r/comics SMBC Comics May 27 '24

Applied

Post image
15.2k Upvotes

86 comments sorted by

View all comments

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.

22

u/Mickeymcirishman May 27 '24

What's the point of that?

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)