I think if you're against this kind of thing you should actually explain what you think is bad about it, rather than leaving it to innuendo and scare quotes.
I think if you're against this kind of thing you should actually explain what you think is bad about it, rather than leaving it to innuendo and scare quotes.
To his credit PG does so here, but FWIW I don't think this objection is very serious--departments typically control what courses count towards the major! x.com/paulg/status/1…
To his credit PG does so here, but FWIW I don't think this objection is very serious--departments typically control what courses count towards the major! x.com/paulg/status/1…
Essentially every course along these lines gets attention from the Quillette-sphere and RW media, but it's not clear to me why. Should the number of courses on 'indigenous mathematics' offered annually worldwide be zero? I don't see why! Seems like an interesting enough subject.
Would I teach a course like this? Probably not, I don't know anything about indigenous mathematics. Would I find the material interesting? Sure, sounds fun to me. I took all sorts of electives in college!
Here is the title of one of the papers a student wrote as part of the assessment for this course: 'The comparative derivations of Maclaurin series of trigonometric functions in 17th–18th century Europe and Japan and 14th–16th century Kerala.' Sounds cool!
Anyway, if you're tempted to explain to me what math is in response to this thread, feel free to check out some of my papers first, so that you pitch your explanation appropriately.
One amazing thing I've learned from the replies here is that mathematics is so universal that you can, apparently, deduce the content/prereqs of a course by pure thought, without spending even a millisecond looking at any of the available literature on it.
@littmath The courses aren’t the problem. The problem is what happens with the degree after the course. For example, does the degree holder then go on to Harvard and start arguing that 2+2=5?
@littmath Or I can look at what she's published and question the content of the article 🤔
@littmath Sir please atleast Answer My Question , Sir today many people Say Artificial Intelligence will replace Mathematicians but My Question is how will it think like Mathematicians Such as Ellie Cartan, Henri Poincare and Peter Scholze and even like yourself Sir.
@littmath Truly amazing considering sometimes the departments themselves are kinda winging it on these points!
@littmath It’s not just mathematics. See also University of Exeter's MA in Magic and Occult Science. Which is about history, scientific links, anthropology and art and not, as many commentators portrayed it, standing around cauldrons cackling.
@littmath It would be good to see what new comes from it. To the degree that Ramanujan represented "Indian math", that math school/tradition/way of knowing was tremendously valuable to Math (capital M). What mathematical insights did we get from Native knowledge of vorticity?
@littmath People just get insanely mad that students get to pick classes that interest them.
@littmath Or more importantly, you can demand someone explain the content to you in a tweet and assume the course lacks any value if they don't, apparently