Imagine if you had one of the greatest piano players in history offering to play you something, and you ask him to play the opening bars of “Heart and Soul”, three times in a row.
Yes, they could do it, and do it perfectly… But why would they want to do that when Claire De Lune or Für Elise exist. And yes, those are still fairly basic in the grand scheme of things but heart and soul is boring AF.
Basic arithmetic is to advanced calculus as a child playing on a xylophone is to composing an entire symphony. Mathematicians start by thinking about what math is and move up from there.
They don’t have to actually be good at arithmetic any more than a composer has to be good at playing a xylophone.
every maths professor I’ve had in college told me to use the simplest numbers possible in my answers because arithmetic is annoying.
Imagine if you had one of the greatest piano players in history offering to play you something, and you ask him to play the opening bars of “Heart and Soul”, three times in a row.
Yes, they could do it, and do it perfectly… But why would they want to do that when Claire De Lune or Für Elise exist. And yes, those are still fairly basic in the grand scheme of things but heart and soul is boring AF.
It’s even deeper than that!
Basic arithmetic is to advanced calculus as a child playing on a xylophone is to composing an entire symphony. Mathematicians start by thinking about what math is and move up from there.
They don’t have to actually be good at arithmetic any more than a composer has to be good at playing a xylophone.