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What's your skill level in mathematics?

Highest level of mathematics studied:

  • Total voters
    39
Simon W. Moon said:
Cite, please?You may have an adequate understanding of maths, but I think your understanding of "society" is wonked if you think it similar to rational processes which are involved in maths.
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Game theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many things if undestood, can be described mathematically, it's just logical relationships. Understanding that isn't required to have a functioning society, true. But a society that understands the relationship, can begin the long and likely never-ending process of replacing the "hodge-podge" of mostly NON-random influenced rules of society, and begin to actually justify them with reasoning, or if really well understood, mathematically. You've seen this process start with say, religious rules, which we've routinely replaced with science, i.e. logic, axioms, etc. What use to be luck or diety picking winners, becomes statistics. What was god cursing a villiage was the specific nature of the pathogen and its vector, etc. It's a long process and won't likely stop entirely, but yes, modern understanding of science generally speaking, is able to answer most "riddles of ethics" or "rules of society". at least in terms of telling you it's a dumb rule or a good rule. Can't stop us from being dumb now and then, but at least we can admit it with math :)
 
Mach said:
Game theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many things if undestood, can be described mathematically, it's just logical relationships. Understanding that isn't required to have a functioning society, true. But a society that understands the relationship, can begin the long and likely never-ending process of replacing the "hodge-podge" of mostly NON-random influenced rules of society, and begin to actually justify them with reasoning, or if really well understood, mathematically. You've seen this process start with say, religious rules, which we've routinely replaced with science, i.e. logic, axioms, etc. What use to be luck or diety picking winners, becomes statistics. What was god cursing a villiage was the specific nature of the pathogen and its vector, etc. It's a long process and won't likely stop entirely, but yes, modern understanding of science generally speaking, is able to answer most "riddles of ethics" or "rules of society". at least in terms of telling you it's a dumb rule or a good rule. Can't stop us from being dumb now and then, but at least we can admit it with math :)
Click to expand...

It's nice to see that somebody has a reasonable idea of how broadly mathematics is applicable. The first quote by Descartes in my signature block says it all. I would challenge anyone to come up with something I can't apply mathematical reasoning or computation to.
 
RepublicanMcDuc said:
So that makes three of us who studied math at the grad level. Cool beans.

And then there's a lot of people who have responded upper and lower undergrad level.

What's interesting is that almost no one has picked anything lower.
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I did by accident. I think I blocked out the undergrad math I took in college I as so traumatized. :2razz:
 
Math is basically a manifestation of the corporate school paradigm that is more interested in producing docile engineers, accountants, and hedge fund managers than it is socially-conscious and enlightened citizens.
 
527 SATM (1st try, Jr. year HS)
597 SATM (2nd try, Sr. year HS)

B- Algebra 101 (1st semester Fr. year college)
C- Probability 101 (2nd semester Fr. year college)

And then I fled from academic math forever.

In the interest of transparency I should mention that the Probability course was the only real joke
of a course I took in school. There was a mother of all curves thanks in part maybe to at least two
athletic scholarship jocks I know who were in that section. I think I got a low pass in one test for
getting 35% of the answers right. On the other hand, the algebra course was demanding and rigorous.

I might also mention that was during the era when there n-o NO multiple choice tests of any kind in
any course, and I mean all 40 courses over four years. You had to show the work in the math, each
answer in humanities courses required at least one full sentence, and each humanities test included
at least one short essay question.
 
High school upper level, I'm a humanities girl.
 
Mathematician said:
You don't understand the math, yet you are going to cop an attitude? I don't need to cite anything, because I can give you a lesson in logic and model theory. Here's a formal mathematical proof of one of the statements I made.
Definition
A set of sentences S is inconsistent if and only if there is a sentence s such that S deduces both s and its negation.
Theorem
A set of sentences S is inconsistent if and only if every sentence s can be deduced from S.
Proof
The proof from right to left is trivial, just choosing an arbitrary sentence s and its negation. So suppose S is inconsistent, say S deduces s and not s. Note that (s implies (not s implies t)) is a tautology. Since we assumed both s and not s could be deduced from S then we obtain that t can be deduced from S by two applications of modus ponens. But t was arbitrary. Hence any sentence can be deduced from S.
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Somehow failed to address the fundamental objection that the functioning of societies is not cut and dry nor consistent.

Mach said:
Many things if undestood, can be described mathematically, it's just logical relationships. Understanding that isn't required to have a functioning society, true. But a society that understands the relationship, can begin the long and likely never-ending process of replacing the "hodge-podge" of mostly NON-random influenced rules of society, and begin to actually justify them with reasoning, or if really well understood, mathematically. You've seen this process start with say, religious rules, which we've routinely replaced with science, i.e. logic, axioms, etc. What use to be luck or diety picking winners, becomes statistics. What was god cursing a villiage was the specific nature of the pathogen and its vector, etc. It's a long process and won't likely stop entirely, but yes, modern understanding of science generally speaking, is able to answer most "riddles of ethics" or "rules of society". at least in terms of telling you it's a dumb rule or a good rule. Can't stop us from being dumb now and then, but at least we can admit it with math :)
Click to expand...
I think you iterated my point again for me.
How society works is not significantly similar to rational processes which are involved in maths.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Somehow failed to address the fundamental objection that the functioning of societies is not cut and dry nor consistent.
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I'm not saying people setting rules do **** logically all the time. Probably every person setting rules has never heard of the term decidability from logic, nor have any clue that finding a contradiction from a starting set of rules can take arbitrarily long. Many of the rules set are based on BS emotion, such as the overreaction to recent shootings. I'm speaking philosophically about how rules should be handled. Unless you think when mommy says yes and daddy says no that you get to choose whichever answer you desire, someone would have to be an idiot to believe a set of rules which leads to contradictions is a good idea.
 
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