Welcome to the blog portion of my website, polymath.
pol·y·math /ˈpälēˌmaTH/
noun: polymath; plural noun: polymaths
a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.
My undergraduate degree was originally only in pure mathematics, but early on it felt far too abstract for me and I needed to ground it in reality (rather than define some arbitrary metric space). In my second semester of undergrad I added a political science double major. Hence the name polymath. I soon added a computer science minor because I loved to code and I also dabbled a bit in astrophysics (because…cool).
Throughout all my interests I managed to find connections between these seemingly disparate disciplines. However, the divide between math and political science remained somewhat treacherous. In math, especially pure mathematics, you are in your own little bubble; even applied mathematics is rarely applied to answer social science questions and is usually reserved for physics. In political science, all the mathematics is brushed under the rug, it is a tool that someone else forged, so why bother remaking it.
I argue we should remake the tools. Why? Well, because at least to me, it is worth remaking them in order to better understand how and why we apply them in political science.
All this said, I am not claiming to be a polymath, far from it (I just couldn’t resist the pun). However, I’m hoping to explore the math and statistics behind political science by connecting it to real-world examples and hopefully illuminate the meaning behind mathematical jargon, since it is often (intentionally) very unnecessarily complex. Because of this, there is a lot of fear tied to mathematics that I hope to assuage.
Transitioning from being a math undergraduate to a political science Ph.D. student has not been easy, so I also hope to just do cool math (and math-adjacent things). I promised myself I wouldn’t stop doing cool math when I decided to accept my admission into political science graduate school, and I broke that promise to myself last semester. This blog is for my own amusement and learning as much as it is for you. So, as much as I’ll try to frame all of my posts in a political science lense I might throw in a cool math/compsci proof or two, just for fun!
And maybe, together, we can break down some barriers to understanding and become true polymaths along the way.
Looking forward to learning with you all.
Cara