The other day I spent time with my brother, and as usual we ended up discussing mathematics. We both use math in our work, but because our work is very different, he and I end up using it differently.
My brother develops powerful techniques for analyzing and identifying DNA. For example, after the attack on the World Trade Center, our federal government turned to him to help them properly identify what remained of the victims.
Meanwhile, I just do computer graphics. So you can see why I think of my brother as the Mycroft in the family.
Because he uses math for statistical analysis, and I use it to make pictures, it would seem that we would find little common ground. Yet it turns out that we are often thinking about the same mathematical objects. We just think about them very differently.
Tomorrow I will give an example.