Tell Me About Your Passion

Explain why you chose your major!
Whats the thing you find the most interesting in your field?
If you've finished college, what are you doing right now?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_theory#Applications_of_group_theory
math.stackexchange.com/questions/449066/do-groups-rings-and-fields-have-practical-applications-in-cs-if-so-what-are-s
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

I was a chemistry major and then I joined the army so I fucked that one up

Chemistry is pretty cool

I'm a doctoral candidate in biochemistry because I am biochemistry and that's just the dopest shit.

>I am biochemistry

This nigga getting a PhD in himself.

>Explain why you chose your major!

I was always interested in mathematics so when time came to pick a major mathematics was obviously at the top of my list, but it wasn't alone. I ended up picking it because it was the literally the least boring one.

To put things in context, my other choices where Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Software Engineering.

All of those were fine but they were filled with so much bullshit. Like random biology and DRAWING requirements for CS? Give me a fucking break.

But everything in mathematics was actually math related stuff that I could get on board with. To be completely honest I hate chemistry, biology and art. I suck at all of that so I needed an education that would get me away from all that shit.

And here in mathematics the most 'unrelated' classes are literally just general physics, and even though physics is boring I can easily pretend like I am doing mathematics by closing my eyes.

>Whats the thing you find the most interesting in your field?

Right now I am hooked in algebra. I've been reading some books on group theory, trying to prove the theorems myself because group theory is the most beautiful thing in the world.

I always had this ideal of turning everything into a math problem and abstract algebra is literally that. Turn whatever you are doing into a group and then study its properties.

However I also like number theory which is kinda related and specializing in number theory will probably give me many more opportunities as a mathematician.

Fortunate for me I take a course in number theory next year (sophomore) and in my junior and senior year I have 3 Algebra classes so that is probably going to be amazing.

I'm doing a double degree on EE and physics because I want to make a Time machine.

Was gonna double major in physics and math. Eventually dropped physics because it wasn't rigorous enough.

>let dx be a small increase
>no

Anyways, now I'm trying to do independent research in mathematical physics, so to speak.

I'm a computer science major because that's where the bottleneck is in scientific discovery. Especially in biology and chemistry, we have enormous data repositories that are essentially collecting dust because biostatisticians are by-and-large a bunch of ecologists who attended a two week workshop on R a few years ago. When we can reliably produce computational simulations of molecular and subatomic events occurring in scenarios similar to real world events, then our discoveries will proceed unchecked.

> inb4 becomes his own grandpa

I'm working on a MSc in math.

>Explain why you chose your major!
I always loved math at school.

>Whats the thing you find the most interesting in your field?
Topology!

Why not study computational biology then?

I have a minor in biochem which requires some physics, quantum chem, biology, organic chem and biochem. Really just keeping my options open, but it takes an actual computer scientist to solve these problems well.

I like how practical mathematics can really be. I'm currently learning about polynomial functions and was blown away by how you can find the dimensions of a box through factoring and all that stuff. I am even more blown away by how you can find out how many units you need to add to the dimensions to have a desired volume of the box.

I like physics because I get to learn about some serious stuff but not commit to a narrow field of study I may not enjoy.

>claim to like mathematics
>physics is boring

Underage, please leave.

I just watched some vids about group theory. It seems pretty cool. Where do you think group theory could be applied in real world problems?

Also, do you think all theories come from tinkering with potential factors and analyzing real world accidental innovation, or do you think theories and formulas lead to innovation?

...

>real world problems
Get out.

You can read this
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_theory#Applications_of_group_theory

If you care specifically about math then the magic of group theory is that so many fields outside of algebra at some point 'ask' for the help of algebra and introduce groups into their research.

This is obviously because so many things are known about groups that if you can simply prove that an operation is associative then you already know like 200 more things about that operation you could never even imagine.

If not then the applications of physics and chemistry. What I find interesting is that I read somewhere is that group theory predicted the existance of certain particles before they were observed.

I am not sure how this happened but this probably has to do with the fact that if what you are working in is a group then for whatever element there is, the inverse MUST exist.

Or if you are more like me then you are interested in the applications of group theory in computer science.

The hint here is that the exclusive or operation gives a group structure to the natural numbers.

People are talking about algebra in general in computer science here

math.stackexchange.com/questions/449066/do-groups-rings-and-fields-have-practical-applications-in-cs-if-so-what-are-s

>Also, do you think all theories come from tinkering with potential factors and analyzing real world accidental innovation, or do you think theories and formulas lead to innovation?

I think that theories come from analyzing the real world. Even in math, most of the time observation comes before theorems.

What is wrong with solving real world problems?

I am actually interested in programming and computer science, so I will research group theory further, hopefully being able to use it later. And great, you seem like a very intelligent and aware person, not just a an academic sheep like many people on this board. Thanks for the insight :)

I'm trying to build my strengths for developing and modelling in Spyder. I haven't come across a suitable 'Simulink' equivalent for system modelling so I'd like to look there next.

kekking hard as fuck rn xd

group theory is everywhere bro, literally everywhere

I'm doing Biological Anthropology and chose to do so because it's something I've always had more than a passing interest in both anthropology and human biology.

From the anthropology perspective I find it really interesting how much we can actually learn from other cultures if you APPROPRIATE the decent parts.

From the biology perspective I find it interesting how much of a brutal beating the body can take and still keep going.

I'm doing Physics and Philosophy

For physics I'm interested in the typical particle physics/general relativity bs

For philosophy, ethics is my favorite

wait wtf, isn't dx an infinitesimal distance on the x axis?

True, but they don't talk about how to properly formalize infinitesimal quantities. You can use nonstandard analysis or synthetic differential geometry, as I found out later.

>Explain why you chose your major!
Saw friends doing intro to microeconomics hw and thought it looked interesting. Took the class next semester and fell in love with the mathy part of it so I decided to keep going and when I started to learn about development economics I decided to make it my major.

>Whats the thing you find the most interesting in your field?
I'm really into development and urban economics, specifically relating to inequality and poverty. I'm still really into the mathy stuff too, so theoretical stuff is kind of my jam. "A Theory of the Allocation of Time" by Gary Becker was the first paper that absolutely blew my mind and is still one of my favorite pieces I've ever read.

>If you've finished college, what are you doing right now?
Finished up in May. Currently working as a research assistant for a guy who just got his PhD from my uni. Applying to Econ PhD, Master of Economics, and Master of Urban/City Planning programs for next fall. Took the GRE last year and got V:163 Q:164 AW:4.5 so I'm hoping that's good enough for the Masters programs and I'm planning on taking it again in October or November to raise my Q score a bit for PhD programs.