The different sections of maths! (3 Viewers)

[lucifel]

stefano:
01110011011011110110110101100101011010000
11011110111011100100000010010010010000001
11001101100001011101110010000001110100011
01000011000010111010000100000011000110110
11110110110101101001011011100110011100101
11000100000010011100110111101110100001000
00011101000110111101101111001000000111001
10111010101110000011100100110100101110011
011001010110010000101110

antwan:
01101110011011110111000001100101001011100
01000000110010001101001011001000110111000
10011101110100001000000110101101101110011
0111101110111

 

[Antwan23q]

He's right, you know...

 

[Stefano]

A quick contest. Decode this:

001100000011000100110001001100000011000100110001001100000011000000110000001100010011000100110000001100010011000100110001001100010011000000110001001100010011000000110001001100010011000000110000


The first to do so is 1337! lol...

 

[Antwan23q]

"lol" your a funny guy

 

[Stefano]

"lol" your a funny guy

Haha!

Good work antwan2bu and thanks!

lol

 

[lucifel]

So why did the AMS not put ODEs and PDEs under one more general "DEs"? They are quite different.

Likewise, real analysis and complex analysis are also quite different, and so have been kept separate and were not put under a more general "Analysis".

Also, we need to ask why classify maths. The main reason is to find references. Putting quite different things under a more general heading may or may not help to find references.

Putting real analysis and complex analysis under a more general "Analysis" isn't going to help much in finding references, so the AMS didn't do it.

On the other hand, Set Theory used to have its own section at the top level, but has now been placed under "Mathematical logic and foundations", which is more general.

The balance between generality and specificity is determined by its usefulness in regard to whether it is going to help find references.

actually i only wanted to quote the last sentence, but this way my post loosk bigger. But yeh, not neccesary, i was quite honestly just bored, and my classifcation had really nothing to do with looking for resources. And anyways, Mathsworld seesm to be doing ok with its what 7 main catergories?

 

[lucifel]

Mathworld have 11 at the top level.

The AMS classification isn't the only one, but it is the best one. They also have an online version. It's called MathSciNet. It's at http://www.ams.org/mathscinet. It's more comprehensive than mathworld.

Mathworld summarises whole topics whereas mathscinet summarises whole articles and books. So mathscinet has a higher degree of specificity than mathworld.

Mathworld is better for an introduction to a topic, but mathscinet is better for finding specific references.

So mathworld is only an introduction? *sigh* and it still makes very little sense. Ah well, 11 is still less than 69

 

[Stefano]

I didn't mean to offend you buchanan. I just wanted to make that clear. You respect mathematics and I respect that about you.

End of off-topic discussion.

 

[martin]

The AMS classification isn't the only one, but it is the best one.

Really Buchanan,
you obviously know a lot about maths but you're lacking a bit in tact and common sense. The AMS classification is useful for their purposes but its a bit unwieldy. I'll offer up a very short classification that is useful to me in that I feel each part (the first three anyway) forms a cohesive whole:

Algebra - the study of structures: numbers,polynomials,groups,vector spaces,...
Analysis - the study of limits and infinity
Geometry/Topology - the study of shape and continuity
Other stuff (foundations, combinatorics, applied maths, probability and statistics, computational mathematics,theoretical computer science,...)

Of course there are many different classification schemes and they are all useful in different circumstances.