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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2011

Thomas A. Garrity
Affiliation:
Williams College, Massachusetts
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Summary

Math is Exciting. We are living in the greatest age of mathematics ever seen. In the 1930s, there were some people who feared that the rising abstractions of the early twentieth century would either lead to mathematicians working on sterile, silly intellectual exercises or to mathematics splitting into sharply distinct subdisciplines, similar to the way natural philosophy split into physics, chemistry, biology and geology. But the very opposite has happened. Since World War II, it has become increasingly clear that mathematics is one unified discipline. What were separate areas now feed off of each other. Learning and creating mathematics is indeed a worthwhile way to spend one's life.

Math is Hard. Unfortunately, people are just not that good at mathematics. While intensely enjoyable, it also requires hard work and self-discipline. I know of no serious mathematician who finds math easy. In fact, most, after a few beers, will confess as to how stupid and slow they are. This is one of the personal hurdles that a beginning graduate student must face, namely how to deal with the profundity of mathematics in stark comparison to our own shallow understandings of mathematics. This is in part why the attrition rate in graduate school is so high. At the best schools, with the most successful retention rates, usually only about half of the people who start eventually get their PhDs. Even schools that are in the top twenty have at times had eighty percent of their incoming graduate students not finish.

Type
Chapter
Information
All the Mathematics You Missed
But Need to Know for Graduate School
, pp. xiii - xviii
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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  • Preface
  • Thomas A. Garrity, Williams College, Massachusetts
  • Illustrated by Lori Pedersen
  • Book: All the Mathematics You Missed
  • Online publication: 11 April 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511800498.001
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Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Preface
  • Thomas A. Garrity, Williams College, Massachusetts
  • Illustrated by Lori Pedersen
  • Book: All the Mathematics You Missed
  • Online publication: 11 April 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511800498.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Thomas A. Garrity, Williams College, Massachusetts
  • Illustrated by Lori Pedersen
  • Book: All the Mathematics You Missed
  • Online publication: 11 April 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511800498.001
Available formats
×