I guess you must work in finance?
It is? QuantNet is a quantitative finance forum.
Because finance is so far beneath you?
in this modern age using the brain is optional.. nevertheless i would have hoped you would use it sometimes. i wasn't referring to
that question, i was referring to the question of who is the best mathematician.
like a lot of people who don't use their brain, it is you who is the fool.. and the moron who does not understand anything. often it is the people who criticise XXXwhom know the most about XXX. if you want to know how something works, learn how to break it. ever heard that? by saying that finance is beneath me, you are projecting me to be arrogant. no, it is you who is stupid and is arrogant, because you do not use your brain. first, use your brain and think, then post... instead of having a discussion on the
correct question "what is the best mathematical result?" we are now discussing what is beneath us... you know what this reminds me of? sunday afternoon tennis club sessions with soccer moms who complain about their peers and 'speculate' about things that they will never understand.. it is pathetic. this is
destroying mathematics, not
helping it.
i have worked in finance for many many years and in other industries such as insurance and academia. yes, i call academia an industry because researchers, in this age, are prostitutes. in mathematics it is less embarrassing as opposed to psychology, statistics, economics, etc... but still, there is something wrong with humanity in the modern age, it is a crisis, a farce. when you consider mathematicians like Abel and Galois, whom died quite early and had shit lives, they still knew more than what a modern day PhD student will ever know. that is not because mathematics is so much weaker now, that is completely wrong, it is because how we approach mathematics is crap. for example, there should be no concept of 'tenure'. it is like saying 'i have been a slave long enough, so i deserve respect now! i have tenure!!!' no... you should never have been a slave in the first place.
when i am working i don't show off about mathematics or complain about the simpletons, i focus on generating revenue for the business, working with peers, etc.. that is the attitude that one needs to have in business. simpletons (people who work in finance) do not understand mathematics. in fact, simpletons do not understand finance. whenever i hear of someone being an 'expert' in finance, i am always reminded by a very famous book on corporate finance, now in its 8th edition. in the 3rd edition, the efficient markets hypothesis was treated as an obvious truth, and now in its 8th edition it is treated with extreme skepticism. the point here is that the authors whom wrote that book knew everything about finance... and even they got it wrong. so let's not treat finance as anything more than a simple business with extremely simple people.
despite having such a 'business oriented' and 'practical' attitude, i can tell you that finance is a place for simpletons. it is full of morons. and who are these morons? risk managers, directors, traders, quants, consultants, sales, brokers, etc, all of them. they produce nothing. even if they do, when there is a massive loss they get fired and their results, like them, follow the garbage can. they are the human embedding of Ebola - they spread their stupidity to others, without any thought of what they are doing... as a general heuristic: the more senior someone is the more naive minded and useless they are. another heuristic: the less someone is involved with the direct actions in the market, the less they know. that is why risk managers know nothing about risk
i am reminded of the scene in fight club where the author has to suffer desolation and hit rock bottom before he realises the state of reality. that is what working in finance is like to me - you need to hit rock bottom and realise that the people you are working with, are essentially slaves, if not prostitutes. they are... nothing.
my views are not unique... if you don't believe me, try working in
any financial institution. ok... let's say you are the special angel that is blind to reality and you say to me 'i work in job XXX at firm YYY its not like that'... my suggestion: read well stablished finance books by respected authors and veterans (the black swan, physicists on wall street, derman life as a quant, mandelbrot, etc..) for verification that finance is full of morons. then learn to open your eyes...
"so you look back at your books, at first the sight of topics such as measure theory and group theory excite you - you have found structure again"
Never liked group theory and measure because of lack of applications.
//
What is a group? Algebraists teach that this is supposedly a set with two operations that satisfy a load of easily-forgettable axioms. This definition provokes a natural protest: why would any sensible person need such pairs of operations? "Oh, curse this maths" - concludes the student (who, possibly, becomes the Minister for Science in the future).
I'm not going to dig into my heart and scream about the technical (pathological) issues regarding mathematics. i respect that you took the time to explain your background and what you feel about mathematics... and also i can see that you know a lot about mathematics - teaching group theory to schoolchildren takes balls. i am sure they appreciated your effort. if i had to teach group theory, like you, i wouldn't use axioms or symbols... i would use shapes. that is how i was taught group theory. i spent more time making shapes then i did writing equations down. and poincare is one of my favourite mathematicians/philosophers..
group theory has many applications.. Burnside's lemma can be applied to the production of security identification cards, for example.. as for the lack of applications regarding measure theory.... i don't know where to begin on that...
the internet wasn't designed for what it is used for now, nor was the laser, and penicillin was found out by accident.. twitter, a social media website where you are limited to X characters seemed stupid, pointless and having no real application... until people realised. my point is, you should not hate on XXX because it doesn't have an application YYY.. penicillin being XXX didn't have an application YYY for many years... until people realised. until they used their brains and realised. my point? group theory and measure theory do have applications, but your mind is telling you "based on my previous experiences they have no application so i do not like them", so of course you will never dig into them - you will have to use your brain and realise. that is the essence of reality - to dig into something to and find the truth about it and to be as objective as possible, not to say 'i don't like it because it doesn't have applications'... how do
you know it doesn't have applications?
