I was thinking recently that my maths ability has almost totally atrophied, from the time I was in university. I did a chemistry degree, with a supplementary subject in ‘quantum chemistry’ - basically quantum mechanics. I did well in this area, which involved stuff like partial differential equations, matrix algebra ,operator algebra, eigenvalues etc.
If you asked me today what is a matrix? I couldn’t honestly tell you. Partial Differential equations? Forget it.
I wonder if it would be possible to re-claim this mathamatical territory? I’m thinking it might actually be very difficult. Maybe less to do with stagnating brain cells then the huge amount of time it would take to re-familliarise myself with the basics. Has anyone ever had to do this as part of a job, or as a hobby?
I can’t imagine wanting to do it as a hobby, but I’m sure it’s possible. I have a degree in biochemistry (though I did mostly organic chem), and worked as a pharmaceutical chemist, which involved lots of dilution and concentration calculations, but not much else. I had done some single-variable differential and integral calculus and some linear algebra in Cegep (post-secondary, pre-university general education), but I really didn’t need to do much in my job.
Now I’ve gone back to school in mechanical engineering, and so far I’ve taken Calculus 1, 2 and currently Advanced Calculus, as well as Ordinary Differential Equations and a Linear Algebra course. I’m taking Partial DEs next term. And while I wouldn’t say it was easy, it certainly isn’t turning out to be as daunting as it first seemed. Taking Cal 1 and 2 was mostly refresher for me, because I was sure I’d be terrible at it after 8 years of never seeing a d/dx or an integral sign, but as I went through the course, I discovered that I actually remembered a lot of it, or at least recognised it and understood it better this time around.
OTOH, give me an equation from last term’s ODE class, and I doubt I can really solve it without glancing at my notes at least once! I’m not good enough at math to remember this stuff forever, but I am good enough to recognize a situation and identify what needs to be done to solve it, if not necessarily the proper steps to doing it.
I don’t think it would be particularly difficult to recover. There’s been situation where I’ve wanted to figure something out which required calculus or some other higher math ability, and if I had a reference book or the web handy I was able to figure it out eventually most times.
The thing is, you’ll probably get rusty again if you aren’t using it. I think that’s true of most things. It’s kind of like, do you really want to take the highway for just one exit? Probably the only way to solidify knowledge if you aren’t going to be using it a lot is to either 1) learn two steps above it - people who have taken calculus may forget differentials but they usually still remember algebra or 2) teach it to someone else - thinking about a subject in such a way as to make it understandable to someone else usually cements it more in one’s own head.
I can’t really think of any time I’ve needed calculus for work. Algebra has been useful, and I can imagine it being useful even for regular people who are using a spreadsheet like excel. I have needed calculus for some random thought experiments that occasionally occur to me.
Well, The Matrix is everywhere. It’s in the air you breathe, it’s in your dreams when you sleep, even when you help your old lady neighbor take out the garbage. Only question is…do you take the blue pill, or the red pill?
In high school, I was pretty skilled in mathematics, but lost interest when I reached basic Calculus (couldn’t get my head around separate degrees of Infinity – how can anything be more Infinite than Infinity??) That said, I’ve recently studied Hawking’s concept of “Time” as a separate dimension, as well as quantum mechanics and theoretical physics (esp. M-Theory) and I’m started to grasp the basic concepts. So maybe science & math is in my future, I don’t know. I could use a career change right now…
(I’ll probably avoid general mathematics, though. Numbers make my head hurt – I can’t even balance my checkbook w/o getting a headache!)
