[zbyszek]

Having worked in a university mathematics department I noticed that the pure mathematicians tended to keep themselves to themselves, for instance not attending talks by visiting mathematicians unless it was of direct relevance to their research. In contrast, we theoretical physicists would listen to any visiting speaker just for fun - even on occasion experimental particle physicists, applied mathematicians or computing specialists. Perhaps pure maths is just more deeply specialised and leaves no possibility of such dilettanteism.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I think it's probably because it's very difficult to understand a pure math talk if you didn't already have significant understanding of the subject before the talk.

I don't work on pure mathematics, but I work in a field of computer science where there is both theoretical and empirical/applied research, and I do, and enjoy doing, both.

However, when it comes to attending talks, I do go to a lot of talks on empirical subjects just for fun, but I hardly ever go to a highly theoretical talk for fun. I only do that if the talk is highly related to the specific work I do; if you see me in a theoretical talk otherwise, it's probably just for social compromise.

The reason is that I can perfectly understand the gist of an empirical paper in 20 or 30 minutes, where there is no way I will understand a piece of theoretical research by listening to a talk if I haven't gone through the paper carefully before (and if you have done that, there is often no point in going to the talk anyway). Honestly I think the talk format doesn't lend itself too well to highly theoretical work. I have learned a lot about empirical research and obtained many useful ideas from talks, but in the theoretical field, the useful ideas and insights I got from talks are few and far between, and I would probably have obtained them more efficiently from reading papers anyway...