1. Kindly see the red sentence below. What exactly does "that approach" mean? I don't know the term for "he peered right through to the mathematical struts and nails holding the story together"?
2. How exactly does Wald's approach $\color{red}{\text{"lead you to ignore features of the problem that really matter"}}$? Examples please? The author provided no examples.
> Wald’s other advantage was his tendency toward abstraction. Wolfowitz,
who had studied under Wald at Columbia, wrote that the problems he favored
were “all of the most abstract sort,” and that he was “always ready to talk about
mathematics, but uninterested in popularization and special applications.”
> Wald’s personality made it hard for him to focus his attention on applied problems, it’s true. The details of planes and guns were, to his eye, so much
upholstery—**he peered right through to the mathematical struts and nails
holding the story together** [Emphasis mine].
$\color{red}{\text{Sometimes that approach can lead you to ignore features of the problem that really matter.}}$ But it also lets you see the
common skeleton shared by problems that look very different on the surface.
Thus you have meaningful experience even in areas where you appear to have
none.
> To a mathematician, the structure underlying the bullet hole problem is a
phenomenon called *survivorship bias*. It arises again and again, in all kinds of
contexts. And once you’re familiar with it, as Wald was, you’re primed to
notice it wherever it’s hiding.
Ellenberg, *How Not to Be Wrong* (2014), p 8.
Chgg Clou
·
2021-07-03T08:21:56Z (over 3 years ago)