Talk:Unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics

I don't understand the article's second sentence. It is written "this catchphrase is meant to suggest that mathematical...". However, as a reader, I don't have a clue whether it is refering to unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics or to The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences . Thanks for your clarification.

Nicolas M. Perrault (talk) 21:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

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This article appears to have been written by someone who has a beef against mathematics.

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I think this item is somewhat misrepresented - it looks like a formal paper on a legitimate subject about mathematics. Instead it should be made more clearly a philosophy speculation. The original paper by Wigdin uses the same logic used by proponents of Intelligent Design, namely that it stresses the credibility angle - that the author is surprised that mathematics could be this effective, and that there is something not quite right about that ("unreasonable"). Mathematicians and physicists might well find this opinion ignorant. It is probably an interesting philosophy question, but the Wikipedia page makes it look like a legitimate subject instead of a couple of people's musings.

Since the question is raised, and has an associated catch phrase I think Wikipedia should have a page on it, but should put it in the correct light, which it does not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alwhaley (talk • contribs) 12:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

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This is indeed a philosophical question rather than mathematical. The discussion is a very very interesting one though. But shouldn't there have been a more general article regarding the "Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics" on the original article? Here the "ineffectiveness" in other fields would come in as a subsection.

One more thing: The ineffectiveness is has nothing to do with maths being useless, as one can be lead to believe by reading this article. It means that the spectacular results from physics cannot be reproduced in other fields. Wigner argues that this is what we should have expected, also in physics.

Linguafranca81 (talk) 12:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Apparently whomever made this page has never heard of Actuarial science or has no idea what an Algorithm is, or does not realize the fact that Computer Engineering is based on Physical Law.... Or the fact that Algebraic theory, Graph Theory, Statistics, Differential Equations and countless other Mathematical constructs are constantly used in Biology, Sociology, Economics, and pretty much any other human endeavor... This page either needs further proof or is completely misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.186.81.169 (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

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Useless quote from a mediocre writer.
"mathematical economics is unreasonably ineffective. Unreasonable, because the mathematical assumptions are economically unwarranted; ineffective because the mathematical formalisations imply non-constructive and uncomputable structures. A reasonable and effective mathematisation of economics entails Diophantine formalisms." This indicates that this person is completely illogical, and/or unable to understand English, despite choosing to write in English. The phrase, "unreasonably ineffective", means "so extremely ineffective that it is unreasonable that it is that ineffective". It does *not* mean "unreasonable and ineffective". It is the ineffectiveness that is unreasonable, not the mathematics. I propose cutting this quote from the article. Polar Apposite (talk) 17:33, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I would think that especially in economics there are (economic) incentives to not give mathematicians enough information to make a fair, because mathematical, economic theory possible, because now someone who has more information tends to gain economically from that information unless someone other could prove (in court) that such information advantage is unfair. For this one would need an economic theory at least encompassing the case under review. As long as such a theory does not exist anybody with enough experience (which is probably the bank) can use any informational advantage to economic gain. They can even write (in their standard contracts) that you have to give them enough information to gain that advantage. And no court can do anything against that because no working economic theory exists. La Zy-Hart (talk) 03:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * On reflection, I take back my evaluation of the writer as "mediocre". I will just say that the quote is useless, and is mediocre (atrocious, actually) writing. The writer may have written some good stuff that I haven't seen. In fact, I think the quote is the only writing by this writer that I have seen. Polar Apposite (talk) 05:15, 16 November 2023 (UTC)