Indeed.  unless you're working on creating a math problem to explain something that hasn't been explained before.  but, even then, your tools are all preset.

I thought mathematicians only ever study new problems. Hence mathematics requires a lot of creativity. People who use mathematics to study problems that have been solved are called analysts or engineers.

Mathematician, because of their natural understanding of the importance of calculation. If both players had never played a game of chess, I would bet on the mathematician. The artist would have little to no chance.

Nice voice, tends to sing a bit sharp ... not sure if he´s generally regarded as having been a professional musician though ;)

Who´s the other one?

Philidor came from a family of musicians, and was once considered the strongest of his time. Smyslov was an opera singer, and Kramnik according to him came from an artistic family: his father was a painter and his mother was a musician, http://en.chessbase.com/post/interview-with-vladimir-kramnik. Amazingly, all of them were notorious for their logical, lucid positional chess which perhaps might be expected from a profession with a more scientific background.

I actually already forgot the original question and only got through about one page of posts.

What I think would be interesting to know, which I feel may he peripherally related to the original question I forgot, is how some of the great chess players (e.g., a great one today like Carlsen) throughout time have done in mathematics, verbal, art, and other areas. Many say Carlsen is a genius, but Mozart was a different type of genius and so was Newton. There are several different types of "genius" I believe.

Is Carlsen gfted at math etc? What about Karpov, Kasparov, Fischer, Alekhine, Morphy, etc?

Mark Taimanov was a concert pianist. 

"Calculation" in chess is not the same as "computation" in math. Not only that, but math is a whole lot more than arithmetic calculation.

Honestly, with everything that's already been said, I think someone who has an artistic gift of visualization has more natural chess "ability" than someone who has good number sense.

For humans, chess is about logic, not mathematical calculation.

I can tell you from experience that mathamaticians, physicists, computer people make better chess players that artists.

Well, some mathematicians have suboptimal number sense. Art and math converge on the creativity front, especially with people who work to understand the foundations of a mathematial subfield. Math involves different sorts of talent in and of itself, much like chess, and I would expect mathematicians like Riemann, Poincare, or Grothendieck to grasp the big picture from a conceptual standpoint, whereas a Weierstrass, Hilbert, or Von Neumann would be more interested in the gritty, calculational details.

Artists need more time to come with a good move and they may surprise you.I once had a fellow at work that had to figure out the rotation of equipment to maximize efficiency. I had the answer in 24 hours and it took him 5 days to resolve but he did.

So give artist a longer time to resolve and come up with the right move I would say if you play online give them 7 days and they might respond earlier.

Agreed.

If mathematicians are good at chess, it is for reasons aside from mathematical calculation. It is really logic, not computational abilities, that would make this kind of person a more natural chess player. Well, it is even more than logic, but logic is a big part of it -- certainly much more important than the ability to "calculate" in a mathematical sense.

Given that von Neumann seemingly had an almost perfect photographic memory (he could recite entire books years after reading them, even after only reading them once), along with a few other such talents such as great feats of calculation, I think it's sort of cheating to bring him into the discussion - he'd need only read MCO and a good endgame book, and then his calculation abilities would likely be enough to make him a very good player almost instantly. But it's a moot point, since he'd probably take little to no interest in actually playing chess.

As a mathematics student myself, I would like to add that chess has helped me in mathematics more than mathematics has helped me in chess. Actual mathematical knowledge is really useless at the chessboard; on the other hand, the ability to persist with a problem for a long period of time, and the important habit of double checking for mistakes, are trained into a chess player through practice alone, and come in really handy in academia (I'm guessing it's not just in maths where this is helpful).

If mathematics has helped me at all in chess, it's helped me slightly in getting better at it: for example, when I first became interested in chess - a full 10 years after learning how the pieces move - I realized that in order to win a game I would need to know how to properly deliver checkmate in a practical game (with K+Q vs K, for example; the kind of thing which is almost never explained to you when you learn how to move the pieces, but which is actually necessary in order to play the game properly). It's that kind of questioning of the problem, asking "What exactly is it that I need to do here?", that is often useful in chess and that I certainly learned from my experience of mathematics.

However, I have no idea if art students have the same kind of thought process.

And here we come back to problem solving, which is exclusive to no discipline. So really it wasn't that math helped you at chess, it's that doing something involving problem solving helped you develop a better approach to problem solving, which you could apply to chess. In that sense, any kind of person could learn a life lesson and potentially transfer it to the chessboard. "Chess lessons" could also be transfered to real life, but that is much less likely in my opinion and experience.

Sure, but as you say mathematics is more than a good number sense. By the time you've made it a profession it's logic and abstract reasoning.

Sure visualization is important, but I think it's trivially train-able. I'm not sure it's nearly as easy to train someone to think logically.

Okay, I see your point. The original question was "would you expect a mathematician to make a better chess player than an artist?", and so my answer was entirely mathematics-centric (besides that, I have little experience with other kinds of problems; maths, mostly academic, is my real interest).

However, your point about "life lessons being applied to chess" seems largely unjustified outside of mathematics, and the "chess lessons being applied to real life" idea, which, in your opinion seems unlikely, is mentioned in my previous post. If nothing else, chess promotes good time management and decision making abilities, which are crucial skills to have in business.

Furthermore, you rightly claim that "problem solving is exclusive to no discipline" (paraphrasing again), but you ignore the crucial point, which is that certain disciplines may not be solving the right kinds of problems (indeed, "the right kinds of problems" have not been proven to exist, besides chess problems). "How should we angle this sofa to get it round the corner?" is one kind of problem that comes up in real life, but I doubt it would help in chess to know how to solve it in the most efficient manner.

yes

mathematician.

Your example in the last paragraph is also a good example of how chess lessons largely do not transfer to real life. Making good chess decisions or going through problems on the chess board are a far cry from making decisions and solving problems away from the chess board. I realize you believe it has helped you, but I am skeptical of this.

As for life lessons being applied to chess, I do believe there is a weak correlation there as well, but whatever potential exists is not only drawn from the world of mathematics. There are plenty non-logical concepts that could help you be good in chess. As for visualization, I do not believe it is trivial or easy to train. It is probably just as important as logical thinking (human chess calculation without visualization is impossible); and like logical thinking, certain people are much more predisposed to this ability, due to reasons of both nature and nurture.