Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Downvotes away ignoranti! Not a mod, but that’s against the HN guidelines and is likely to keep your comment grayed out. I thought the rest of your comment was interesting, FWIW.
[flagged]
Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
21–30 of 684 posts
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#22America did this too. There was the New Math trend in the 50-60s which feels like common core. Here's a comedy song about it from that era. https://youtu.be/UIKGV2cTgqA
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#23Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I gravitate towards grayed-out comments. I think that they tend to be likely to be on one or another extreme side of the intellectual bell curve. Basically, they end up grayed out because either they are too dumb or too smart for the average Hacker News user. So if I manage to run an effective mental filter to discard grayed-out comments that are on the low side of the intellectual gray curve, then gravit…
Or the ones you most agree with, which for most people are approximately the same as the 'highest intellectual range' ones. But since this is how like to you read HN, you really should know about the 'showdead' option in your profile. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html .
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#25Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#26I can only assume but culture makes things very different. I often said that French abstract algebra books stopped me from learning for 10 years (after many serious attempts). One book from Garreth Williams unlocked 80% of my issues. The shocking part was the approach. It was very operational, you calculate, you manipulate concrete data. In French books it's all theorems and concepts. Learning curve to make a Haskell…
Thank's for the insight. I struggled with geography until I discovered history...again, after high school of course. I still struggle with algebra, so I look forward to checking your suggestions out. I think my problem as a kid was I was just hyper, all the time. I could cut wood outside for 10 hours but couldn't sit still for a moment.
If it were somehow possible to let kids chop wood for 10hrs, as the need arose, or whatever, and then they could go / go back to school when they were ready.
Certainly would have helped me a lot.
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please stop posting ideological bait to HN.
Dan you continue to be a Nazi ideologue in the service of sociopaths. I have tried for years to help you but it's hopeless isn't it. You won't stop sucking their ass in the promotion of fascism. You horrible piece of evil. I wish you would get what you have created for yourself but there is no justice. The innocent will be oppressed by the elitist liars you support as a sycophant and justice will never prevail. It's…
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#28I can only assume but culture makes things very different. I often said that French abstract algebra books stopped me from learning for 10 years (after many serious attempts). One book from Garreth Williams unlocked 80% of my issues. The shocking part was the approach. It was very operational, you calculate, you manipulate concrete data. In French books it's all theorems and concepts. Learning curve to make a Haskell…
Thank's for the insight. I struggled with geography until I discovered history...again, after high school of course. I still struggle with algebra, so I look forward to checking your suggestions out. I think my problem as a kid was I was just hyper, all the time. I could cut wood outside for 10 hours but couldn't sit still for a moment.
Tangentially, a lot of fantasy authors seem to love maps for their own sake, and provide maps of their world as illustrations. I never saw the point of these; the map never really matters to the story.
But history books provide almost the same number of maps -- usually one, before the discussion of whatever -- and it just isn't enough. Those maps really matter to understanding whatever was going on; in the real world, geography is a huge deal.
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#29In a US college in the 80s, the math professors definitely seemed to be in awe of the Russians when it came to this stuff. And though I was in the US, early on I was in an utter hardware wasteland, and I do think that not having much hardware access improved my ability to just sit and think about things with pencil and paper.
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#30"At the risk of oversimplifying, I noticed that because of the traditional scarcity of equipment, Russian students and scientists had to
think
rather than experiment, whether with computers or accelerators; it was often all that was available to them."