Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] predicting the future

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Fri, 19 May 2006, Christian M. Cepel wrote:

> Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
> > In 1995 I made a decision that maybe I would put God on the backburner for 
> > a while, and work primarily on my math career.  Looking back, by far my 
> > most productive years were pre-1995.
>
> I know this is an old thread, but I've been putting off reading it till 
> now. I'm curious. What was the timeline post 1995 and your productivity 
> levels?


I would just suggest that Stephen's plan to "put God on the backburner for 
a while, and work primarily on [his] math career."  Implies that he felt 
his math career wasn't going as well as he would have liked in 1995.  If 
"putting God on the backburner" had no effect at all, we should still 
probably see that he was doing worse after 1995 than before.  Another way 
to think of it is the change in his emphasis on God was an attempt to 
treat himself.  If a sick person were to look back at his life, he would 
certainly see things like "I was a lot healthier before I started taking 
those cancer meds," but of course we blame the cancer, not the meds.

I also hear that for many mathematicians, they do their very best work at 
a young age.  As we get older, we know more, but we seem less able to do 
surprisingly original things in areas like math and physics.

Mike

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