[FOM] FOM Digest, Vol 201, Issue 22

José Manuel Rodriguez Caballero josephcmac at gmail.com
Fri Sep 27 14:20:04 EDT 2019


Annatala Wolf wrote:
I have a question. I'm curious about what might make a mathematical
researcher view an area of math as non-mathematical. Do you think it is
that there is not enough active research in the area? Or is it that the
subject is "too easy" to qualify? Or is it simply when the domain has
real-world applications? If the latter, I might agree that research is not
in some sense "pure" when it is directed toward a specific applied purpose,
but that's about as far as I would take the qualification?I don't find it
useful to label something mathematical based on whether it finds utility in
other scientific fields.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 27, 2019, at 7:02 PM, fom-request at cs.nyu.edu wrote:
> 
> I have a question. I'm curious about what might make a mathematical
> researcher view an area of math as non-mathematical. Do you think it is
> that there is not enough active research in the area? Or is it that the
> subject is "too easy" to qualify? Or is it simply when the domain has
> real-world applications? If the latter, I might agree that research is not
> in some sense "pure" when it is directed toward a specific applied purpose,
> but that's about as far as I would take the qualification?I don't find it
> useful to label something mathematical based on whether it finds utility in
> other scientific fields.


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