My reply to this guy who made this statement that engineers and mathematicians are not known for their creativity (read that letter here) has been published! Here's my letter (as published by ST, somehow I think they 'corrected' my grammar and I don't really agree with the correction).

I REFER to the letter, 'Stress language and creativity, not sciences' by Mr Patrick Tan Siong Kuan (ST, July 15).

In it, he made the comment: 'Mathematicians and engineers are, unfortunately, not known to be great creative thinkers.'

In making this statement, he is contributing to an unfortunate misunderstanding of what creativity means.

Creativity is by no means confined to the arts and aesthetics. One can be creative no matter what profession he is in. In daily life, as long as we approach every problem we encounter with an inquisitive mind and think out of the box to resolve it, we are being creative. It is a stereotype to think of only artists and poets as creative.

Indeed, most people think of Leonardo da Vinci as creative because of his artistic work, though when asked referred to himself ultimately as an engineer. His fertile mind produced many engineering ideas. Some were applied to solve practical engineering problems at the time, such as his work on hydraulics focused on the canals of the Arno and Lombardy regions of Italy. Some were fantastical, such as flying machines - a good four centuries before the successful launch of the aeroplane.

Mr Tan must have got too used to modern life and takes for granted the many inventions around us that are indeed creations of great ingenuity. Engineers actually had to think and be creative to design and build that computer, that refrigerator, that clock, even that light bulb that is almost ubiquitous in modern life - ideas do not grow on trees.

Perhaps it is difficult to see the creativity in these inventions because one has to understand the technical details in order to see the great beauty in these inventions.

In the same way, people who find it difficult to understand the language of mathematics will find it difficult to appreciate the beauty of mathematics, and hence the great creativity demonstrated by mathematicians.

As a mathematics undergraduate studying in the National University of Singapore, I remember being shocked in my first year of study by a lecturer who told us 'Mathematics is an Art'. I later came to understand this when I experienced the euphoria of coming up with unique proofs and solutions to mathematical problems during my course of study.

As an educator, I feel creativity should be emphasised as part of our education in every discipline. A creative approach to life will make our people competitive in the global economy, regardless of their profession. And perhaps the first step to this is to free our minds of stereotypical ideas of what constitutes creativity.