[zchrykng]

Seeing as mathematicians proving things in math has minimal relation to the real world, I'm not sure how important this is.

Mathematicians and physicists have been speculating about the universe having more than 4 dimensions, and/or our 4 dimensional space existing as some kind of film on a higher dimensional space for ages, but I've yet to see compelling proof that any of that is the case.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not attempting to minimize the accomplishment of these specific people. More observing that advanced mathematics seems only tangentially related to reality.

[brian_cloutier]

You might consider reading Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology. It gives an argument for studying math for the sake of math. Personally, reading a beautiful proof can be as compelling as reading a beautiful poem and needs no further justification.

However, there is another reason to read this essay. Hardy gives a few examples of fields of math which are entirely useless. Number theory, he claims, has absolutely no applications. The study of non-euclidean geometry, he claims, has absolutely no applications. History has proven him dramatically wrong, “pure” math has a way of becoming indispensable

[baruchel]

I have always been fond of the following quote by Jacobi: “Mathematics exists solely for the honor of the human mind”

[zchrykng]

I have no problem studying Math just to study Math. I read the title and jumped to some conclusions, I'm afraid. Was talking to a friend about String Theory and their 11+ dimensions the other day and that is immediately where my brain went to with this one. The article is interesting even though I have zero desire to personally study math just for math's sake.

[seanhunter]

There is a huge amount of mathematics that initially seems as though it could not possibly have any practical application that later turns out central to all sorts of things in the real world.

The most obvious examples are number theory and group theory, which are respectively the study of numbers and how they behave under basic operations like arithmetic, and the study of a type of set with a single operation that satisfies very basic rules[1]. How could this possibly have any relevance or practical application? And yet it turns out they are central to cryptography and information theory. Joseph Fourier trying to solve the equations that govern how heat diffuses through a metal came up with the theory that forms the basis for how we do video and audio compression (and a ton of other things).

Finally mathematicians don’t speculate about how many dimensions the universe has, they study 4- and higher- dimensional objects and spaces to understand them. This theory is used all over the place. You can’t have a function like a temperature map without 4 dimensions (3 for the spatial coordinates of your input and one for the output).

[1] this turns out (non-obviously) to be the study of symmetry.

[duskwuff]

> More observing that advanced mathematics seems only tangentially related to reality.

You might be surprised; there have proven to be a number of surprising connections between abstract mathematical structures and more concrete sciences. For instance, group theory - long thought to be an highly abstract area of mathematics with no practical application - turned out to have some very direct applications in chemistry, particularly in spectroscopy.

[core-explorer]

When you try to solve one problem involving two objects in three-dimensional space, you have a six-dimensional problem space. If you have two moving objects, you have a twelve-dimensional problem space. Higher dimensional spaces show up everywhere when dealing with real-life problems.

[Muromec]

>Seeing as mathematicians proving things in math has minimal relation to the real world, I'm not sure how important this is.

Évariste Galois says hi and Satoshi-sensei greets him back.