created math wasn't a dumbass and made sure no one else would know the complete rules
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Anonymous2009-12-12 20:37
>>9
It's entirely possible, depends entirely on the statement.
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Anonymous2009-12-12 22:20
>>11
Yes, I forgot the word "always" before "possible". Very clever.
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Anonymous2009-12-13 17:29
>>10
Even him didn't know how to math-Bug exploit.
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Anonymous2009-12-13 17:32
>>12
Yes, you did. That doesn't make me a pedantic bastard.
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Anonymous2009-12-13 19:40
number 14 if you like children you really need to see a physicist thats just wrong
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Anonymous2009-12-13 19:40
number 14 if you like children you really need to see a physicist thats just wrong
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Anonymous2009-12-15 3:37
there are too many physicists
we need more math grads
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Anonymous2009-12-15 7:59
Almost all math research published in the major journals is interesting and important, at least to people in that specific field. If by "mediocre research" you mean anything that doesn't get you a Fields medal, then yes, there's lots of that going on. However, the major breakthroughs are all based on lots and lots of earlier "mediocre" research. Go find a paper that you consider important and ground breaking, and look how many other papers are referenced, and how many papers are referenced in those, and so on... Research (in all fields) is made primarily in baby steps, building little by little on work that's already been done.