Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "No, it's not possible! How could anyone not want to be a mathematician!?!? Surely, you're mistaken!"
No folks, it's true. I do not want to be a mathematician. And I'll tell you how I came to realize it.
I was sitting in class tonight. It was a fine class. The professor, Frank, has a great sense of humor. At the start of the class, he dropped a piece of chalk, and mumbled, "Shit. That was the only good piece." Then aloud, to the class, "I guess we won't be having a very long class today." Laughter ensued. But this was not when I decided I didn't want to be a mathematician.
In fact, the entire class went well. We didn't really get out early. That was just some math department humor. (NOTE: read previous blog posts to find out more about math department humor)
After class, we had a recitation with a Ph.D. student who is just okay. He's a nice enough guy. A little nervous at the board, but he's probably new to it. The recitation tends to be a little boring, but not awful. During recitation, we work out a bunch of problems on the board. Generally the problems are not too difficult, definitely not the level that they expect us to work out on our own in the homework assignments.
One of the problems we worked out tonight:
f(x) = x^2
Find subsets A and B of R such that f(B\A) is not equal to f(B)\f(A).
Let B = [-1, 1]f(B) = [0, 1]
Let A = [1/2, 1]
f(A) = [1/4, 1]
B\A = [-1, 1/2]
f(B\A) = [0, 1]
f(B)\f(A) = [0, 1/4)
So they are not equal.
This is fine. I understand everything we're doing. Then, an annoying guy in the class asks a question. "But we could have just chosen a point, right?"
The response from the TA: "Yes. It's kinda fun to play around and see what works, isn't it?"
KINDA FUN TO PLAY AROUND AND SEE WHAT WORKS!?!
I googled fun just to see what kind of images show up. Here is but a small spattering:
I think you probably get the idea. It occurred to me that many, probably a majority even, of the people that I am in class with think things like playing around with sets and functions are fun. Perhaps it's because I was so sick of looking at math after hours of manipulating matrices and proving mappings are injective and similar such things. But I find very little about what I'm studying to be "fun."
Therefore, I do not want to be a mathematician. QED
