Hacker News Reader

Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

Well he says this, "he decided to regard it as a barren pursuit of one logically necessary statement piled atop another"

This indicates that he views a certain type of worthlessness in math. Then he can justify not being good at math, and distance himself from the pursuit of math on its own grounds.

Of course his perception of him not being good at math and actually not being good at math are two different things. Physics uses math, but not for maths sake. And in reality, I'm sure he was more than competent in math, so the level of math required for undergrad physics was not a problem.

It was only, through his journalism, did he let down his guard enough to enjoy math for maths sake -- and realize that a test you took in elementary school needn't define you.

View on HN

I think there's a bigger problem the article is getting at, that people are kind of missing or downplaying, which is the culture around math skill acquisition and ability.

It's obvious this guy had a love of math and ability in it, from his majors and subsequent events.

But it's also actually not that unreasonable for him to start second-guessing himself when he struggled with math earlier in life.

I do think there's this idea that if you're good at math and have something to offer in it, it will show early on regardless of life circumstances or mentors or role models or whatever, that if it's not immediately obvious that you're a mathematical genius you should forget about it.

"Realizing a test you took in elementary school needn't define you" is actually a nontrivial thing to overcome in today's society, maybe even especially in STEM circles.

Sometimes I wish STEM culture was more focused on sharing the joys of STEM and trying to be as open-minded and inclusive as possible, instead of brandishing it as a competitive tool.

Very much agreed. I've definitely encountered the attitude that my high-school grades or my undergrad GPA define me. And by "define me", I mean that my undergrad GPA of 3.45, higher in just my CS+math courses, is considered a little on the low side to be applying for STEM grad-school. My GPA was sufficient to graduate with Latin honors, but it's low for STEM? Come on.

Yes, we definitely treat STEM as a competition to see who can be the closest to "perfect" at set tasks and classwork, rather than as an exploration (or even exploitation) of structures and spaces through strictly logical reasoning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com