Math is infamously g-loaded, pure math even more so. An unfortunate fact of life. On the bright side, math is very much a "shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars" subject to pursue if you even loosely keep industrial or business applications in mind.
Physics majors, in my experience, had a significantly higher arrogance level.
It’s just different leagues of intelligence: social studies undergrad vs math undergrad vs math grad vs competitive researcher.
The smartest ones were usually the philosophy majors. Also some of the weirdest (in a good way) folks.
Some people are (much) smarter than others. It sucks, but that's life.
It seems a bit like gatekeeping to make people question whether they are smart enough when they will figure out pretty quickly if they have the aptitude or will to do it just by being exposed.
We disagree here, most people are not very good at figuring this out for themselves at all ime. It's always wise to compare yourself to known or semi-known metrics before you take the plunge into any given career, to make sure it really does seem like a good fit for you, or to make sure you can justify why you want to do it anyway even if the metrics paint an unflattering story.
I mean a lot of people just run a database but don't know wtf it does - but it still useful to them - maths however need to be understood to be really useful -
Is there not a way to make this lot more navigable ? Are there bridge concepts that are important enough that we can spend some time to learn them ? (there are ofc) - and how deep shall we go ?
> The median IQ for mathematics PhD students probably hovers somewhere around 145
Does that mean the 145 figure is only a guess on your end ?
Second, as far as I know, an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training. I remember reading (that's an anecdote so correct me if I'm wrong) that rewarding a good score with money was able to improve the outcome by up to 20 points. It doesn't sound absurd to me that someone with a slightly above average IQ could get close to 140 after 6, 7 years of high level math training.
It's not quite a guess, but I don't have precise data on this exact thing either. Previous studies in this field have consistently found a range of between 140 and 150, and you can probably find those with some Googling if you want to corroborate it yourself. I have a long cached memory of seeing a study where theoretical physics PhD students had an average IQ of 150, which also loosely supports this, since theoretical physics is almost its own form of pure mathematics.
>an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training
Most psychological research I've seen says no such thing, unfortunately. Believe me, I would love for that to be the case - one extra point of IQ correlates to roughly $1000 extra income per year in the US, and so if your 20 point claim were really true we could potentially cause a double digit spike in GDP over the next few months just by implementing it in smart ways. But my baseline belief is that study is almost certainly an outlier in a sea of similar studies which support the null hypothesis.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5008436/#tbl1
Note that it's an IQ of 128 vs 125 for humanities. With the small sample size, it's basically noise. And given that this is Oxford, I would expect the average PhD student to have less than these numbers.
Hung out with PhD's, economists, bankers, trust find kids, scientists, and artists - who maybe weren't top tier enough, but none thought this way.
Literally the weirdest take on a forum filled with dreamers, but every take is valid.
I have seen this first hand. I remember when I was in university doing my math major. This one older adult lady (she seemed 40yrs old, and very attractive too), she had decided for some reason or other she wanted to do a major in mathematics. Not for a job or anything but just to do it.
Whereas the rest of us, let’s face it, we just wanted a good job in STEM.
Bless this lady, she was so determined and hard working. She would show up to every lecture, first in, last out, and she would show up to every study session and give it her all.
But unfortunately, she was not good at grasping the concepts nor solving the problems. It was shocking how little she grokked the introductory concepts for the amount of effort she put in. She worked harder than anyone in our group.
I don’t think any of us had the heart to tell her that maybe a math major was not in the cards.
I never saw her on campus in my 3rd year and on so imagine she dropped off.
But I was rooting for her.
That naturally leads many people to ask whether making only $200,000 a year as a professor somewhere is really a price you're willing to pay, as opposed to making multiples of that as the smartest guy in the room in any number of private industries. Opportunity cost matters!
I´ve never been able to wrap my mind around this saying.
I am certain that there are mathematicians below, near, and above an IQ of 145 that all have great research productivity. IQ tests do not approximate the creativity, effort, and collaboration required in a mathematician. Not to mention the dubious nature of the 145 claim.
Of course, there are some people that will have a greater aptitude for mathematics than others. But you do not need to be a genius, and this is echoed by Terence Tao [0].
[0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-t...
“I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people. It happens they get interested in this thing and they learn all this stuff, but they’re just people.”
― Richard Feynman
I have bad performance IQ (the visual spatial stuff), only a bit above average, and my high verbal-mathematical ability means that I can basically outdo everybody on anything that matters.
SAT is a good suggestion though, because tests like that do measure the verbal-mathematical ability.
Either write a good guide, explaining why you pick each book, what it will teach you and why it’s needed, or just post a link to a university degree and say “just finish all these courses, good luck”.
nphardon•3h ago
I think about it differently. If you want to become a pure mathematician, you have to publish research in pure mathematics. There are many different routes one can take to accomplish this, and the route that you can stick with and enjoy is the best one.
kbrkbr•2h ago
Nothing wrong with classical mathematics, as also used in this roadmap. Having axioms and drawing logical conclusions or searching proof does just not click for me.
Give me 0: N and suc: N -> N and I see how to construct stuff. Induction makes sense right away as a case distinction on those two constructors.
guyman16•47m ago