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How long does it take to become a forensic artist?

How long would it take a 25-year-old artist to learn from scratch and become a mathematician?

  • Mathematics and art have a long historical relationship. The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks knew about the golden ratio, regarded as an aesthetically pleasing ratio, and incorporated it into the design of monuments including the Great Pyramid, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. There are many examples of artists who have been inspired bymathematics and studied mathematics as a means of complementing their works. The Greek sculptor Polykleitos prescribed a series of mathematical proportions for carving the ideal male nude. Renaissance painters turned to mathematics and many, including Piero della Francesca, became accomplished mathematicians themselves. I'm starting to see with my own eyes the beauty of numbers embedded within masterpiece arts and now planning on to go back to school to learn. Personally, I haven't taken a math class since 10th grade. I'm 25 now. How long would it take for a person like me to reach the level of a 'mathematician'?

  • Answer:

    Persi Diaconis, now a professor of mathematics at Stanford and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, dropped out of high school to pursue a career as a professional magician and traveling gambler before eventually returning to school, graduating from college at the age of 26. What matters most in mathematics is the creativity and intuition to come up with original ideas combined with the discipline to actually carry them out.  That said, you will likely need to go back and fill in a substantial amount of background -- the easiest way would be to go back to college and do an undergraduate math degree, then a Ph.D.  This should take between eight and ten years.  If you're bright and have the talent for it, you may be able to do some interesting elementary research after two or three years.  That said, you may want to focus on areas that depend on less background. There are currently quite talented people in my graduate program who are easily twice your age, so if this is what you want to do, you should do it.

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In the millennia since the classical civilizations, people have discovered a bit more math than the ancients knew. Correspondingly the standard for becoming a mathematician is that much higher. If you really want to be a mathematician at the level of a professional, consider that it usually takes four years to earn a bachelor's degree in mathematics and another 6-8 years to earn a PhD. So we are looking at a ten year investment as a reasonable minimum. This is really a polite way of saying that as far as becoming a professional mathematician goes, art doesn't really do very much for you compared to, say, having taken calculus, as far as background material is concerned.

Jiahao Chen

A2A. It depends on just how much you want to know. If you simply want to be able to appreciate/understand mathematics it will probably just take you a few years. If you want to be able to contribute useful results you are talking about a much longer commitment. I have a friend who started in college at about 25 in basic arithmetic. He is now about to graduate as a math/cs double major after 6 or 7 years. Not bad. With your artistic background you may enjoy the book Visual Group Theory. It's a good introduction to the ideas of group theory that only requires a background in high school math.

Dan Taylor

The question is similar to asking how long it would take to become a professional baseball player and the answer depends on what native talent one currently possesses. The answer could be as short as a couple of years if one is a born math genius and just needs to read up on current developments or it could be 'longer than your lifetime' if you do not possess the talent.  Advice- start by picking up where you left off in high school by watching Khan Academy and if you zip through all of them and say 'this is a snap,' then just keep going and don't ever stop. I have a Ph.D. and that is the way it works in math, science, art etc.  It is a combination of talent, effort and time. Do you have all three?

Ronald Salazar

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