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A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

jeremykun.com

91–100 of 223 posts

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#91

Do the exercises have solutions? The most annoying things about math books is the lack of solutions. A beginner absolutely needs to know whether or not their solutions are correct. The “the reader should know if they are correct” logic doesn’t apply here. A beginner could easily have faulty logic and fool themselves into thinking their solutions are correct. I usually don’t buy math books without solutions if I’m sel…

> The most annoying things about math books is the lack of solutions.

To me the most annoying thing about math books is hand-waving, lack of rigor, and unexplained notation.

At least in programming, everything is formal and I can figure out the entire problem by looking at the source.

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#93
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf is wrong with hn. >[sorry if I am being blunt, but it's how I feel] you should learn to keep your feelings to yourself when the only function they serve is to denigrate others and derive cruel satisfaction for yourself. >Here is a rule of thumb that in my experience applies well to almost everything in mathematics this is aspirational pretension - everyone claims to appreciate formal purity /after/ they've learne…

>wtf is wrong with hn. I believe you must have mistaken me for someone else. My name is andrepd. Is this "hn" a friend of yours? >you should learn to keep your feelings to yourself when the only function they serve is to denigrate others and derive cruel satisfaction for yourself. It never ceases to amaze me how some people are so perceptive that they can confidently deduce the intentions and personality of a person…

Is there any way we can keep this somewhat civil?

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#94
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf is wrong with hn. >[sorry if I am being blunt, but it's how I feel] you should learn to keep your feelings to yourself when the only function they serve is to denigrate others and derive cruel satisfaction for yourself. >Here is a rule of thumb that in my experience applies well to almost everything in mathematics this is aspirational pretension - everyone claims to appreciate formal purity /after/ they've learne…

>wtf is wrong with hn. I believe you must have mistaken me for someone else. My name is andrepd. Is this "hn" a friend of yours? >you should learn to keep your feelings to yourself when the only function they serve is to denigrate others and derive cruel satisfaction for yourself. It never ceases to amaze me how some people are so perceptive that they can confidently deduce the intentions and personality of a person…

on the internet everyone is a dog and has read all of the volumes and TAOCP and all of the volumes of landau lifshitz (and also peskin and shroeder and read baby rudin at 5). no one cares about /you/ man - it's a public forum so the point is to give advice that is generally relatable.

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#95
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, you are what's wrong with HN. His post is a well-justified opinion, with reasoning provided, whether you chose to agree or disagree with that. Somebody may (or may not) take it into consideration. Yours are simply "how dare you!"-post, adding absolutely no value to the discussion. Also, learn capitals, it's hard to read you like that.

there is zero justification in the post I responded to outside argument from authority and prescription so i have no idea what you're talking about

I have not one single time invoked any kind of authority to make the points I'm making. It was only below, after you've (ironically) invoked the writer's credentials and insultingly proclaimed I never should be allowed to ever teach anything, that I let you know my qualifications.

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#96
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is zero justification in the post I responded to outside argument from authority and prescription so i have no idea what you're talking about

I have not one single time invoked any kind of authority to make the points I'm making. It was only below, after you've (ironically) invoked the writer's credentials and insultingly proclaimed I never should be allowed to ever teach anything, that I let you know my qualifications.

Erm...

> Like Leslie Lamport says

Pretty clear appeal to authority, IMO.

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious how many people the author has taught mathematics to. It doesn't seem a good idea to jump into writing a textbook teaching mathematics unless one has experience of teaching mathematics. But the author makes the very point about early failures of programming, due to lack of experience, so perhaps he can supply information about what his pedagogical experience consists of. Teaching other people is a craft,…

Apparently he was a TA as a math PhD student at UIC. Now is a programmer working at Google. He wrote a bunch of posts on his website over the years, https://jeremykun.com/main-content/

His blog has appeared here before and I've found it well written.

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#99
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"wtf is wrong with hn" One thing that's wrong with HN is that perceived "negativity" often gets condemned in exactly the way you have done here. It seems as if a significant number of HN readers have never really participated in a spirited discussion with arguments made from multiple different perspectives. Maybe any kind of apparent conflict scares them, maybe they project their own aggression onto a comment that se…

there are zero "arguments" in the post I responded to outside of argument from authority. there's nothing about /why/ precise definitions are better than meandering, nothing about simplicity etc just proclamation that it is

I have not one single time invoked any kind of authority to make the points I'm making. It was only below, after you've (ironically) invoked the writer's credentials and insultingly proclaimed I never should be allowed to ever teach anything, that I let you know my qualifications.

I do justify why simplicity and succinctness are better than meandering. More superfluous information obscures the "nugget" or the essence of we really want to talk about. Strip away the accessory, write the simplest, most lucid explanation that captures the idea, and you will see the concepts and connections in their elegance, more clearly than when that is obscured in the middle of pages and pages of talk. In summary: "idea" is more understandable than "idea+cruft".

What do you mean no reason why? Are you expecting a scientific trial? I'm sorry to disappoint you: these are but my opinions.

Re: A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

#100
post #91

Do the exercises have solutions? The most annoying things about math books is the lack of solutions. A beginner absolutely needs to know whether or not their solutions are correct. The “the reader should know if they are correct” logic doesn’t apply here. A beginner could easily have faulty logic and fool themselves into thinking their solutions are correct. I usually don’t buy math books without solutions if I’m sel…

> The most annoying things about math books is the lack of solutions. To me the most annoying thing about math books is hand-waving, lack of rigor, and unexplained notation. At least in programming, everything is formal and I can figure out the entire problem by looking at the source.

I think you aren't buying very good math books then. I find the exact opposite: the thing about math books I have read is that they overemphasize rigor at the expense of intuition. Everything is painstakingly illustrated in such great detail that I sometimes see the trees and lose sight of the forest. I feel as if reading proofs and doing problem sets in math books is just manipulating symbols in well-known ways without really understanding intuitively why something must be true. For example my introduction to metric spaces started by defining the characteristics of a certain function d without explaining how this could be thought of as a generalization of distance.

On the other hand, many programming stuff is ruefully hand-waving and lacks rigor. They might present important algorithms in pseudocode; even when they present in real code, the precise semantics of the real code is often underspecified and vaguely described in English. I mean take a language; how often do you see in the language specification the semantics of the language defined rigorously, using operational or denotational semantics? PL nitpicking aside, how many programmers think a piece of code must be correct because they pass a few test cases, without ever giving a proof?

I'm of course not saying the lack of rigor in programming is bad. Perhaps 95% of the software we are building isn't mission-critical and relying on intuitions is fine; we ain't got no time to prove every piece of code we write. But my point is your observation really does not match mine.

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