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Were you ever tempted to say that you do something different for a living?

Lakeside_runner

By Lakeside_runner
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Lakeside_runner Established Member

Lakeside_runner

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Geez... as great as my profession is (research mathematician) it is REALLY HARD to talk about to people :lmao:. I'm not saying that I talk about it on dates - quite the opposite: if she asks specific questions, then yes, I'll answer them but I never bring it up myself - it's just futile!

 

I'm telling you - the first woman that actually gets it - I'll marry her! It's always either "Oh, geez, I've never been good at math :(" or "I thought that all the formulas in math have already been discovered :)". :banging my head against my desk: - frustrating!

 

A good piece of math is like... it's like a nice piece of choir music. Everything is in harmony, there is nothing superfluous, there is nothing missing. Everything just fits right... :)

 

So, what's your story? Were you ever tempted to say that you are a plastic surgeon just to avoid explaining your actual profession? :)

skydiveaddict Established Member

skydiveaddict

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No I've never lied about that, but you'd be surprised how few people know what a wind turbine is

Jersey Shortie Established Member

Jersey Shortie

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I am highly attracted to men that are good in math because I am not. One guy I dated was an engineer. Boy that was sexy. :)

 

I sometimes tease and tell men I am a professional lion tamer and that usually gets some smiles and good playful conversation. Unless the guy is completely humorless at which point, totally not a good match for me anyway.

jackson30 Established Member

jackson30

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So what exactly does a research mathematician do?

alphamale Established Member

alphamale

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So, what's your story? Were you ever tempted to say that you are a plastic surgeon just to avoid explaining your actual profession? :)

yes sometimes i just say i'm a garbage man

alphamale Established Member

alphamale

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So what exactly does a research mathematician do?

they research math

jackson30 Established Member

jackson30

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they research math

 

Thanks, I was confused.

Green Established Member

Green

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As a joke I will some times lie to women. Like I once had this girl believing I was a motivational speaker. I told another girl that I was a famouse actor once after she asked me if I was haha.. I might have said dolphin trainer once... For the most part I've never done it for anything other then my amusment... not something I would do to start a relationship

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Lakeside_runner Established Member

Lakeside_runner

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So what exactly does a research mathematician do?

 

Yeah, as alphamale said - we research math :)

 

OK, to be more precise - it depends on the field that you're working in, kinda like in medicine. For instance, people who are concerned with differential equations (like myself), they pose questions like: hey, there are those equations that supposedly describe how fluids flow or how other stuff works, but do they really make sense? If yes, how? Do they always have a nice solutions i.e. can you always predict how the physical entity will behave given it's initial state? etc. Without going into much detail, these are quite important questions.

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Lakeside_runner Established Member

Lakeside_runner

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As a joke I will some times lie to women. Like I once had this girl believing I was a motivational speaker. I told another girl that I was a famouse actor once after she asked me if I was haha.. I might have said dolphin trainer once... For the most part I've never done it for anything other then my amusment... not something I would do to start a relationship

 

I'm not saying that I'm lying about what I do. It's just SO DAMN BORING to me to go through the whole thing over and over again. I am excited about what I because it's one of the best jobs ever - like you don't have a boss watching over you and you can hit the gym at pretty any time of the day (except when you're teaching) and nobody will frown upon that. It's just - they don't even want to take the extra effort to think about it a little deeper beyond "um, so I remember this calculus problem - could you explain it to me?".

 

Just for the record - I NEVER talk math on dates. It's a job, just like any other. On dates I talk personal stuff :).

alphamale Established Member

alphamale

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OK, to be more precise - it depends on the field that you're working in, kinda like in medicine. For instance, people who are concerned with differential equations (like myself), they pose questions like: hey, there are those equations that supposedly describe how fluids flow or how other stuff works, but do they really make sense? If yes, how? Do they always have a nice solutions i.e. can you always predict how the physical entity will behave given it's initial state? etc. Without going into much detail, these are quite important questions.

indeed, research mathematics is quite instrumental in many important scientific discoveries

Art_Critic Established Member

Art_Critic

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I almost always did alter my description of what I did till I got to know a girl.

 

I used to tell them I was in IT for a graphics company.. ( it wasn't really a non truth ) instead of telling them I owned the company.

 

Once I could trust them I would let it out of the bag slowly what I did for a living and how long I had been doing it.

 

I got asked why quite a bit.. and I just would say that I wanted to date a girl that wanted to be with me for my humor and not my job. :laugh:

 

So I could see you altering your description some to come off different then you are right now..

reservoirdog1 Established Member

reservoirdog1

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I had fun with a girl one time with this. My job is pretty easy to explain (lawyer), but we were dancing, she asked me what I do, and I told her I was an astronaut. She laughed, said "no, really", and I told her I was a porn star. She laughed again. Eventually I told her what I really did, which was a bit less exciting than the first two things but still cool because I'd already made her laugh twice.

 

You've got a pretty intellectually demanding job, one that would probably go over the heads of most people. The best thing to do, rather than try to explain what your job entails, is find something -- anything -- interesting as an example of something you've done at your job, something with some applicability to "real life". The math part may have nothing to do with her skill set or area of interest, but if you can relate it to something she is aware of, you should do fine. "I was part of a team that developed the formula for the statistical distribution of... etc. etc. etc. ... Manolo Blahniks."

alphamale Established Member

alphamale

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I almost always did alter my description of what I did till I got to know a girl.

 

I used to tell them I was in IT for a graphics company.. ( it wasn't really a non truth ) instead of telling them I owned the company...

basically you were weeding out the gold-diggers

crosswordfiend Established Member

crosswordfiend

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I'm not saying that I'm lying about what I do. It's just SO DAMN BORING to me to go through the whole thing over and over again. I am excited about what I because it's one of the best jobs ever - like you don't have a boss watching over you and you can hit the gym at pretty any time of the day (except when you're teaching) and nobody will frown upon that. It's just - they don't even want to take the extra effort to think about it a little deeper beyond "um, so I remember this calculus problem - could you explain it to me?".

 

Not to take this off-topic, but have you guys made any progress on the inverse problem, ie predicting the initial state given an observation? It's a much more difficult problem but has some important applications.

Art_Critic Established Member

Art_Critic

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basically you were weeding out the gold-diggers

 

Yeah.. you cut right to the chase of it Alpha..

 

To more like the OP's problem though..

When I was younger ( mid 1980's) we used quite a few DEC mainframes computers that we did some of our work on and some of the computers were prototypes that only existed in my company and I was the person in charge of repairing them as we couldn't count on the company who built them..

 

Let's just say I was a geek during the 80's and I used to have trouble where I would converse over peoples heads.

 

I did alter what I did back then also when telling them what I did.. ( IT wasn't a term used yet )

I used to tell them I worked on computers and left it at that..

 

I also had to learn how not to talk over peoples heads so I didn't alienate myself..

I dumbed down the conversation quite a bit and never spoke about work..

Then there was the gold digger shield as well..

 

Looking back I guess I'm lucky I've never had any trouble finding dates or women/wives :laugh:

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jackson30 Established Member

jackson30

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DEC made pretty good computers and some pretty good software, if windows were only 1/10 as reliable as VMS my job would be so much easier. It wasn't unusual for our VAX's or PDP's to go years between reboots, unlike pc's which seem to require weekly or daily reboots.

123BeachFan Established Member

123BeachFan

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Lakeside, I think you just need to stick to dating smarter women who find your brains a turn on. :)

USMCHokie Established Member

USMCHokie

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I tell women that I sell cell phone accessories at a kiosk at the mall.

SadandConfusedWA Established Member

SadandConfusedWA

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Ha! I am also a research mathematician and it's even worse for a girl. My area is different than yours (I do a combo of maths and genetics or applied maths really, I imagine that yours is closer to pure maths or maths/physics).

 

I find it impossible to explain to people what I do without talking for an hour and even them most wouldn't get it. I constantly minimize what I do. Also, people fail to get excited when I tell them about my latest publication, they just don't get it. Teaching is the only part that people can understand - so I tend to talk about that. As a result of all this, I develop dead end crushes on fellow academics that are all married (seriously there is not a guy in my department that is not at least living with someone - so much for nerds being undesirable).

 

But yeah, it's frustrating.

SarahRose Established Member

SarahRose

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I'm glad you started this thread as I have been thinking about this the past month or so.

 

I also simplify what I do as frankly the average person just isn't that bright and I have to dumb things down quite a bit.

 

Like AC I've been in computers for many years.

 

Some years back I was a technical architect and I told someone that and they thought I built houses lol. I just didn't feel like explaining it so I just say I work with computers and because it was back then and I am female they thought I meant data entry operator hahaha.

 

Now I just say management level software engineer.

 

It was funny telling some distant family members that and they say I guess you have to have some training for that. I said yes I have a BS and a Masters degree in computer science and they thought that was so strange to have.

brainygirl Established Member

brainygirl

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I've been less than honest about where I work, but not the actual job. And that's just because its such a small school that I teach in.

Lizzie60 Established Member

Lizzie60

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Geez... as great as my profession is (research mathematician) it is REALLY HARD to talk about to people :lmao:. I'm not saying that I talk about it on dates - quite the opposite: if she asks specific questions, then yes, I'll answer them but I never bring it up myself - it's just futile!

 

I'm telling you - the first woman that actually gets it - I'll marry her! It's always either "Oh, geez, I've never been good at math :(" or "I thought that all the formulas in math have already been discovered :)". :banging my head against my desk: - frustrating!

 

A good piece of math is like... it's like a nice piece of choir music. Everything is in harmony, there is nothing superfluous, there is nothing missing. Everything just fits right... :)

 

So, what's your story? Were you ever tempted to say that you are a plastic surgeon just to avoid explaining your actual profession? :)

 

 

I wouldn't mind.. I might not be good in maths.. but I'm good at other stuff.. ;)

 

Yes.. I do lie ALL the time (by omission) about my 2nd job.. :laugh:

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Lakeside_runner Established Member

Lakeside_runner

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duh, duh, girls want hot athletes get a clue

 

Ummm... just fyi - yeah... I run marathons and do triathlons or a regular basis and rank always in the top 15%... so, dude: :sick::sick::sick:

USMCHokie Established Member

USMCHokie

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Ummm... just fyi - yeah... I run marathons and do triathlons or a regular basis and rank always in the top 15%... so, dude: :sick::sick::sick:

 

 

Hmmmm...that ban was a little quicker than usual... :rolleyes:

 

I'd love to get my swimming improved enough to do triathlons...but I hate swimming...and training... :o

 

Women like smart guys...but you already know this...embrace it!

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