There are easy majors. Just not at Mac.

Originally Posted by J. Dorey

For me, science, commerce, engineering, etc. are out of the question, because I can't think in terms of numbers. Give me an essay to write, however, and I'll have no problem coming up with an original argument. Some of my friends, however, are in math-based programs and can't reason through an essay to save their lives.

I think that's pretty uncharitable. Mathematics adheres to the "rules of reason" far more strictly than the humanities, and as such I have a hard time believing that people from math-based disciplines cannot understand the reasoning in essays.

A much more likely explanation is that they don't have a particularly good grasp of the subtleties of the English language, just like you don't have a particularly good grasp of the subtleties of numeric thinking. Think of it this way: if a friend of mine in the humanities cannot figure out a proof, I wouldn't think it's because they don't understand the reasoning. Again, a much more likely cause for their problems would be their inability to understand the mathematical language.

Additionally, many people from math-based streams are confused by the shift in "logic". In math, positions are absolute in that contradictions cannot be simultaneously true in a model. In the humanities, the dialectic method is used (and rightly so), which seeks to "converge" to a position based on a minimization of simultaneous contradictions, rather than an elimination thereof (which is of course impossible in that context). The matter of fuzziness of logic can also be important, as most people in math-based subjects use binary logic exclusively (although "fuzzier" logic is used widely in logic, mathematics and electrical engineering).

So what I'm saying is that there's no substantial difference in the reasoning capabilities of students of either math or English based disciplines; rather, there's a difference in their linguistic capabilities. (There may be a relevant tangent here about whether or not reasoning is language dependent, but in any case someone in China can learn modus ponens just as well as someone from Canada).

Originally Posted by Mahratta

I think that's pretty uncharitable. Mathematics adheres to the "rules of reason" far more strictly than the humanities, and as such I have a hard time believing that people from math-based disciplines cannot understand the reasoning in essays.

I didn't mean reason in these terms, I simply meant it in terms of breaking essays down, understanding their different compartments, and unpacking these ideas to form an original argument. Must have gotten lost in translation. I'm sure all programs use reason to understand their problems, but it's used in different forms in different disciplines. That's all I meant.