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The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

math.vanderbilt.edu

41–50 of 117 posts

Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

#41

I studied undergraduate mathematics, and I think it's a field which requires the student to spend as much of their own time as needed to understand a concept. Perhaps this could be said of all fields, but there is just limited time in a class to absorb, e.g. Euler's Formula, because there are several concepts in play, and if the student doesn't have a firm grasp or recollection of one of them, then they get lost at o…

This is why I really like learning math through MOOCS (with pause/rewindable videos) despite them having a number of other drawbacks.

Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

#44

One realises how confusing and complicated are the standard notations when one implements a programming language. You would prefer Lisp/Scheme or RPN notations, but they both scare away a lot of people, who prefer "natural" notations. People don't realise that they probably hurt them as much as they help them.

It seems tempting to have a single unambiguous notation for mathematics. But In constructing such a language, one will quickly realize that doing mathematics becomes an intensely arduous task.

This is not unlike recent discussions about the conlang Ithkuil on HN.

For better or for worse, math notation has for the most part been optimized for writing on paper or a blackboard, using context to eliminate "inessential details". Local edits are generally easy, and pieces of notation are not always so tightly coupled. (For example, we can put a "for all x" at a distance from some equation.)

Have you ever attempted to write Lisp on a blackboard, then needing to insert an expression in the middle? It's extremely difficult because you have to perform a quadratic process (erasing everything after and reindenting) to make the Lisp readable. At least this is what I've noticed in interviews. You can sometimes patch your Lisp forms with lines and arrows, but it's the quickest way to get spaghetti on your blackboard.

RPN is similarly useless for the task. RPN is exceedingly easy to write, but not so easy to read. Also, higher level mathematics becomes unwieldy in RPN.

Sussman and Wisdom in their book "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" did take a different approach to math notation in order to make it unambiguous for that relatively small sub field. It looks like regular math notation but written in such a way to make things more easily computable. I'd say they were successful, though their work would be difficult to generalize.

Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

#46

By 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…

I use a similar style of writing, including slashed 7s. I wish I could find a nice monospaced font with slashed 7s and 0s, etc.

Last time I saw a font with a slashed 7 and 0 was on Genera for the Lisp Machine. See it here: http://www.eurogaran.com/downloads/lispmfont/screenshot.jpg

Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

#47
post #17

I disagree that 0^0 is undefined. I would argue should be 1 and the function 0^x is not continuous at zero. The basic definition of exponentiation for integers is n^m is a product of m instances of n. Because the multiplicative identity is 1, a product of zero numbers is always 1. Therefore 0^0=1.

It goes deeper than that. Many things in mathematics are defined in a manner that is consistent and convenient. Defining 0! to be 1 is a similar case. In doing so nothing goes wrong, and the binomial theorem becomes simple and convenient to state. Without defining 0! as 1, it's a dreadful mish-mash of special cases. Similarly with 0^0. Considering x^y where x and y are complex numbers, there is no consistent single v…

Just completing Real Analysis and an interesting addition to your point is the decision to even call zero a natural number.

It's really opened my eyes to just how much of the definitions around the math I group up with is due to convenience more than anything.

Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

#48
One of the most bizarre errors I've seen undergraduates make is in induction proofs. I saw it so many times that I decided a TA must have been telling them to do this.

They would always show the base case correctly. Then they assume it's true for all positive integers up to a fixed positive integer "n." So far so good, now we need to prove it's true for "n+1." This is where weirdness happens, I have seen a hundred assignments where an equation is reduced down to "0=0" or "1=1" and they then write "Q.E.D" even though the fact that 0=0 was not under contest.

Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

#49

By 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…

I do the same, but only when I write mathematics. I have different i, j, k, l, q, t, x, and y. However, I always serif my 1's, and slash 7 and 0.

Re: The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

#50

One realises how confusing and complicated are the standard notations when one implements a programming language. You would prefer Lisp/Scheme or RPN notations, but they both scare away a lot of people, who prefer "natural" notations. People don't realise that they probably hurt them as much as they help them.

It seems tempting to have a single unambiguous notation for mathematics. But In constructing such a language, one will quickly realize that doing mathematics becomes an intensely arduous task. This is not unlike recent discussions about the conlang Ithkuil on HN. For better or for worse, math notation has for the most part been optimized for writing on paper or a blackboard, using context to eliminate "inessential de…

> Have you ever attempted to write Lisp on a blackboard

What's a blackboard?

Seriously, blackboards are pretty obsolete technology. Designing a notation to optimize for blackboards in this day and age is kind of like designing roads to accommodate horses.

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