Is quantitative finance as diffcult as medicine?

think of Hardy when he wrote his essay about why mathematics is a young man'ss game), therefore i did not stay in academia.

I don't read Hardy.
Hardy was a mediocre (pure) mathematician. Maybe he is referring to himself. Mathematicians tend not to quote him ... it's a bit trite. And untrue.
Leonhard Euler did his best work after 61 (and he had 13 children). More recently, 90-year old Michael Atiyah claims to have solved Riemann Zeta.

Hardy is credited with reforming British mathematics by bringing rigour into it, which was previously a characteristic of French, Swiss and German mathematics. British mathematicians had remained largely in the tradition of applied mathematics, in thrall to the reputation of Isaac Newton (see Cambridge Mathematical Tripos). Hardy was more in tune with the cours d'analyse methods dominant in France, and aggressively promoted his conception of pure mathematics, in particular against the hydrodynamics which was an important part of Cambridge mathematics.


Mathematical physics died in the middle of the 20th century when they artificially split pure and applied maths. And maths was removed from physics because it was a nuisance.
 
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Daniel Duffy said:
think of Hardy when he wrote his essay about why mathematics is a young man'ss game), therefore i did not stay in academia.

I don't read Hardy.
Hardy was a mediocre (pure) mathematician. Maybe he is referring to himself. Mathematicians tend not to quote him ... it's a bit trite. And untrue.
Leonhard Euler did his best work after 61 (and he had 13 children). More recently, 90-year old Michael Atiyah claims to have solved Riemann Zeta.

Hardy is credited with reforming British mathematics by bringing rigour into it, which was previously a characteristic of French, Swiss and German mathematics. British mathematicians had remained largely in the tradition of applied mathematics, in thrall to the reputation of Isaac Newton (see Cambridge Mathematical Tripos). Hardy was more in tune with the cours d'analyse methods dominant in France, and aggressively promoted his conception of pure mathematics, in particular against the hydrodynamics which was an important part of Cambridge mathematics.


Mathematical physics died in the middle of the 20th century when they artificially split pure and applied maths. And maths was removed from physics because it was a nuisance.
Click to expand...

it is a shame that you dont read hardy, because he got it, he understood why one should study mathematics. he is one of the few who spoke the (uncomfortable to academics) truth about mathematics. it is really reaching far and pushing a silly narrative to suggest that mathematicians dont quote him. yes, he is controversial for saying mathematics is a young mans game (it is), but he is certainly respected.

it is probably because his line of thinking doesnt fit with the current narrative in mathematics, or more generally, science. on a side point - people dont listen to or take scientists seriously these days - and good on them for not doing it because a large number of scientists are charlatans. this is driven by the modern cancer called academia. and that metaphor has some connection - cancers grow until they kill the host, and that has happened to academia through various factors.

there is a good quote about how to get people to read a book - tell them that it should be banned. calling him mediocre, "mathematicians dont quote him" - what are you so afraid of? that maybe what he said is true?

i have seen atiyah's paper that claims to prove the riemann hypothesis - it is garbage and it is not even professional. the presentation (not proof, not even inkling of a proof) revolves around talking about Todd's function. ... so what? "the proof to the poincare conjecture revolves around the ricci flow". is the poincare conjecture proven by making that statement? nope. you actually have to prove it. if anything, atiyah blew his credibility by making such a talk, because the "crowd" saw the paper for what it was: garbage. at least he had the balls to try something.

you dont prove things by jotting down a few examples that push forward your narrative (euler, atiyah). i could mention several important mathematicians who died at early ages - galois (21), abel (27), ramanajuan (33), riemann (40). you make an argument for it - hardy did so in a mathematicians apology.
 
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there is a good quote about how to get people to read a book - tell them that it should be banned. calling him mediocre, "mathematicians dont quote him" - what are you so afraid of? that maybe what he said is true?

Fair enough, but..

Number theory is not my cup of tea. It doesn't turn me on. That's all. At a deeper level, I try to not to quote. Everybody does it and it becomes trite after you have heard it for the umpteenth time. Like quoting Oscar Wilde ad nauseam. I didn't need Hardy to tell me why I shoulda study mathematics.
I prefer the work of mathematical physicists such as Lagrange Cauchy, Riemann, Poincare, Lanczos. And Banach was hugely influential. Before the schism between pure and applied maths occurred. In France, Bourbaki did it.

it is a shame that you dont read hardy
It's Hardy. Would I learn some maths by reading him.

Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

My 2 cents.

BTW Galois would have lived much longer had he not been messing around with firearms. I did all the Galois theory in undergrad. It was OK but few applications..
 
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Just a comment on Hardy again; he was a number theorist but he missed out on the greatest application of number theory by Gordon Welchman
and Alan Turing who cracked Enigma at Bletchley Park and thus saved civilization. And he was not a million miles away.​
 

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