The Mathematical Hacker (2012)
I basically hate math discussions on HN. Why? Because it seems like there&#x27;s two (at least) &quot;camps&quot; in terms of how they interpret what &quot;math&quot; even means. And the various camps constantly talk around each other, with neither camp seeming to realize that they&#x27;re arguing about completely different things. So they keep arguing, nobody gets anywhere, and the whole thing is largely a cluster-fuck.<p>So what do I mean by &quot;camps&quot;? Well, the most obvious dividing line is between people who see &quot;math&quot; as something that everybody does, and that includes everything from elementary school addition up to, well whatever, and has a primary goal of computing something. Then you get the camp who see &quot;math&quot; as the exclusive domain of mathematicians, look down on any maths class at a level lower than abstract algebra or real analysis, and consider the primary goal of math to be more math (eg, proving things that we didn&#x27;t already consider proven). And the latter often tend to look down their noses at anybody who dares talk about &quot;learning math&quot; but without a goal of becoming a mathematician.<p><i>sigh</i><p>My position is that &quot;math&quot; includes both of those notions, and that in most conversational contexts you have to explicitly define which one you are talking about up front in order to have even a chance at a productive conversation.