does maths ability have a shelf life?

[d000hg]

But you study twice as much maths, which if you are going to uni to study maths or physics makes a lot more sense than filling up the time with something else.

Except then you have to fill some of the time at 1st-year uni while all the regular people catch up. Which is nice, do an elective in astronomy or something

[doodab]

There is some anecdotal evidence that maths ability does decline with age, in the sense that most of the great mathematicians did their best work by their early 20s, but in terms of being able to learn and apply existing techniques I think, like fitness, it's really a question of practice, so someone who has been performing at a high level continuously will have an advantage over someone who has a 10 year hiatus.

[doodab]

Except then you have to fill some of the time at 1st-year uni while all the regular people catch up. Which is nice, do an elective in astronomy or something

We had a snooker club.

[Sysman]

Does anyone remember S levels?

I've got one in Maths.

I failed the Physics one, probably because I ran out of time.

But then again, I got carried away on one question and was proposing a theory which I saw aired in a Scientific American article a few years later.

That article cheered me up (that I was right) and pissed me off (because I hadn't published first) at the same time.

[d000hg]

Also, I didn't know you could do maths and further maths as 2 of your 3 subjects... our school only let you do it as a 4th A-Level IIRC.


I did some practice S/STEP papers and was not exactly overly successful, but I didn't get an offer at Cambridge after all so luckily never had to take one for real.

[NotAllThere]

I have a maths degree from twenty three years ago, My son is currently studying physics. I can follow the maths in that I can go from one step to another, but can't do the actual reasoning. However, I think I'd just have to re-learn the identities and techniques and it would be fine. It's not totally alien.

I'm currently do a humanities degree. That's easier. It's just learning facts and putting arguments into a coherent form. The younger students find this considerably more difficult than use oldies - even those of us who last wrote an essay nearly 30 years ago.

[xoggoth]

Yeh. Did a very mathematical subject at Uni, and used it for nearly 3 decades - calculus, some stats, trig, lots of numerical methods, curve fitting etc. Now #1 son keeps asking me about trajectories of missiles, shortest distance over curved surfaces etc for some PC game he's writing and I never have a clue, not immediately anyway.

[minestrone]

I think you lose interest in concentrating for long periods of time when you get older.

It is why people find it hard to learn musical instruments when they get older, they just cannot be arsed putting in the hours day after day. Snooker players always dive when they get into their 30s as they will not do the 6-8 hours practice a day.

[Spacecadet]

Re: does maths ability have a shelf life?

I think you lose interest in concentrating for long periods of time when you get older.

It is why people find it hard to learn musical instruments when they get older, they just cannot be arsed putting in the hours day after day. Snooker players always dive when they get into their 30s as they will not do the 6-8 hours practice a day.

It's not the lack of interest, it's the lack of time. Having said that, if you really want to learn something then you find or make the time.

Back to the original topic though: I had to revisit statistics for my masters degree after over 15 years and didn't find it much of a problem. Bit like riding a bike, you might be a little wobbly or unsure after a few years but you get back in the groove pretty quickly.