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Kevin O'Bryant
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True probabilists have a rather unique way of thinking. It is, if you will allow word-creation, hyper-analytic. This thought pattern seems (anecdotally!) to not be too compatible with algebraic or logical patterns. I'm not talking about basics, of course, but on a high level. I've never met a probabilist who enjoyed or personally valued the theory of modules, for example. I've never met a probabilist who would feel that the model-completeness of algebraically closed fields was super-cool.

If you're not inclined toward such things, then the foundational advantage conferred by NSA is moot. And the intuitive advantages are already exploited without hesitation. In my experience, all probabilists think with NSA ideas by default and without self-conciousness, and without concern about how to "rigorize" the arguments.

To make my point, everyone knows that Brownian Motion is the limit of simple random walks. They don't feel the need to make this rigorous, it is just self evident. That it can be made to be almost trivial using NSA is as interesting as seeing an epsilon-delta proof of continuity. Fine for beginners, but not something for me to spend time on now.

Kevin O'Bryant
  • 9.8k
  • 6
  • 57
  • 84