The Logic Off Topic list

Kool Musick wrote:
 > > Lagrange, Gauss, Archimedes, Euler, Riemann

Joeri Vankeirsbilck wrote:
 > These guys have caused me an awful lot of headaches in the last couple
 > of years!!! :-))
Me too. Let us be very clear. There's a big difference between those who 
can actually DO mathematics, and those who are just interested in it. I 
always enjoyed mathematics, but gradually I became less and less able to 
actually do it. I can manage some basic calculus but beyond that .... Since 
I quite enjoyed the subject, however, I became very fascinated by the 
history of mathematics, and by its philosophy. So I have an interest in 
people like Peano and Godel ... and I am also very interested in how 
mathematical ideas have developed over the centuries as new ideas have 
sprung up and the like.

When it comes to actually DOING it, however, they give me as big a headache 
as you do. I can no more actually follow say Lagrange's Celestial Mechanics 
than you probably could. But I do know what he was trying to achieve, and I 
know its place in the history of mathematics etc. It's the same with the 
history of music, I guess. I am very well aware of Mozart and The Beatles, 
and the periods in their lives at which they wrote certain things and why 
and so on and so forth ... but I am no more capable of writing the stuff 
they did than I am at solving a barrel of differential equations in my head.

 > E.g. his work on determinate equations. Lagrange had shown how
 > the roots of such an equation could be extracted by using a second
 > equation
etc etc etc.


 > Question: is this the kind of stuff one would have to study e.g. in a
 > bachelor business degree?
 > Reason why I ask this:  I had a math professor who made us study all
 > these things and I argued that this was a bit "over the top" for
 > business studies.

Interesting question. My immediate thoughts are:

A person who has a very good idea for a business does not in himself or 
herself have to know very much about organizing the details of his or her 
business or of making it run on a day to day basis. He or she simply has to 
come up with a very good idea and then learn to be a suitable magnet for 
those who believe that it will work ... and who are therefore willing to 
finance it. And, of course, financing a business is a big key to making it 
successful.

Once the business starts getting established things become very different. 
It becomes important to make 'correct' and 'wise' decisions and to see that 
the particular business is well integrated into its niche, into the broader 
community, and so on and so forth. Necessarily this means -- at least in my 
view -- benefitting from the ability to reason. It means importing into 
economic management the methods and techniques that a study of mathematics 
can teach so well.

It's hard to say if Lagrange, Gauss, Archimedes, Euler, and Riemann are 
truly 'beneficial' to the running of any one business ... but since those 
are theirs are the kinds of ideas that bandied around amongst those who, 
for example, want to decide on economic policies, discover new 
technologies, and make new products, then in general I think the financiers 
and controllers of business are being very foolish indeed, on a social 
scale, if they do not know and understand what others in the economy are 
talking about, and if they cannot keep pace with them intellectually at the 
very least.

Yes ... it is expensive, economically, to teach these things and to have 
them available in society, but on the whole I think they are indispensable 
things that should be made freely available and disseminated in any society 
that can afford it. I think, on the whole, that the business community 
cannot afford NOT to learn about them ... although I do accept that when 
you look at any individual business, or at any particular business person 
within any one organization, then it is easy to see that in that particular 
circumstance it is probably 'over the top' to have to do it. So ... I 
sympathise with you and with everyone else who does not want to study it 
because, honestly, I don't very much myself. However, I think it would be a 
big mistake to take it completely out of business schools altogether. Yes, 
I think they should be in business schools, but to set against that I 
really don't think people should be penalized either for avoiding them, or 
else for not being very good at them.

I hope this answers your question adequately, albeit in a very personal 
kind of way.

 > I didn't do very well on that exam.
I sympathise!!!

Kool Musick
Keep Musick Kool


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