| I got hooked on math in the fifth grade, owing mostly to Jerome Meyer's book
_Fun With Mathematics_. I got a BA and MS in Math and qualified for the Ph. D.
program but turned to Computer Science instead. My own reasoning was that
I disliked applied math, but about all you can do with the rest is teach.
(There are exceptions but they are of measure zero so we can ignore them).
Personally I didn't relish the thought of teaching and doing research in a
highly political publish-or-perish atmosphere. I wanted to work where you
were -- objectively -- measured and rewarded for producing tangible results.
In a way it's good that we get so many foreign students, especially if such a
large number of them remain. It speaks well of our country and serves to
further our national interest.
John
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| I'm another math "ABD" (All But Dissertation) - AB and MA, but I never found
a good thesis topic and gradually lost interest. Turned to programming as a
way to turn a pastime into a way to make a living.
My interest in math developed gradually over a number of years. There is one
8th grade teacher I particularly remember as inspiring my interest, but it
was there before - my earliest mathematical memory is, having learned how to
do "long addition" and single-digit multiplication, sitting at a my father's
desk one afternoon trying to figure out how to do multi-digit multiplication.
(I failed.) I also re-discovered Gauss's method for summing consecutive
numbers, having heard the story somewhere or other.
My interest was in (generic) "science", gradually concentrating on math and
physics. A big push toward math was a summer spent at an NSF program in
New Hampshire. (The program later moved to Hampshire college, where I
believe it continues to exist. I suspect there are a number of Hampshire
(or New Hampshire) alumni reading this file - I know of at least 3 from
just my year who are now fairly big names in the theoretical CS community.)
There was also another NSF program, held Saturdays, at Columbia University;
I took both math and physics courses there. (The infamous Richard Stallman
was a classmate.) As an undergrad, I split my time between math and physics,
eventually discovering that I was a lot better at math - so that's where I
ended up.
Unfortunately, real math research turned out to be rather different from
the kind of problem solving that had attracted me to begin with. The
rather dismal outlook for math teaching positions at the time (1976 or
so) was discouraging. (The projections for the period in which I and my
cohorts would have been coming up for tenure were for negative growth in
positions - more people retiring than being replaced.) Of the people I
knew, several have ended up in computer science, including at least 3 at
DEC, others became accountants, lawyers, you name it. A couple even got
their degrees and, at last word, are teaching/doing research.
A couple of factors contribute to the decline in the number of Americans in
math grad schools. Reacting to the same dismal projections mentioned above,
the good math departments sent out copies of reports on the situation to
all applicants, trying to discourage them. This went on for several years,
and clearly had an effect. At the same time, government funding for math
declined - a recent AMS study documents by how much. It turns out that no one
really noticed the decline for a long time because NSF reports grouped math
with computer science, and computer science research went up dramatically
during the same period. Finally, I think there is a large overlap between
children and college students potentially interested in math, and those
potentially interested in computer science. These days, such people are
highly likely to go into computer science - more money, more prestige,
besides, it's much more exciting to a beginner. (The Hampshire math program
these days does a lot of computer-related stuff. When I was there, we had
limited access to a new toy - an ASR-33 connected to the then-new Dartmouth
time-shared BASIC system.)
-- Jerry
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| I fell into math almost by accident. I hated math until I was in the 10th grade
and until that time I planned to be a musician. At that time I took geometry,
where I learned that not all math was drudge work (like arithmetic and algebra),
and I got a scientific calculator as a Christmas present. The calculator taught
me that even drudge work can be interesting if you can get a drudge to do it for
you while you think lofty thoughts about it. Math was actually sorta fun!
Getting back to the subject of this note, why there are few Americans in math
graduate schools, when I graduated with my degree (B.S.) in math in 1980, I
asked one of my professors for advice. I had been doing math honors work in
mathematical logic, and was torn between accepting a job with a computer firm
and getting a Ph.D. in math. He told me, "When you're in logic, you really have
two career paths: you can either get a B.S. in math and then go work for a
computer company or you can get a Ph.D. and then go work for a computer company.
The disadvantage of having a Ph.D. is that you might end up pricing yourself out
of the market." A few others tried to impress me with the difficulty of getting
a position at a university and said things like, "Nowadays, there's nothing
wrong with going into industry." I'm not sure exactly what the remark meant (was
industry once a tawdry place to be?), but I passed on grad school.
Jon
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