The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
math.vanderbilt.edu
The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
1–10 of 117 posts
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#2My god, if someone created a similar list for undergraduate Computer Science education, I would be astoundingly happy.
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#3Aka most common undergraduates who study math do not know math.
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#4"An equation such as ∫ 3x^2 dx = x^3+C says that we add together uncountably many infinitesimals, and we get a medium-sized number."
Yelp! My buddies Riemann & Lebesgue had quite a different story on the matter...
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#5Do yourself a favor and shrink the browser width to about inches.
And learn about why newspapers are laid out in columns.
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#6By the way, write your plus sign (+) and lower-case letter Tee (t) so that they don't look identical!
From my experience, I'm one of the very few people who write manually in a serifed font; in particular, I write 1, l, I, and | very distinctly and use a slashed zero so as to distinguish it from the letter O. I wish more people would do this since it is still sometimes necessary to communicate on paper, and trying to interpret handwritten notes with ambiguous writing can be quite annoying.
Unquestioning faith in calculators.
The same can be said for computers too - except the problem is often worse as computers are far more complex to the point that almost no one understands them fully, and we are encouraged to accept this.
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#7Do yourself a favor and shrink the browser width to about inches. And learn about why newspapers are laid out in columns.
> are laid out in columns.
Because they can't be resized on the fly?
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#8You know, this post may cause problems though.
There is something called photographic memory...
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#9Do yourself a favor and shrink the browser width to about inches. And learn about why newspapers are laid out in columns.
> are laid out in columns. Because they can't be resized on the fly?
Because the optimal line length for readability on a monitor seems to be between 50-95 characters per line[1]. On my 1920x1080px screen, I'm seeing about 300 characters per line in this article.
[1] http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability and http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/72/LineLeng... - and no, the irony is not lost on me on the second link
Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics
#10Do yourself a favor and shrink the browser width to about inches. And learn about why newspapers are laid out in columns.
> are laid out in columns. Because they can't be resized on the fly?
No, for readability. Paul Graham's essays are a good example. For example, http://paulgraham.com/copy.html