My brother has a PhD in pure mathematics. Sometimes I get in trouble (yes, hyperbole) with him because, while I’m pretty decent at arithmetic and I like numbers, he knows so much more about either than I do. For example, I recently said that 57 was a boring number (I tried to connect it to 17, which I like, but was thinking of 19, which is fine) and learned quite a lot from both him and some lemmings.
Another time I told him that I thought there was debate about whether 2 was prime and I subsequently got quite a lecture on the nature of primality.
Point I’m trying to make is, give at least some math graduates at least some credit.
I suppose it depends on what you value. Language is more of a creative venture while math is more of a technical one. “Credit” is also somewhat of a nebulous term.
More like the difference between a circle with radius r >> 0 vs a point.
It was supposed to be another math pun about a line being 1 dimensional (at least it only requires a single parameter) with a point being 0D and the fact that “deep” conversations could be said to be multi-dimensional.
majors? you mean bachelors? PhDs get PhD respect. Bachelors get Bachelor respect. It’s not the subclassification of study, it’s the level. if you only have a bachelors, you get less respect than a masters and so on.
Of all the numbers to call boring you picked the Grothendieck prime.
2 is unambiguously prime. The best motivation for the definition of primality I know is the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every integer greater than 1 can be uniquely decomposed into a product of primes. That’s what primes are, and the uniqueness constraint is why 1 is not prime.
as if math graduates could do that sort of addition in their head
My brother has a PhD in pure mathematics. Sometimes I get in trouble (yes, hyperbole) with him because, while I’m pretty decent at arithmetic and I like numbers, he knows so much more about either than I do. For example, I recently said that 57 was a boring number (I tried to connect it to 17, which I like, but was thinking of 19, which is fine) and learned quite a lot from both him and some lemmings.
Another time I told him that I thought there was debate about whether 2 was prime and I subsequently got quite a lecture on the nature of primality.
Point I’m trying to make is, give at least some math graduates at least some credit.
Is the amount of credit I should give them less than, equal to, or greater than the amount of credit I should give English majors?
I suppose it depends on what you value. Language is more of a creative venture while math is more of a technical one. “Credit” is also somewhat of a nebulous term.
I don’t know, once math becomes Greek letters and mathematician names it sort of seems to circle back around.
That’s a really excellent point.
Didn’t they just talk about circling back, not back into itself?
Don’t you drop a dimension from this deep conversation!
Are you picturing, like, a spring?
More like the difference between a circle with radius r >> 0 vs a point.
It was supposed to be another math pun about a line being 1 dimensional (at least it only requires a single parameter) with a point being 0D and the fact that “deep” conversations could be said to be multi-dimensional.
majors? you mean bachelors? PhDs get PhD respect. Bachelors get Bachelor respect. It’s not the subclassification of study, it’s the level. if you only have a bachelors, you get less respect than a masters and so on.
Gotta add context for readers.
Of all the numbers to call boring you picked the Grothendieck prime.
2 is unambiguously prime. The best motivation for the definition of primality I know is the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every integer greater than 1 can be uniquely decomposed into a product of primes. That’s what primes are, and the uniqueness constraint is why 1 is not prime.
There’s more than one way to multiply numbers to get 1?
1, 11, 11*1, etc
But by that reasoning, 7 is not prime because you can do 7, 1*7, 1*1*7 etc.
Hence why 1 is not considered prime
So what are the prime factors of 1?
It doesn’t have any. Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic applies to integers greater than 1.
Are you my brother?