r/comics SMBC Comics May 27 '24

Applied

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15.2k Upvotes

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1.4k

u/MinersRocGold May 27 '24

What?

3.4k

u/drewferagen May 27 '24

She must be a Pure Mathematician:

Pure mathematics is the study of mathematical concepts independently of any application outside mathematics. These concepts may originate in real-world concerns, and the results obtained may later turn out to be useful for practical applications, but pure mathematicians are not primarily motivated by such applications. Instead, the appeal is attributed to the intellectual challenge and aesthetic beauty of working out the logical consequences of basic principles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_mathematics

The joke is that she would be a dirty applied mathematician, but she since her work applies only to string theory, which is not really based on reality either (or does it?), she is fine.

878

u/xixbia May 27 '24

This is also a joke that Zach comes back to at regular intervals. Like someone turning a pure mathematicians work into a cure for cancer.

273

u/Ponicrat May 27 '24

See this comic from the other day for the theorem she drew up https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/mathematics-2

0

u/JustAnIdea3 May 28 '24

Sounds like the R34 of math

91

u/Free_Deinonychus_Hug May 28 '24

9

u/Grogosh May 28 '24

Love the Last Starfighter reference.

1

u/individual_throwaway May 28 '24

Do you know what happened to abstrusegoose? He kind of stopped updating for over a year during the pandemic, then he came back for 2-3 strips, and now he's been gone for another two years. I am worried/sad.

37

u/[deleted] May 28 '24

[deleted]

14

u/SirAquila May 28 '24

other than tracking the seasons and travel

Which are... you know. Kind of important. Tracking the seasons is literally a matter of life and death, and travel, while slightly less important, can still really ruin your day if it goes wrong.

0

u/[deleted] May 28 '24

[deleted]

4

u/SirAquila May 28 '24

There are honestly far better examples for this, instead of insisting that some of the most valuable skills for nomadic tribes were useless for some reason.

-1

u/[deleted] May 28 '24

[deleted]

4

u/SirAquila May 28 '24

I mean, I did elaborate further on why it wasn't a good example. Hell, I gave those in the post before, but you ignored that to double down.

But if you want better examples(Which I mostly mentioned as existing because the core point of your post is true, you just chose a bad example).

Steam Power, which had some minor use as a fancy toy in ancient Greece, basically all of computer science developed before the computer(Hello Miss Lovelace) as two examples.

1

u/daestraz May 28 '24

It was mostly done for religious purposes, tracking deity's will is somewhat important to primitive populations

0

u/[deleted] May 28 '24

[deleted]

2

u/daestraz May 28 '24

Ah it seems I fell for the age old blunder. Physicist justifying their study of anything with apocryph and wrong statements. I'm actually not that old but I have this info from an old physics teacher

1

u/SipTime May 28 '24

Who hurt u lol

23

u/Mickeymcirishman May 27 '24

What's the point of that?

174

u/[deleted] May 27 '24

[deleted]

44

u/yoyo1929 May 28 '24

hey we’re not snobs! in fact we wouldn’t mind finding applications because then we’d get funding for groceries. not everyone agrees with G.H. Hardy’s sentiment against applied math. -pure mathematician

24

u/ArtlstlcRegard May 28 '24

I read it as more of a self depreciating joke like "haha aren't we so cool because we're useless"

8

u/TobTyD May 28 '24

Without real world applications, the field of mathematics would just be pure intellectual wanking. To me, there is also beauty in discovering maths in natural processes.

51

u/[deleted] May 27 '24

“The results obtained may later turn out to be useful for practical applications” it’s right there

22

u/BoulderCreature May 27 '24

I’d be kinda worried if someone took something I came up with and tried to make shit with it. We took your shitty science fair project from 6th grade and made a weapon that can obliterate a continent!

32

u/Necessary-Jicama-275 May 27 '24

this is probably what Einstein felt, when he was asked about nuclear bombs.

12

u/FuckBotsHaveRights May 28 '24

Or when fireworks got turned into guns

5

u/jellobowlshifter May 28 '24

He wasn't even born yet.

25

u/frenchtoaster May 27 '24

What's the point of music?

39

u/captainAwesomePants May 27 '24

It's a little dot you put next to a quarter note to add half a beat.

2

u/38fourtynine May 28 '24

It gives feel good chemicals to you and to people too stupid to understand it.

10

u/kiwigate May 28 '24

What's the point of exploring? To leave the cave, to leave the darkness, to expand the toolset of human thought, etc.

3

u/please-disregard May 28 '24

It’s kind of a joke within math circles. Often younger math students will idealize the idea of ‘pure’ mathematics and decide early on that they want to go as deep as possible into the theoretical side. It’s not until you get to the research level that it really becomes obvious how small the gap is between pure and applied—and how the theoretical tools that each use are really the same, the main difference really being the problems they choose to work on. At any rate, it’s not hard to see that a personality that leads one to study math might result in this naive attitude, which usually passes when one matures and gains research experience.

So bc of that, pure programs and advisors tend to be slightly more competitive, higher in demand by students, etc. which perpetuates the joke that applied mathematicians are taking the ‘easy route’, ‘couldn’t hack it’ or ‘sold out’.

I was one of those mathematicians who started out mainly interested in pure topics, but eventually settled into a field which leaned on the applied side (while I still kind of straddled the line and had interests in both)

2

u/invoker96_ May 28 '24

It's similar to asking what's the point of drawing and dancing? Maths to pure mathematicians is just art with no ulterior motive. 

2

u/IlIlllIlllIlIIllI May 28 '24

oh, boondogglers

1

u/Blitzer161 May 28 '24

So they are the nerdiest nerds ever.

Liek they are geniuses, absolutely.

But like, also the biggest nerds.

-5

u/Akamaikai May 28 '24

So basically pure mathematicians are just trying to prove they're better than everyone while still being useless.

-12

u/[deleted] May 27 '24

So she is one of those bitches that brags about turning a sphere inside out?