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Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

groups.csail.mit.edu

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Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of Burke's Applied Differential Geometry ?

Haven't read it unfortunately. The table of contents shows a much more rapid treatment. When working outside of a university course, examples can be very useful. Anyone else read Burke?

I've read Burke. ADG is excellent, though it would be even better if it had more concrete examples. It's also very much aimed at physicists (assuming advanced undergraduate knowledge of mechanics, E&M, etc.) and has less emphasis on mathematical rigor than most differential geometry texts.

I actually helped Burke out with a follow-up to ADG called Div, Grad, Curl are Dead, which looked very promising with lots of examples, but tragically he died from injuries sustained in a car accident before it could be polished for publication.

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#22
In [Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/s...), the same authors mention that a computational approach to calculus revealed errors in their own understanding of classical mechanics equations (such as Lagrange's equations), and they introduced new notation to address the problem. It appears that Functional Differential Geometry picks up that idea and runs with it.

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#23
post #2

Enough of you care about this to vote it to the front page? Who are you people? In that case, I have two favorite books on this topic. Bamberg and Sternberg, A Course in Mathematics for Physics Students. It's a redo of calculus using differential geometry from the start. A very pretty way to do E&M, or calculations on the surface of the Earth, or vector flows. Grady and Polimeni, Discrete Calculus. This is how you do…

Wait, Bamberg wrote a book on differential forms and didn't tell me when I asked him for self-study references (he recommended Hubbard&Hubbard IIRC)? Crazy. (Context: I took a Hilbert Space class from him and only then realized what I had missed by skipping his vector calculus class for the standard intro to analysis.) Maybe he made the generous assumption that I'd already thoroughly reviewed the available books and…

I hope Bamberg's books are better than his teaching... (I was a math concentrator..)

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#24
post #20

I have a big problem when people describe mathematics as just "a language". The people who usually do this say this because they are not interested in the mathematics itself, but in some other subject that happens to require mathematics. In this case, the actual subject of interest appears to be relativity, not mathematics. It seems to me like a disrespect to say that mathematics is a language, because it seems to su…

Calling mathematics a language confuses form with substance or declares that it's all form and no substance.

Fauconnier & Turner (2002)?

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#25
post #2

Enough of you care about this to vote it to the front page? Who are you people? In that case, I have two favorite books on this topic. Bamberg and Sternberg, A Course in Mathematics for Physics Students. It's a redo of calculus using differential geometry from the start. A very pretty way to do E&M, or calculations on the surface of the Earth, or vector flows. Grady and Polimeni, Discrete Calculus. This is how you do…

> Enough of you care about this to vote it to the front page?

Possibly only because of the author.

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#26
post #19
post #2

Enough of you care about this to vote it to the front page? Who are you people? In that case, I have two favorite books on this topic. Bamberg and Sternberg, A Course in Mathematics for Physics Students. It's a redo of calculus using differential geometry from the start. A very pretty way to do E&M, or calculations on the surface of the Earth, or vector flows. Grady and Polimeni, Discrete Calculus. This is how you do…

Treating data as a distribution in high-dimensional space is at the core of machine learning, and differentiating across those dimensions is typically how learning is done. I don't know if this is true, but at a glance it looks to me like differential geometry could be useful to people in machine learning. Am I right about that? I am probably going to look closer tonight...

Yes, you're right about that.

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#27
post #22

In [ Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics ]( http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/s... ), the same authors mention that a computational approach to calculus revealed errors in their own understanding of classical mechanics equations (such as Lagrange's equations), and they introduced new notation to address the problem. It appears that Functional Differential Geometry picks up tha…

I would call both of these "X for computer scientists".

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#28

I think a functional (or CS) perspective is an interesting approach, but I think you can lose some nice results in introductory differential geometry by following just this course. For example, the Gauss-Bonet theorem doesn't appear to be covered, which is an incredibly beautiful result linking the geometry and topology of manifolds. For a more classical introduction to differential geometry requiring only multivaria…

My three cents: Lee, Spivak v1, Stillwell.

Re: Functional Differential Geometry (2012) [pdf]

#29
post #2

Enough of you care about this to vote it to the front page? Who are you people? In that case, I have two favorite books on this topic. Bamberg and Sternberg, A Course in Mathematics for Physics Students. It's a redo of calculus using differential geometry from the start. A very pretty way to do E&M, or calculations on the surface of the Earth, or vector flows. Grady and Polimeni, Discrete Calculus. This is how you do…

Exterior calculus: http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.5356

Discrete diff geom: http://mesh.brown.edu/DGP/pdfs/sg06-course01.pdf

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