On May 16, 8:52 pm, Arne VajhQj <a...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
Lew wrote:
Mark Thornton wrote:
Lew wrote:
John W Kennedy wrote:
And it's even worse with methodwise syntax instead of functionwise.
That is:
b.exp(2).minus(4.times(a).times(c))
is even worse for a mathematician than
minus(exp(b, 2), times(times(4, a), c))
Why would a mathematician waste their time writing Java code?
Because there isn't a perfect language.
What I mean is why would a mathematician waste their time writing any
code in any computer language?
Same reason programmers grow rhododendron in their garden ??
Actually I believe a few mathematicians are using computers
to create proofs.
But that will be far far from numerical calculations.
Arne
This is a fairly narrow view of mathematics and what mathematicians
do. My understanding is that the single largest employer of
mathematicians in the world is the National Security Agency where
there's a lot of work where Java's BigIntegers and such could play a
significant role. Similarly, a lot (compared to the total population
of mathematicians at least!) of mathematicians now work on Wall Street
in the analysis of markets -- I believe more than in academics.
Even if we limit ourselves to academic mathematics, fields like the
development of chaotic systems and fractal analysis of images are of
immense interest in both pure and applied mathemetics and there are
plenty of other areas where numerical computations play a major role.
There's a lot more to mathematics than abstract proofs.
I mean, instead of hiring someone who knows how to write software. I am not