Mathematics

Mathematics is to me like the Force is to a Jedi!

What mathematics mean to me

To me, mathematics are (or is?) a tool for precise thinking. But it is also a language throught which we can communicate our precise thoughts to other people. But I think there is more to that.

Lots of applied mathematics revolves around computation. It is useful for physicists, that they can apply mathematical laws to predict how nature will behave. So mathematics is also some description of how the universe is and how it behaves. If mathematics was only serving the purpose of a tool for precise thinking, it would not have to describe the nature so perfectly.

So mathematics is also a language that tries to capture the rules, by which the universe lives. For example, geometry tries to capture the axioms i.e. the rules by which objects in space have to play.

Why I find mathematics beautiful

Mathematics is eternal. What is proved once will hold forever. I also love the fact that it cannot be manipulated. No regime can tell me what the facts are without me being able to just check it myself and see if the facts really hold.

I love that to arrive at certain theorem takes much brainpower and is hard task. But once we discover it, it sometimes starts to be simple. Once somebody bore the tunnel of knowledge, other people can go through the tunnel more easily.

Many times a simpler proof to mathematical theorem is found. This I find highly interesting. I think it is a worthy job to find easier way to arrive at hard theorems so people in the future will have an easier way and can work harder further down the road. That is what the school system should do. Find better ways to explain things. Better ways to compress the knowledge. Better ways to express ourselves.

An analogy could be this: Using the roman numeral system, many computations required hard work. Even though we technically could do the same amount of computations as we can do nowadays, it was really slow and impractical back than. Just switching the paradigm of how numbers are represented to arabic numerals, we bore a whole new infrastructures of tunnels through which knowledge could burst faster than ever before.