I know responding to a suspended member might be futile, but there has been a lot of bantering about Einstein and mathematics that I think need to be backed up.

According to the Nobel Prize people about Einstein, here's a few key points.
So he clearly had the math background.
Clearly an understanding of existing math. You can't reconcile two things without understanding them clearly.

Now they don't address his early years, so here's some other facts.
In particular, look at the misconceptions paragraph explaining how he was never poor in mathematics.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

The only surprising aspect of this thread is that so many people bothered to post in it. Surely the question is not actually worth an answer, is it?

Chiefly differential equations.

Differential equations tutorial

There´s plenty of resources on the web.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

Did you read the thread? Have you read many ATM threads? Are you aware of the understanding of and attitudes toward math and science of the people you stand in line next to at the grocery store?

The question is definitely worth an answer. Many more people than just the OP have the same question and need to see it answered.

Maybe he was just a bit less mathematically inclined than most other people who hold Ph.D.s in mathematics or a math-heavy field.

Sort of like how I didn't fare as well as a lot of my classmates at differential equations. Sure, I wish I had earned better marks, but even so the fact that I've successfully studied differential equations means it's hard to make a case that I'm no good at math. . . just not as good at math as people who are better than me at math.

I don't know why, but this post has just really inspired me. You must be living a very happy life, fine sir.

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"Science is physics and astronomy." -Me
"There is absolutely no law in physics that prevents time travel." -Dr. Michio Kaku

And this is a family board.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

I've recently been taking A&M online maths courses which i actually find invigorating since i now appreciate it in a way i never did at school (i started working directly after high-school).

However I dont think its right to say maths is the only way to understand physics. All of Einstein's peers considered him the greatest of their era because he was very intuitive about how nature worked without always understanding the matehmatical formulation. In fact he counted on a very good friend (I dont remmeber the gentlemans name at this moment) to help him with mathematical formulations.

On the other hand i believe if one wants to develop a theory which can be falsified, and for it to meet the approval of the scientific community, maths is absolutely vital.

And i also think most everyone can get a good grasp of reasonably advanced maths if they put the time into it.

Yes of courseNo, and I suspect I won't bother with many if this is typicalVery much soI am just surprised that this question needs answering on this forum, that's all.

To me, the question is in the same category as, say, on a forum about Shakespeare, and somebody were to question the point of being able to understand English.

Perhaps I have not yet appreciated the full range of members here.

Not just you, but to most of us here. That's why it's such a hot topic.

But; yes, I'm sure even on a Shakespeare board, there would be regular members (if they are considerate and patient enough) that would at least try to explain why English is important.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I made a similar point here about Shakespeare and English that some may find worthwhile.

I finish up that post with the following:

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I know where you come from, but I think it´s still worth discussing, because tommac has asked which branch of maths should be more useful in approaching physics, especially GR physics. Referring him to number theory or group theory would be a desservice.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

Grant Hutchison

I was equally amused by the singular, myself. What's more, while I've never, so far as I remember, played Chopin (viola, not piano), I've played a lot of other things, including a very complicated piece of Tschaikovsky. I did know the scales and the notes and so forth, and it was still a bit beyond me. I had a private teacher's help, not to mention the help of the conductor of the youth orchestra in which I played it. I'm not bad at music, and I've put a great deal of study in. But I'm not as good as Mr. Meyer, or even a lot of my friends. To the kid down the street who went to Julliard, I'm sure I'd count as "not as good at music," and I'm sure he'd be right--comparatively. This would not actually stop me from writing music myself, or a great work on music theory, even.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well put as usual.

And true.

But with language and math, verbal and visual symbol chimes [verbal /visual]: even science must bow to the mind's ability to comprehend such communication which apparently takes siting at a disk for a minimum 24 for years from birth day one to the end of graduation..

Very constrictive to say the least.

A more direct perception would be more convincing like vision and feel: and philosophy gets put into quibbling about math and language and duality.

@Gillianren

I think a few things are getting mixed up in this thread.

I would agree with tommac as far as to say that a layman can appreciate and perhaps even "grasp" concepts such as GR on a simplistic, basic level while standing on the sidelines as a passive spectator. Where this not the case, books like those from Hawkings certainly wouldn't be sell as well as they do.

There is however a huge difference between grasping a concept and working with it, or actually developing new theories with it. While one may get the basic idea of GR, one certainly can't hope to implement it or extrapolate it to other theories without being able to crunch the numbers.

Music isn't quite the same, but mutatis mutandis, one could attempt an analogy.

There are many excellent musicians around who's only instrument of virtuosity is the CD player. Though they may know most of Chopin's music by heart and would be able discuss its interpretation with pianists, they couldn't hope to play two measures of any of it and wouldn't be foolish enough to say they could," if they only wanted to."

However, experience shows that having played an instrument of some kind and having learned some music theory greatly enhances the appreciation and enjoyment of classical music.

Even if a conductor can't play the bassoon, he can still tell the bassoon player how to play a certain passage. However, he can only tell him how it should *sound*, not how the bassoon player should technically create that sound. That's up to the bassoon player who has practiced his little tuchas off for years on end.

So, music and physics may be the same in as much as passive appreciation can be achieved without the "math," but if you want to "play" it, you have to learn the scales.

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Ach, mein Sinn, wo willst du endlich hin, wo soll ich mich erquicken? Bleib' ich hier, oder wünsch' ich mir Berg und Hügel auf den Rücken?
Bei der Welt ist gar kein Rat, und im Herzen steh'n die Schmerzen meiner Missetat, weil der Knecht den Herrn verleugnet hat.

The band I'm in calls them "charts". Piece works well. Another word used is "work"--the work by Chopin. Also, something more specific, like the waltz by Chopin or the fugue by Bach.

To me, "song" is something that is sung.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I think part of the problem is there is a lot of mathematics, and no mathematician knows it all. Einstein was weak in differential manifolds, and got help from an expert before formulating his General Relativity.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

You can use a conceptual model to develop a mathematical model, or you can make observation and use the observations to develop both conceptual and mathematical models.

The mathematical models, if the conceptualization is correct; should then have the power to predict past, present and future events within the boundaries of the model. What should be consistent, is that all of the mathematical arguments used to explain the physical concepts should be seamless. The irony is, accepted theories are NOT mathematically cohesive: General Relativist models are time-dependant; quantum models are not; and there is no obvious high ground. So even the concept of 'grasping GR' relies upon some unimaginable conceptual compromises, mathematically

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

That is so beautiful,

"Two puppies from the same litter."

I see us as sisters.

We argue allot, but that is how we maintainer balances within the time/space continuum.

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osiris

Wrong. A musician, by definition, is one who plays music. One who just listens to it is not a musician. They may be a connoisseur, but they are not a musician. Further, how do you judge anyone's ability if they have never shown what they can do? They can talk a good game, but you can't call someone "excellent" or a "virtuoso" if they've never shown their stuff, and in order to show their stuff, they have to do the work.

Assuredly true.

Ah, but a conductor can play bassoon if he's come up through the ranks like any good conductor has. It's one of the things they teach you in music school--how to play everything, so that you can help people know what to do. The conductor, unless they're a bassoonist first themselves, isn't going to be remotely as good, but a conductor who isn't also a musician is not a conductor I'd want to follow.

But to be considered an expert, you have to know the language. To really understand Bach, you have to know what instruments are being played, for example, and the world he lived in, and why he wrote what he wrote. (There's a reason he wrote so much church music, of course.) You can appreciate the sound, but not the music.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Only if you had ten digets fingers but if 12 fingers the song math is the same but the sound would be entirely different and not better, but a mistake for doing art as to science.

So art is the same, and not dependent on Math but feel.


But the math will be revealed to the satisfaction of math guys.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska
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@Gillianren

I think we agree in pricnipal (or even in detail) with each others posts. The format of the forum is just too narrow to write the wordy explanations needed to get the viewpoints fully across.

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Ach, mein Sinn, wo willst du endlich hin, wo soll ich mich erquicken? Bleib' ich hier, oder wünsch' ich mir Berg und Hügel auf den Rücken?
Bei der Welt ist gar kein Rat, und im Herzen steh'n die Schmerzen meiner Missetat, weil der Knecht den Herrn verleugnet hat.

The first example you give, actually is one that, imho, can be understood without understanding the exact mathematics involved. Of course that does not imply that the importance of these mathematics is overrated. But imho the concept can be understood without understanding the math (just like you don't need to know any English to understand Juliet wasn't quite happy when she awoke and found Romeo dead - when you're watching the play, that is ).

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Neptune, Titan, Stars can Frighten...

The problem with your argument is that the octave actually does have 12 notes, not 10.
Mainly because the many factors of 12 makes the pure ratios that sounds so good come out nicely (apart from the whole temper thing that makes the modern scale a bit of an approximation).

You're forgetting that math (as opposed to numerology) pretty much ignores how numbers are written and is invariant over number systems.

And it's even worse for those wind instruments that are basically a half open tube, as they really needs 17 fingers to play

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

From all of the discussion about Einstein in this thread and elsewhere, I think it is clear that unlike many would-be theorists in the ATM page, he recognized and accepted the need for mathematical treatment of his idea beyond his initial capability, and he took the trouble to spend a few years learning the necessary mathematical methods.

Any resemblence between Albert Einstein and the proponents in the ATM forum is in the haircut.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.