Re: Suggesting a Poll

On 17 Feb 2009 20:24:03 -0500, Bill Dubuque
<wgd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Of course there will be a few exceptions since there
are some mathematicians who seem to enjoy crank bashing

.... or are drawn into such threads for quite other (and even
completely opposite!) reasons. (Not that I'm classifying myself
as a "mathematician" - I have a good few more years of study to
go, before I begin to qualify for that title, even informally -
but the point is that it isn't sheer mathematical incompetence,
or malicious kookery either, that causes me to be so drawn in.)

Perhaps, if you can spare the time, you might e-mail me with some
indication of how I came to figure so embarrassingly high in the
list of offenders.

Most likely because you participate a lot in such threads.

Not so much at the moment, I think (recently when I haven't done
a lot of studying, I also simply haven't posted much to sci.math
at all), but for quite a long time after coming back to sci.math,
I was uncomfortably aware of a strong tendency to get pulled into
them, which is presumably reflected in my CRAP index (as computed
last year). It was "uncomfortable" insofar as it also tended to
pull me away from doing actual mathematics, a pertinent fact which
I suppose it is quite fair to see reflected in my CRAP index.
<grimace>

I hate witch hunts of any kind, especially when I am fingered as
one of the witches.

It's certainly no witch hunt. It's one of the variables that
I use to compute a score for posts in my newsreader (gnus).

Well, you must do as you see fit, but I shall try not to allow
it to dissuade me from defending (or criticising) those accused
of crankery, or even from enjoying the occasional madly off-topic
joust with galathaea. I don't like any pressure to exhibit the
mere surface signs of respectability, whether in mathematics or
in anything else.

These days, I don't have the uncomfortable sense I used to have
that participation in such threads decreases my real mathematical
activity (such as it is!). On the other hand, I also participate
less in them (even as a proportion of my total participation in
sci.math), and my CRAP index will presumably reflect this fact
- which perhaps means that, in spite of my protests, this crude
statistical index does reflect pretty accurately my own intuitive
sense of how well I'm concentrating on mathematics (or not).

If you recompute the numbers, some time, and I'm significantly
lower down the list (without having done anything deliberately
to bring this about - which would be quite pathetic!), I might
be mollified to some extent.

--
Angus Rodgers
.

Relevant Pages

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