h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What is the hardest maths in the whole world?

I'm gonna take a stab and say Vector Calculus, but maybe that's just becauseI have an exam in it tomorrow

Statistics, so boring its impossible to stay awake to study them fully.

Non-euclidian geomitry, have you even seen a ruler that will draw a straight line in all the possible non euclidian geomitries ?

Math

Non-Euclidean geometry's great fun!

And yes, I have seen such a ruler - you have to remember that the ruler will *itself* change as you move it within such a geometry...

Hey, I like statistics!
Does that make me boring then?

Each to his own...

TK

I like all of me, apart from the occasional back ache, the bit i like most is no hangover no matter how hard I try, and does anyone else know another Math I could like too ?

they were more my own views with a touch of sillyness thrown in than constructive responces, this however is a real answer;

all maths is easy when you understand it, and almost impossible when you don't.

Math

From the point of view of making up new maths (research), it does sortof make sense to say that one sort of math is 'easier' than another. I'm not at the front lines yet myself, but for example, I've heard it said that logic is maybe easier than some areas. Possibly half joking, but I've also heard that the reason 'recreational maths' is known as that, is that the questions that get asked tend to be too damn hard for real mathematicians to make a living at.

There are certainly subjects that are harder than others to get into, simply because it takes so long to learn the material to contribute. If you're 30 or 35 by the time you've got the mathematical background to do something in an area, it can't be that easy Incidentally subjects like that give an argument against the idea that all the really great mathematics gets done by young mathematicians.

I agree with Math: it's down to the individual- some find bits hard, and others find the same bits obvious. There seems to be, however, a general consensus among my peers that Vector Calculus is just a very bad joke, and when we get to the exam they'll shout "January fools!" and laugh at how we could actually try to learn so much gibberish...

TK

Statistics are antastic compared to probability

I can do stats till they come out my ears (I'm even planning to take some more exams) but probability just baffles me.

Luckily it baffled me at A Level stage enough that I never quite got round to the interesting sounding vector calculus...such a shame.

Lucky you... although I don't understand your problems with probability when you like statistics... the basics of statistics ARE probability!

I sort of know what you mean though- I find it much easier to understand mathematical concepts when I can find a basis for them in the 'real' world- such as statistics and gambling

TK

Ahh see the stats I deal with is taking lots and lots of raw data and making it meaningful, relating it to other data...even finding trends I can do but ask me to explain dice rolls, cards and stuff like that

The other part of stats I like is presenting the data graphically...v fun (oh dear I'm a sad muppet and noone told me)

I hated stats when I did maths A level *because* it was presented as a part of probability....in my first exam (trig, calculus, vectors, forces) I got about 90% (apparantly)...in the stats/probability exam I somehow managed to pull my grade down to a C.

I've forgotten almost all of it now though...just get a vague feeling that I *should* know what people are talking about when intergration and cosec etc etc are mentioned.

Lol, opposite way round for me.... was doing really well in all the applied modules, then did the pure final exam, dragged me down to a D. And I'm doing maths at uni now. oops....

I still don't get integration as well as perhaps I should :S

Stats is traditionally one of the hardest maths because of how it's placed in curricula. The actual mathematics behind it depends on plenty of calculus, but the class is usually taught to people who haven't had calc, so a lot of it seems really arbitrary and obscure. The professors are also often maths professors teaching a class to non maths majors, which doesn't help.

Number Theory is the area that seems to spawn the most famously hard problems, like Fermat's Last, and the 3n+1 Problem.

but number theory is fun you can sit and think about it for hours forgetting to move, i did that once, scribble pad and pen sat at a bust stop had a thought on fermats last theorum (came to nothing in the end) but i sat there for hours not noticing the time or busses go by, got shouted at for not calling when i got home though

What's the 3n+1 thing you're talking about, GTB?

Number theory is easy to understand, but when it comes down to proofs... well. FLT is really easy to explain to someone... but only a handful of people in the entire world understand the proof.

It's like Goldbach's conjecture (which no-one has proved yet - I think!) - "every even number greater than 4 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers".

So whats wrong with 1+1=2 ?

well the thing is am going to year 9 this year, and im smarter than the rest of the class espially when it comes to algebra.
The thing that annoyes me the most is when there are kids who wind up asking questions like doesnt a=1 b=2 c=3 d=4 etc, and im just sitting their saying to myself, what a idiot.

Im in the middle of reading The Mathematical Universe by William Dunham, and on the chapter Fermat, i went over the section on prime factors, and how he managed to find out 5 digit numbers prime factors, so i was thinking, now why cant they teach this in school insteed of that stupid "factor tree" cause to try and figure out the prime factors of a 5 digit number would use about 500 pages and take a long time, while u can use fermats work and do it in a fraction of the time
What do you all think?

Maths teaching in schools isn't great... and it's the brightest people who end up with the problem first, since this government is obsessed with more people passing exams than doing well in them. Fermat's method would probably be considered too difficult. Come to think of it, factorising a 5-digit number would most likely be considered too difficult up to GCSE level.

I *think* you get to do something like Fermat's method at A-level though...

In answer to 1+1=2... well, generally speaking 1 is not usually considered to be a prime number. Probably because if not then the prime factors of a number would include a 1 and look rather messy, maybe?

Only that 1 isn't prime.

I'm not sure what Fermat's method is, but the thing with the factor tree (if it's what I think it is) is that it shows the concept of prime factors well. That said, once you've got the concept actually drawing ickle pictures of the tree the whole time is a bit cack. And I'm a topologist so I like drawing pictures.

Oops, similpost.

Andy, don't you mean you'd include 1^2 in the prime factors? or is that 1^3.

Getting back to stats & probability, I didn't like probability at A'-level, when it was presented as part of stats. I'm sort of the antiPencilQueen.

Or indeed 1^4. Or 1^8743.

Sorry.

I always preferred pure maths to anything else... it just seemed more, well, er... pure (for want of a better word)... I always found complex analysis good fun. Particularly elliptic functions.