Only a small fraction of math has practical applications, the majority of math exists for no reason other than thinking about it is fun. Even things with applications had sometimes been invented before those applications were known. So in a sense most math is designed to be fun. Of course it’s not fun for everyone, just for a special class of people who are into this kind of thing. That makes it different from Angry Birds. But there are many games which are also only enjoyed by a specific audience, so maybe the difference is not that fundamental. A large part of the reason the average person doesn’t enjoy math is that unlike Angry Birds math requires some effort, which is the same reason the average person doesn’t enjoy League Of Evil III.
Spot on. Pure, fun math does benefit society directly in at least one way, however, in that the opportunity to engage in it can be used to lure very smart people into otherwise unpalatable teaching jobs.
In fact, that seems to be the main point of “research” in most less-than-productive fields (i.e. the humanities).
Pure, fun math does benefit society directly in at least one way, however, in that the opportunity to engage in it can be used to lure very smart people into otherwise unpalatable teaching jobs.
Is it clear that this is in the best interests of society? It would seem to me the end result is bad teaching. Back when I was in undergrad, the best researchers were the worst teachers (for obvious reasons- they were focused on their research and didn’t at all care about teaching).
When I was in grad school in physics, the professor widely considered the strongest teacher was denied tenure (cited AGAINST him in the decision was that he had written a widely used textbook),etc.
Also, the desire for tenured track profs to dodge teaching is why the majority of math classes at many research institutions were taught by grad students.
In graduate school, for special topics class there were usually only 1 or 2 professors that COULD teach a certain class (and only 3 or 4 students interested in taking it)- so when you are talking cutting edge research topics, its a necessity to have a researcher because no one else will be familiar enough with whats going on in the field.
Outside of that, not really. Good teaching takes work, so if you put someone in front of the class whose career advancement requires spending all their time on research, then the teaching is just a potentially career destroying distraction. Also, at the intro level, subject-pedagogy experts tend to do better (i.e. the physics education group were measurably more effective at teaching physics than other physics groups. So much so that I think now they exclusively teach the large physics courses for engineers)
I mean, it’s easier to get research positions with those professors, and those are learning experiences, but the students generally get very little out of it during the actual class.
Only a small fraction of math has practical applications, the majority of math exists for no reason other than thinking about it is fun. Even things with applications had sometimes been invented before those applications were known. So in a sense most math is designed to be fun. Of course it’s not fun for everyone, just for a special class of people who are into this kind of thing. That makes it different from Angry Birds. But there are many games which are also only enjoyed by a specific audience, so maybe the difference is not that fundamental. A large part of the reason the average person doesn’t enjoy math is that unlike Angry Birds math requires some effort, which is the same reason the average person doesn’t enjoy League Of Evil III.
Spot on. Pure, fun math does benefit society directly in at least one way, however, in that the opportunity to engage in it can be used to lure very smart people into otherwise unpalatable teaching jobs.
In fact, that seems to be the main point of “research” in most less-than-productive fields (i.e. the humanities).
Is it clear that this is in the best interests of society? It would seem to me the end result is bad teaching. Back when I was in undergrad, the best researchers were the worst teachers (for obvious reasons- they were focused on their research and didn’t at all care about teaching).
When I was in grad school in physics, the professor widely considered the strongest teacher was denied tenure (cited AGAINST him in the decision was that he had written a widely used textbook),etc.
Also, the desire for tenured track profs to dodge teaching is why the majority of math classes at many research institutions were taught by grad students.
Interesting. Did there seem to be any pedagogical benefit to having relatively easy access to research-level experts, though?
In graduate school, for special topics class there were usually only 1 or 2 professors that COULD teach a certain class (and only 3 or 4 students interested in taking it)- so when you are talking cutting edge research topics, its a necessity to have a researcher because no one else will be familiar enough with whats going on in the field.
Outside of that, not really. Good teaching takes work, so if you put someone in front of the class whose career advancement requires spending all their time on research, then the teaching is just a potentially career destroying distraction. Also, at the intro level, subject-pedagogy experts tend to do better (i.e. the physics education group were measurably more effective at teaching physics than other physics groups. So much so that I think now they exclusively teach the large physics courses for engineers)
I mean, it’s easier to get research positions with those professors, and those are learning experiences, but the students generally get very little out of it during the actual class.