proof

so tonight, eric and i went to see proof... i'd heard about it as a broadway play in years past but never seen it, then it came out on the big screen a month ago, but nowhere within 45 minutes of here until the last couple weeks. as it was, we still had to drive 10 miles or so to get there.

plot: a famous mathematician dies, and you follow his daughter going back and forth in her head from the past to the week after his death, while she tries to cope with who he was, fearing that she inherited not only some of his brilliance, but also some of his insanity, as most of his life his mind was really out there. (the plot on the website tells it better). it was a really well done movie, and eric and i both enjoyed it immensely.

it brings up two things to mind that i think about from time to time

(1) famous mathematicians are always portrayed as literally insane people. this is moderately humorous to me since at least 75% of the people i interact with on a daily basis are mathematicians or aspiring mathematicians and they're who i think of as normal, and most of them are completely mentally stable. i guess we all do have our quirks, i just find it humourous that i can't think of one mathematicians who i've seen portrayed as a mentally balanced individual.

(2) at one point in the movie gwyneth paltrow's character is ranting to jake gyllenhaal's character how her education didn't come from a university and she pities the people who are struggling to just barely get a ph.d. when there are people without formal training who have an especial knack for things and their brilliance is shunned. it wasn't a main theme of the movie, just came out in one angry line, but it strikes a chord.

i have an aunt who is always telling me how brilliant i am, etc., etc., and when i point out that i'm generally around people much smarter than me, so in the grand scheme of things i'm not quite so brilliant as she likes to play up, she argues against me and tells me i shouldn't be so modest.

that's the thing about math people though. there are some mathematical giants (like paltrow's character in the movie) who are brilliant and prove these giant results with great clarity. then most of the other math people fill in the little chinks. i guess the thing is, yeah, math grad school (for example) is intense, and you have to be reasonably intelligent to get in. but once you're there, you're in a more focused group of people who are all at least reasonably intelligent. when the average person you're around is at least as smart as you, it's really easy to feel defeated and realize that you and most of your peers are just those people just barely scraping by to get their ph.d.s, with no strokes of brilliance to revolutionize their fields. i realize this most of the time. eric's response to that was that he knows it and just doesn't care and keeps hoping that one day he'll prove something brilliant, and in the meantime keeps chipping away. i guess that's my hope too, but i guess the knowing i'm not that brilliant in the more focused pool of mathematicians gets to me more often than it does to him. sure i'm competent enough to study my way through to a ph.d., but i often feel like i'm being paid to do something i'm not that great at doing. don't get me wrong -- most days, it's a great blessing to be paid to study things i think are interesting, and i don't want to trade that in at all. on the whole i really like the idea of what i do, even when i'm incredibly stressed. just looking at my colleagues and fellow mathematicians, it's hard to not feel like i'm at the bottom of the smartness totem pole.... sure i can study hard and probably work my way through finishing a ph.d., but i can also name hundreds of people even within a couple years of my age who are much more brilliant than i am at what i do.

i've spent an hour on this post, and i'm just making it more and more circular.

summary:
* proof was an awesome movie -- see it.
* not all mathematicians are insane
* more mathematicians have inferiority complexes than you might think

the end.