[xanderlewis]

Yes! He’s a great counterexample to the popular view that mathematical/pure logical reasoning ability is negatively correlated (even zero-sum) with communication ability. Yes, there are people that are crap at one and quite good at the other… but you can’t make much of an inference when given one without the other.

[tadala]

Is this a popular view? I think mathematicians can be odd, but usually they communicate quite well. I think as far as popularization of their fields go, mathematics is probably doing the best out of the lot: numberphile, 3blue1brown etc.

[xanderlewis]

The examples you list are not known as mathematicians; they’re popularisers who (sometimes) happen to have qualifications and a history of studying the subject. 3B1B is absolutely brilliant but Grant Sanderson is not a ‘mathematician’ in the sense of someone who does research in mathematics.

Ironically, the fact that mathematics popularisation is as visible as it is is itself a sign of how much it is needed and therefore how unpopular and misunderstood the subject is. Branches of science like, say, astrophysics don’t need popularisation; people already think they’re cool.

The view of ‘people who are good at mathematics’ being bad at English is a relatively common one, in my experience. At least at the level of university students. People think there’s some sort of conservation of ability or equilibrium in the universe that means that if you have a ‘maths brain’ then you’re no good at much else, and vice versa. If anything, I think there’s a positive correlation between mathematical and communication ability — after all, mathematics is basically just the science of clever notation and clear-headed thinking.