I believe inability to do arithmetic correctly is more common in folks with maths and other STEM degrees
Reminds me of a story from <https://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pd...>. Quoting it below:
One striking characteristic of Grothendieck’s mode of thinking is that it seemed to rely so little on examples. This can be seen in the legend of the so-called “Grothendieck prime”. In a mathematical conversation, someone suggested to Grothendieck that they should consider a particular prime number. “You mean an actual number?” Grothendieck asked. The other person replied, yes, an actual prime number. Grothendieck suggested, “All right, take 57.”
It's like they say: the only numbers a mathematician needs are 0, 1, and 2 (and just because it's not 1).
(And there's always unary.)
For instance, under this notation, the dual of L^p is just L^(1-p). And Littlewood’s interpolation inequality is a lot easier to remember, since the exponents used come directly from the coefficients in the convex combination:
If r = ap + bq, where a and b are nonnegative and sum to 1, then |f|_r <= (|f|_p)^a (|f|_q)^b
And going off on a tangent: in thermodynamics, we should measure coldness (coldness ~ 1 / temperature). It makes all the math come out nicer.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldness
Coldness handles 'negative temperatures' much better. As Wikipedia puts it:
> Though completely equivalent in conceptual content to temperature, β [= coldness] is generally considered a more fundamental quantity than temperature owing to the phenomenon of negative temperature, in which β is continuous as it crosses zero whereas T has a singularity.[7]
That has not born fruit so far.
In hindsight I could have had the same career path with a straight CS degree and much less stress during my college years. No regrets though, math really is fun! Even more so when the classroom setting is removed.
At school, we had tests to show what we were good at. The guy who came to comment on our tests told me that I should definitely go for something like literature or history.
And here I am, an engineer with an extra PhD in physics who dreams about meeting these idiots and explaining to them that what they do is revolting. They are probably dead by now though (it was in the 80's)
Had to look it up.