Sorry, but the breathless way, that maths is often discussed on HN, makes me feel uneasy.
It feels strange to see adults that opine on every subject, from nuclear fusion energy, to virology and financial markets, like they know it all, to suddenly "I was never good at math", like a clichee party conversation.
I mean, I get it: It first feels strange and magical, since even the explanations of some of the vocabulary take more time than we are willing to devote to a single thought. But instead of digging in and looking up what "Borel measurable" might mean, the HN crowd rather watches the x-th numberphile video/emotionalized Quanta blurb.
/rant
More to your points:
> Your kid has a greater chance of being a multi-millionaire NBA player than being smart enough to understand this stuff
There are >5000 math phds each year, so no, getting into the NBA is harder.
> Even 18th century math would be a challenge for many math grad students. Just crazy
Not sure, what this is supposed to mean. Certainly as a math grad you should be able to _understand_ 18th century math. Now, to _come up_ with the stuff is something else entirely. But I'm not sure how many engineers would claim they had discovered the telegraph, were they be born instead of Gauss.
It feels strange to see adults that opine on every subject, from nuclear fusion energy, to virology and financial markets, like they know it all, to suddenly "I was never good at math", like a clichee party conversation.
I mean, I get it: It first feels strange and magical, since even the explanations of some of the vocabulary take more time than we are willing to devote to a single thought. But instead of digging in and looking up what "Borel measurable" might mean, the HN crowd rather watches the x-th numberphile video/emotionalized Quanta blurb.
/rant
More to your points:
> Your kid has a greater chance of being a multi-millionaire NBA player than being smart enough to understand this stuff
There are >5000 math phds each year, so no, getting into the NBA is harder.
> Even 18th century math would be a challenge for many math grad students. Just crazy
Not sure, what this is supposed to mean. Certainly as a math grad you should be able to _understand_ 18th century math. Now, to _come up_ with the stuff is something else entirely. But I'm not sure how many engineers would claim they had discovered the telegraph, were they be born instead of Gauss.