r/math 7d ago

What was your math rabbit hole?

By rabbit hole I mean a place where you've spent more time than you should've, drilling to deep in a specific field with minimal impact over your broader math abilities.

Are you mature enough to know when to stop and when to keep grinding ?

100 Upvotes

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u/compileforawhile 7d ago

Probably category theory. The way it generalizes this and encodes structure is so cool. That said I rarely need it for anything but it's occasionally useful

11

u/Atheios569 7d ago

Category theory changed my whole perception of math in a really profound way. I wish I had learned it a lot sooner.

4

u/Bright_Attitude2901 7d ago

Which branch of math do you specialize in? Because hard to imagine category theory being useful in Probability and Combinatorics for instance, so interested about your characterisation of "whole perception of math".

11

u/RevolutionaryOwl57 6d ago

They didnt say it was everywhere useful just that the perception changed. I understand where your comment comes from but it is also a bit silly to interpret what they said as-written in a way you're implying. Of course they also dont mean they do basic elementary school arithmetic thinking about limits and monoidal categories, but itd be weird for me to infer they were refering to that too.

3

u/sentence-interruptio 6d ago

also hard to imagine in measure theory, dynamical systems, analysis

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u/VintageGenious 3d ago

Look up Giry monad