The New York Times published the following really quite fascinating article today:
The Singular Mind of Terry Tao
by Gareth Cook
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html
I particularly like the article's description of the game of devil's chess - an imaginary game which
not only really seems to get at how a mathematician works but also captures some of
what it takes to be a successful mathematician.
From a personal perspective, I really liked what I thought mathematics was in high
school and it turned out that I was quite good at it. By the start of my last year of high school, I had decided that I would pursue a career in pure mathematics. Fortunately, at about that time my sister Colette arranged for me to meet a
University of Alberta mathematics professor for an hour or so. This turned out to be one of the best spent
hours of my career as I not only got a tiny sense of what pure mathematics actually was but I figured out that it was not the aspect of mathematics that I was actually interested in*. The professor figured this out as well and suggested that I consider going into applied mathematics or possibly even computing science. I had read one or two books on computer programming but this discussion with the math prof is what really crystallized my interest in computing. In hindsight, it turned out to be one of the best spent
hours of my career.
* Once I actually started
university, I quickly learned a bit more of what mathematics is and soon developed a constructive proof that I wasn't actually all that good at most of it. Going into pure mathematics would have been a real fiasco!
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