On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 6:12 PM, <jeanbigbo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dima writes: > "there is nothing wrong with using a bit of pure mathematics for > applied problems; e.g. cryptographers do this all the time... " > > Agreed. My formal education was from a time when fields, groups, and such > were not common undergraduate fare.
They are still not common undergraduate fare, in the US at least. Most math major seniors I've encountered at Univ of Washington know almost nothing about groups, rings and fields. I personally did an undergrad math minor without once ever hearing about groups, rings or fields -- then I ran into a misfiled book [1] in the programming section of a bookstore about abstract algebra, and was instantly hooked. Abstract algebra is a really beautiful and powerful collection of ideas and ways of thinking about mathematics. It's also assumed in a lot of Sage documentation. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Abstract-Algebra-David-M-Burton/dp/0697067610 -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-support" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
