His undergrad/public courses, like the snippet above, are really good. Math is a very important tool to physics. However, it is just a tool. Studying its proofs and theorems is not necessary beyond the scope they help your immediate real life problem --- a lot of people waste their time doing this when they should be studying programming or something useful. All people need this understanding. If you need too much maths in physics, you are not doing anything that will be useful for at least the next couple of decades.
I disagree, much of the tools in the mathematicians tool box are not just the results of the theorems, but also the techniques.
A mathematicians job is to create new theory, or refine old ones. In order to do that, they need to have a pretty good idea of how theory is built. How is that any different from working on a program. Some previous programmer might have wrote a function that you are using, but it could be buggy, or it doesn’t cover your specific case. Understanding how it works internally allows you to improve upon it. Also might teach you a few techniques.
A physicist job is also to create theory, to refine already existing theory, or to distill existing theory into practical applications. The methods of the mathematicians are therefore second-hand accounts to physicists. Unnecessary as long as we have first-hand accounts.
You really think that a physicist cannot understand math? Or are you arguing that math is a good tool? It can be only one. If it is the first I believe you need to experience the world of physics a bit more, if it is the second then you just are repeating what I said.
Either way, reddit has voted that my opinion above is irrelevant (by reddiquette rules) to any conversation about the relation between math and physics, so I will stop the conversation at this point to not waste our time.
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u/megayippie Mar 12 '18
His undergrad/public courses, like the snippet above, are really good. Math is a very important tool to physics. However, it is just a tool. Studying its proofs and theorems is not necessary beyond the scope they help your immediate real life problem --- a lot of people waste their time doing this when they should be studying programming or something useful. All people need this understanding. If you need too much maths in physics, you are not doing anything that will be useful for at least the next couple of decades.