Timeline for The relevance of knowing "just facts"
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 30 at 12:55 | answer | added | Alec Rhea | timeline score: 14 | |
| Jul 30 at 11:40 | comment | added | Sam Hopkins | Understanding the intellectual history of your field is important*, but maybe not as much when you're just starting research. And there is a spectrum between "not knowing anything" about the proof of an important result in your area and "knowing every single detail by heart." I'm not sure there's more to be said than that. *Okay to say a little more about this point: just like much of modern mathematics is about finding patterns in more and more abstract ways (category theory, etc.), as one develops as a mathematician one notices useful historical patterns in the culture of mathematics. | |
| Jul 30 at 10:55 | comment | added | Federico Poloni | You have a clear case of the so-called "impostor syndrome", very common among young academics. For a quick description, see this image and this image, but you can look for more detail on the internet. | |
| Jul 30 at 10:47 | answer | added | Timothy Chow | timeline score: 18 | |
| Jul 30 at 6:04 | comment | added | quarague | You wrote: "At least to me, the feeling is that the lecturer knows in great detail every such cited work" Rest assured, your feeling is wrong in the vast majority of cases. | |
| Jul 29 at 23:24 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jul 29 at 17:05 | comment | added | LSpice | My experience of mathematicians is surely not representative of the whole, but, as in any field, even when you meet the people who seem like gods when you're just reading their papers they have their own uncertainties, fears, and confusions. Some of the deepest workers in my field have told me that they, too, feel that, if only other people could see it, they really only understand their field in a superficial way. Just so long as you're using that feeling to guide you to deeper understanding and better work, I'd say you're in good shape. | |
| Jul 29 at 16:23 | answer | added | Yiftach Barnea | timeline score: 18 | |
| Jul 29 at 15:49 | comment | added | user479223 | Reading literature is how you find problems. Read papers, see what the gaps are, then fill them. That is what research is - filling gaps in the literature. | |
| Jul 29 at 15:24 | history | asked | JustWannaKnow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
