Different people are good at different things. In particular, the algebra/analysis dichotomy is a pretty standard one and if you’re good at analysis and not so good at algebra, it probably matters how good you are at what you’re best at.
(I’ve heard people talk of branches of maths the way gender essentialists such as EY or Ozy Frantz would talk of gender identity.)
One of my pet theories is that math and (applied) statistics require very different brains. People whose brains are wired for math make poor (applied) statisticians and people who are really good at stats tend to be poor at math.
This is partly an empirical observation and partly, I think, is a consequence of the fact that math deals with “hard” objects (e.g. numbers) that might not be known at the time, but they are not going to mutate and change on you, while statistics deals with uncertainty and “soft”/fuzzy/nebulous objects (e.g. estimates). Moreover, for applied statistics the underlying processes are rarely stable and do mutate...
(I’ve heard people talk of branches of maths the way gender essentialists such as EY or Ozy Frantz would talk of gender identity.)
Possibly relevant: the relationship between algebra/analysis and how one eats corn on the cob.
One of my pet theories is that math and (applied) statistics require very different brains. People whose brains are wired for math make poor (applied) statisticians and people who are really good at stats tend to be poor at math.
This is partly an empirical observation and partly, I think, is a consequence of the fact that math deals with “hard” objects (e.g. numbers) that might not be known at the time, but they are not going to mutate and change on you, while statistics deals with uncertainty and “soft”/fuzzy/nebulous objects (e.g. estimates). Moreover, for applied statistics the underlying processes are rarely stable and do mutate...