UKC

Are we really such a scary breed?

Yesterday my friend tried testing the reaction of someone before and after they knew he was a mathematician (a maths teacher in his case). Before hand people who'd just decided to chat to were happily conversing with him, but as soon as he revealed he was a maths teacher (or the rest of us were maths postgrads) a cold look came across them and they started seeming to look for a way out.

What is that makes people almost seem to have a fear of associating with us types? Just interested - are we really so terrible?

In reply to Liam M: Yes.

In reply to Liam M: The trick is to invite me along as well - compared to a PhD in nuclear physics mathematicians seem nice and fluffy!

In reply to Liam M:

I would have thought you would have worked that one out already? The formula is pretty straight forward.

(Mathematician) m x (boredoom factor) bf x (I could be climbing instead) ci + the square root of normal person = (cold look on someones face)cl.

You shouldn't worry too much though. I am an 'artist' and you should see the looks I get when that one rears it's ugly head.

In reply to tommyzero:

Don't they just proceed to order a burger with large fries?

In reply to Liam M:

Well you lot will start going on expounding on the theory of relativity, we practice it then by placing space between us.

I am pondering on whether to use a 7/32 drill or 3/16 one and what would be the best sort of thread to tap it for fixing my thingymajig, BA,UNF, metric or Whitworth. Any suggestions? ;-P

In reply to Liam M:

Be grateful. It's better than being pitied and/or reviled.

Y (Aero Engineer, then Marketeer.)

In reply to Liam M:

Try being a chugger, Jehovahs witness, oh hell and a mathematian as well, all at the same time.

In reply to sutty: Reminds me of the young ones episode, "Flood"

JUDGE: Master prisoner. Does thou knowest the crime of which thou has been found guilty of?

PRISONER: Yes, your holiness!

[pause]

JUDGE: [irritated] Well?! What be that crime?!

PRISONER: [pulling out microphone] Being Scottish and Jewish: two racial stereotypes for the price of one! Perhaps the best value in the graveyard this morning. Perhaps not. Incidentally, just let me say how pleased I am to be here in the graveyard, where so many other comedians have died before me. [bows] And why not?

Cheers,

FT.

In reply to Yanchik:

With an Aero engineering degree and now studying for a PhD in computational fluid mechanics in a maths department, I'm like an instant checklist of all things geek!

In reply to Liam M:

Yup .. you can count on it!

In reply to Liam M:

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz snore zzzzzzzzzzzzsnore

In reply to Liam M:

Yes, heading that way. Built any model aeroplanes at any point in your life ? Have any binoculars and notebooks in close proximity to each other ?

CFD - tsk, those were the days. Actually it was stability and control I enjoyed most, back in the days when I was numerate.

Y

In reply to Yanchik: <sing> S..plane, there ain't no diagram like a s-plane diagram </sing>

(To tune of sclub7)

In reply to Liam M:
You should try being a computer programmer - worse, a FEMALE computer programmer... I'm sure that's why I got no matches when I went speed dating

(What's that you say? it could be that I'm ugly and have no personality? surely not...)

In reply to tommyzero:


people seem to be alright about the art bit of my job... it's the marketing that sees them look confused (to say that i don't look or act like a stereotypical marketing person is something of an understatement)

In reply to Liam M:

Eeek eeek eeek, it's not that you're a mathematician, it's that you're an applied mathematician.

If you were a pure mathematician, you could tell people so. It always triggers slightly raised eyebrows as you give them a wicked grin as you say the 'pure' bit as no one knows WTF you mean. Even better if you're actually researching something interesting. There's a certain mystique to the degrees of unsolvability, even when you have to expand on it and explain you're studying just how incomputable incomputable sets are.

So I reckon you just need to change area. HTH

In reply to gingerkate:

>There's a certain mystique to the degrees of unsolvability, even when you have to expand on it and explain you're studying just how incomputable incomputable sets are.

You talk like an ex flatmate, we had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded interesting if you could have understood it.;-P

PS, thinking of retaking my gce in woodwork, what do you think are my chances?

In reply to sutty:

Go for it, I say.

In reply to gingerkate:

Some firm has just put up a fence next door, rough as a bears arse for the finish flatters it. I think the inspector for the council may have them back.

In reply to Liam M:

Seriously though, there's two things behind people's reacting like that. One is the 'hated maths at school' thing... an awful lot of people really detested, and were almost frightened of maths at school. So tell one of them you're a maths teacher and it's like putting salt on a slug. Secondly, there is a clear enough correlation between being a mathematician (or engineer) and being a really tedious dull nerdy individual who doesn't read novels, or understand emotional connections, or any of a whole wealth of stuff that the rest of humanity finds pretty important. I actually know a mathematician who reads the Journal of Symbolic Logic in bed. I mean, can you imagine what life would be like with a man who reads the JSL in bed? I can't even bear to think about it. But not all mathematicians are like this, thank heavens. Some are interesting, complex, rounded human beings.

In reply to gingerkate:

logical . . ?

In reply to Liam M:

You should try telling people you're a techie. All they ever want to talk about is why their computer's behaving badly...

I don't know any mathematicians - or maybe I DO but they've told me they're paramedics, builders, whatever - ANYTHING but a mathematician...

In reply to TN:

I believe you are my ideal woman, can fix computers, cook decent food, reads Sprouts or whatever his name is, can sew, rides bikes, climbs, drinks, knows one evd of a hammer from the other.

Damn that bloke Muz, got there first.

In reply to rich:

Ho

Btw, do you know how you tell an extrovert mathematician at a party?




























He's the one staring at someone else's shoes.

In reply to sutty:

Why Sutty, you smooth talkin' devil, you!! <blush>

In reply to TN:


You know me! Only I may not count, seeing as I'm an ex-mathemtician. (Geddit, geddit?

In reply to TN:

I know, it was the mention of reading sprouts that did it, shameless thats me.

In reply to sutty:

<shhhh> I didn't understand that bit and was too shy to ask...

In reply to gingerkate:

I didn't know you were an ex mathematician - see, proves my point - you never told me!! (very poor, by the way! GOL*)


(* GOL = groaned out load - I just made that up!)

In reply to fimm:

but what about the department parties.

In reply to Irton Pike:

Erm, I am one of the few that won't frown at you when you order fries. I am an 'artist' that makes art for a living.

In reply to CJD: Isn't that like an oxymoron though? Maybe that is why they frown. Or that people just don't like marketers.

'Art marketing' (the oxymoron)..... it's like the moment any artist/actor/musician hawks themselves for products on tv they loose credibility.

Maybe oxymoron is the wrong word for it? It's two words that don't belong together.. conflict of interest... I need to go home and sleep..... thank buddha for four days off!

I like mathmaticians. My cousin is one and she is 6ft tall.

In reply to gingerkate:


Oh, I'm sure CFD has its moments.

Engineering is another sure-fire zzzzzzzzz-maker.

In reply to captain paranoia:
Yeah, my tongue was in my cheek throughout, hence winkie at end ...

In reply to Liam M: First I tell people I'm an acoustician and they look puzzled, then I tell them I used to be a mechanical engineer. They look bored, I shuffle off.

Being a geek is great.

In reply to Fume Troll:

OLD LADY: [With dead man in wheelbarrow] I say young man do you dig graves.
NEIL: [With spade in hand] Um yeah they're OK, I suppose.



I agree with previous post in that a lot of people are scared of maths. I went to an open morning at my daugters primary school where they were giving us some help on how to explain maths to kids without getting them too scared of it. We did some simple exercises that even we were having difficulty with, using words like difference and other descriptive words. But before that we each had to say what our backgrounds were. That was pretty scary. Being one man in a classroom of 10 women was bad enough, but when I told them I had an engineering degree.....

I suppose I could have lied, but that would have been illogical.

In reply to TimR:

I was never told what reciprocal meant at school, it was only about 15 years ago when I was showing someone how to do some homework and looked it up. Doh, so easy, but till then confusing, like a foreign language. That is the problem, some teachers know the maths but cannot put it across.

In reply to gingerkate:

s'funny

at the current stage of the evolution of my identity i occasionally feel in a position to introduce myself as a psychologist - that can be amusing

In reply to Liam M: Interersting topic. Personally the women who've interested me most (in *all* the meanings of that phrase), and have interested me most miles apart from the others, are the exceptionally bright ones. For me a powerful brain is a powerful aphrodisiac. But then again, I'm a complete geek right now of a 30-something grad mature medical student who gave up a well paid career to be here with exams looming!

In reply to Liam M:
It is a shame that apparently so many people and children find maths scary.
I used to love maths at school and never really knew, then, how scary some people find it.
At home, during primary school years, my grandfather used to set maths problems for us kids to do as games.
I ought to have studied A'level maths but I didn't.

At university the mathematicians were a bit of an odd bunch but the stuff they were doing seemed abstract and artistic.

In reply to Hannah m:

It is, it's very much an artistic subject ... well, pure maths is, I'm not sure to what extent that is true of applied? ... proving new theorems is a completely creative activity, building on what has gone before of course, but then all art builds on what has gone before?... even if not overtly.

I don't suppose many people have any idea what mathematicians actually do, I certainly didn't really understand till after I'd finished my maths degree and started research. But a crude description of it would be that you're constructing mental structures out of other mental structures, inventing new ones as you go, exploring how the structures relate to each other and finding the beauty there. It's sort of sculptural. The end result, the theorem, doesn't give you the full story. It's a bit like the outside of a building — the most visible bit — but the internal structure of a building, the girders or whatever, even the wiring, is also part of the building, just not immediately obvious.

In reply to rich:

Twenty years back, if you'd told anyone you were a psychologist they'd have likely felt nervous, worried that you were seeing into their soul or something. But now, aren't we all so au fait with counsellor speak that it's less threatening and more fascinating? It's one of the subjects I would really have liked to study. I love the way they're mining away now at the interface between our humanity and our animalness. I love these crazy crazy facts like how the woman, asked to do a twirl, does so slower if she's ovulating. And how females get the 'tend and befriend' hormonal response, rather than 'fight or flight'. And that crying really does help, and why. I find it captivating.

In reply to gingerkate: psychology is a pretty broad field even when you don't count overlaps into sociology on one end and neurology on the other

it only really tends to come up at work where i'm in either an educational or some sort of work / organisational setting so people are usually cued up not to think about it in terms of individual counselling-type stuff still less human/(other)animals terms

having said that i've been doing stuff on analysing langauge recently and there's a very funky and very reliable thing you can watch out for:

conversational 'turns' often work in pairs (question-answer, invitation-acceptance' and so on)

those pairs have what they call a 'preference structure' - that is the 2nd of the pair had a normatively preferred response - not what the respondent 'prefers' as an individual by the way, a peference built into the way the langauge works irrespective of who's using it

so:

"isn't it a nice day?" - "yes, lovely"

"would you like a cup of tea" - "yes please"

when conversation follows the structure it flows rapidly - there will be no gap at all between the two turns - they might well overlap in fact

but if someone's goig to 'break the rules' they have to do a lot more work - the pattern is pretty reliable

"would you like a cup of tea? " - <pause (0.5-1sec but it is noticeable> "ummm (or similar - a marker)" <pause> "no thanks, i've just had one" (the excuse)

so, pause - marker - excuse

keep an eye/ear out for it

when you get bored with that try a few experiments to see how people react when you break the rules - especialy with refusals - if someone invites you round to dinner say "no thanks" politely but miss out the excuse - it makes this sort of big gap in the interaction - very often they'll supply the excuse for you

i should probably do some work eh

although this practically is my work now :¬)

In reply to Liam M:



Most do seem well-rounded and balanced, maybe it's just you Liam?

In reply to rich:
>- very often they'll supply the excuse for you

Ha, I found myself doing just that the other day. Can't remember the scenario but was suddenly aware that I'd expected a certain response, hadn't got it, so filled it in for the person and felt really twittish for so doing. But now I know I'm normal after all, LOL.

I will keep an eye open for pause excuse etc things then. My sister's a computational linguist so she's always coming out with fascinating stuff about speech, too.

In reply to Richard Bradley:
Yes

In reply to Liam M: Maths is the worst taught subject at school. I use the word 'taught' in the widest sense as it's a case of open the book for the level you are at and when you've finished that page, turn over. Mind numbing like the teachers.

They make no link with the outside world e.g. in Engineering where I have taken pupils on an Engineering project and they loved the complexities involved with solving such seemingly simple problems such as the effect of removing part of a structure in a barge to create a hole, and stregthening the surrounding area.

To be fair though I have some very good friends who are Maths graduates, but the concept of judging people by what they do for a living is something I have always found annoying.

In reply to yer maw:


Which is one of the things that was great about maths - the thinking for its own sake.

I guess I was lucky in that the maths teacher (same one every year through secondary school) was excellent and maths was never boring.

In reply to Liam M:

It's all in the way you tell them. If you expect people to react badly they will. be excited and proud (it's not easy becoming a mathematician/comp programmer/artist ect). whenever I get asked I always say "I'm a big nerd" (with a cheeky grin). Then follow up with stuff about designing drugs ect...

People are interested for most people it's not everyday you meet a research scientist/mathematician/computer programmer