A short monograph on exposition and the emotive nature of research and publishing

Abstract

Not altogether surprisingly – given that mathematicians are humans first and foremost, with as much variety in personality, inspiration, energy and temperament as found in any other societal grouping – within our own internal ranks there will always be a degree of discord and divisions of opinion on such things as the relative merits of ‘pure’ versus ‘applied’ mathematics, research versus instruction, rigorous versus heuristic arguments, theoretical versus practical work, conceptual versus computational analysis, problem-solvers versus theory-builders, anonymous versus declared refereeing, solo versus collaborative efforts, and so on. Overlaying most of these, the very essence of research and publishing raises separate sources of emotive contention, as does the virtue of writing expositively which is discussed here based partly as a result of some recent survey work by the author that also forms a starting point for the piece.