Talk:Informal mathematics

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The phrase "justified by examples" was piped to constructivism (mathematics), which seemed just plain wrong. Constructivism demands STRONGER standards of proof than standard mathematical reasoning. A Geek Tragedy 13:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Ditto. Same goes for intuitionist mathematics, which is less intuitive for most people (ex: the idea that "A or not A" must hold for any statement A is not endorsed as a truth by intuitionists).

This article is also laden with passive-aggressive hostility to "formal mathematics" and implies that it's somehow biased or disdains the mathematics of the common people.

Begging for help

Asking for help from mathmos didn't seem to do anything so I've put templates to have somone from antropology or psychology add something. A Geek Tragedy 17:47, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Ought math based upon intuition and supported by examples be considered physics? Any physicists out there wish to comment?

Potential External Reference And Merger

To help point the way, I believe this article is attempting to get at the subject covered by The Math Instinct by Keith_Devlin. From his vita he has a Mathematics Ph.D. specializing in "Logic, computer and information science, in particular linguistics and human–machine communication". I agree with A Geek Tragedy that this article is more in line with anthropology, although Devlin's book also draws on biology in general and shares some commonality with treatment of mathematics as sections within Mathematical_Philosophy as it is a different way of viewing the nature of mathematics, without a clear match to any section already in that article. The later might be a good fit for a merge as a section in there? TylerXD —Preceding unsigned comment added by TylerXD (talk • contribs) 22:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I tried finding references for this article and found a motley assortment of ideas from different areas, so Devlin may have a valid viewpoint but it's one of many. The problem isn't notability since there are plenty of sources that define the term, but they all seem to define it differently and I couldn't find anything to support what's in the article beyond the obvious "mathematics that is not formal". An aspect I found in my research that seems to have been missed is educational, what do children know about math from general culture and how should it be built upon or corrected? I'm pretty sure mathies aren't the ones to solve this, we're more interested in formal mathematics.--RDBury (talk) 03:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Perspective of the article

Mathematical "informality" is a very subjective--or should I say relativistic--concept. What is "informal" to an anthropologist will be very different from what is informal to an engineer, which will in turn be different from what is informal to a mathematician. Would it be out of place to have a section about informal math from the perspective of intentional, rather than developmental, ideation? To make myself more clear, it seems as if "informal" in this article is defined as incorrect-but-useful "everyman" mathematical technique, when informal derivations and the like are frequently (and correctly) used by highly technical educators, scientists, and engineers. Mathematically "formal" arguments are often outside the scope of these fields.Pondrthis (talk) 07:45, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

You have a good point, as "informal" mathematics can be used by experts and that is not what is being referred to in the article. We could add a section talking about informal mathematics as used by experts. Alternatively, given that 'naïve physics' is also a page, perhaps the article should thus be renamed to 'naïve mathematics' to indicate the field of study as opposed to merely informal mathematical technique? This would maintain consistency with the 'naïve physics' page, and piped links to this page indicate that this is already a common phrasing of this concept. Either case seems reasonable. --Webspidrman (talk) 00:57, 2 March 2022 (UTC)