yeah, I wish we could be more specific here. Like I appreciate the things you’re saying, and I don’t doubt the truth or sincerity of that opinion — but I feel like I’ve encountered some math PhD students who were surprisingly inflexible in the way they thought, and very parochial in their intellectual interests. I guess I just haven’t (anecdotally) found the transference of math training to other domains as much as others seem to.

i think that’s a characteristic of a lot of PhD’s though - they become so specialized they become inflexible. i’m more talking about applied math into industry types. in insurance, tech, etc, i always tend to find the mathy people are faster, come up with unique solutions, and are more self motivated.