Math tools for the next 20 years

Igor Carron commented on his blog that

… the mathematical tools that we will use in the next 20 years are for the most part probably in our hands already.

He compares this to progress in treating leukemia: survival rates increased dramatically over the last 40 years, not primarily by developing new drugs, but by better applying drugs that were available in 1970.

I find that plausible. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of math that was well known 100 years ago.

Related post: Doing good work with bad tools

One thought on “Math tools for the next 20 years

  1. Yes, it takes math about 100 years to escape the social circles of mathematicians and reach the undergrad math programs.

    The more math you know, the easier integration gets, but you don’t find that math until long after Calc II.

Comments are closed.