Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So you want to study mathematics

susanrigetti.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 371 posts

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#51

Post by LolWolf »

brimble wrote: post #31

Are there any "math for people who just want to use it" tracks in math pedagogy? I don't care a bit about proving any of it's true, or even reading others proofs of same. "Recognize which tool to apply, then apply tool", all focused on real-world use (so, yes, it wouldn't be "real" mathematics). That's the math education I'd like—try as I might, I just can't make myself care even a little about math for math's sake.…

Sure, here's a fun one !

https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/

(I'd even replace Strang's "linear algebra" recommendation with this book.) Imo, proofs are useful in so far as they are enlightening (e.g., the proof that a problem has a minimum is often useful in so far as it tells you how to solve it!) but in many cases they are less so.

Math is pretty fun, though, proofs and all, and I'd recommend trying your hand at it as a cool little side hobby! It can often help with "clarity of thought" :) (In many cases, proofs are just one or two lines that tell you something interesting, too, not page-long arguments that are mostly definitions chasing.)

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#52

Post by Koshkin »

brimble wrote: post #31

Are there any "math for people who just want to use it" tracks in math pedagogy? I don't care a bit about proving any of it's true, or even reading others proofs of same. "Recognize which tool to apply, then apply tool", all focused on real-world use (so, yes, it wouldn't be "real" mathematics). That's the math education I'd like—try as I might, I just can't make myself care even a little about math for math's sake.…

> "math for people who just want to use it"

It's called "engineering mathematics." (The books by Stroud would be an excellent choice here.)

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#53

Post by criddell »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #16

I went from only having done high school math 10 years ago to completing an MS in math and statistics at my local state university while working in an unrelated field. I would recommend NOT starting with calculus if you haven’t done it, instead, just learn how to do proofs - I used Chartrand “Mathematical proofs” - You don’t need to know any math beyond algebra in order to do that most of this book. If you need to re…

I looked up the Chartrand Mathematical Proofs book and it's been a while since I had to buy a textbook, but $175 for hardcover and $75 for paperback or ebook? That's nuts. If I were a student today, I'd pirate that and feel absolutely no remorse for doing so.

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#54

Post by bnbond »

tunesmith wrote: post #48

How do you like to solve math problems in this day and age? I'm partial to Jupyter notebooks lately - I run it locally from a docker container, and have a folder of notebooks. Mostly markdown cells, alternating between my narrative thinking and LaTeX math output.

I find paper and pencil works pretty well.

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#55

Post by pphysch »

brimble wrote: post #31

Are there any "math for people who just want to use it" tracks in math pedagogy? I don't care a bit about proving any of it's true, or even reading others proofs of same. "Recognize which tool to apply, then apply tool", all focused on real-world use (so, yes, it wouldn't be "real" mathematics). That's the math education I'd like—try as I might, I just can't make myself care even a little about math for math's sake.…

> Are there any "math for people who just want to use it" tracks in math pedagogy?

Use it for what? That is the question. If you pursue the what, you will inevitably be exposed to genuine ways that mathematics may be employed by it.

The academic standard for "learning math" is like "learning programming" by reading the C++ language/STL spec from front to back. No one productively learns programming that way, and even if someone did, they would hardly be well off when faced with a real-world production C++ codebase that follows $BIGCORP's inhouse programming style.

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#56

Post by auggierose »

helpfulclippy wrote: post #47
brimble wrote: post #31

Are there any "math for people who just want to use it" tracks in math pedagogy? I don't care a bit about proving any of it's true, or even reading others proofs of same. "Recognize which tool to apply, then apply tool", all focused on real-world use (so, yes, it wouldn't be "real" mathematics). That's the math education I'd like—try as I might, I just can't make myself care even a little about math for math's sake.…

I did a degree in applied math. You’d think this would be “math you’ll use,” but the fact is that despite my program having a CS concentration, most of the stuff I did was not really applicable in practice. However, one thing that has been VERY applicable is proofwriting. Although math proofs are far more rigorous than most real world stuff, the discipline I learned in writing proofs has carried over into pretty much…

Proofs are indeed very practical. For example, I believe Leslie Lamport mentioned somewhere that he only came up with the final version of Paxos once he tried to prove it, and noticed that some condition he assumed wasn't necessary at all.

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#57

Post by rscho »

da39a3ee wrote: post #29

I am fairly confident that Susan Rigetti is a future president of the USA. In addition to becoming somewhat well-known as a household name early on in her adult life, she has achieved so many difficult and impressive things (publishing multiple books, studying physics and philosophy at graduate level, working for a top-tier tech company, taking down the CEO of a top-tier tech company and damaging the company's reputa…

POTUS is a very low bar...

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#58

Post by k__ »

brimble wrote: post #31

Are there any "math for people who just want to use it" tracks in math pedagogy? I don't care a bit about proving any of it's true, or even reading others proofs of same. "Recognize which tool to apply, then apply tool", all focused on real-world use (so, yes, it wouldn't be "real" mathematics). That's the math education I'd like—try as I might, I just can't make myself care even a little about math for math's sake.…

I think, the problem is, proofs are what makes math useful.

This might sound a bit dense, but the alternative is what 90% of programmers do every day.

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#59

Post by pattt »

Spivak’s Calculus reignited my interest and appreciation in math. Sad to discover the author passed away quite recently. The way of explaining principles and making you do the hard work via problems which I believe is a must with this book, is profoundly astonishing. There’s a lot of mathematical insight packed into those problems, it almost feels you can build up the entire high school and the early uni curriculum from the ground up, for instance there are a number of popular formulas you’d arrive at and derive accidentally while working on those problems. Furthermore it really works your brains by making sure you can reason within the established framework and exercise great doubt. I’m taking this book very slowly.

Re: So you want to study mathematics

#60

Post by itcrowd »

Susan, I greatly appreciate this list and will definitely come back to use it as a reference if I need a book recommendation. (I don't think I'm the target audience, although who knows what the future brings..)

That being said, I think you are missing out on an opportunity to reach a wider audience. It bugs me a bit that the requirements seem very American-centric. What I mean is the following bit:

> A high school education — which should include pre-algebra, algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and trigonometry — is sufficient.

And later the paragraph on "pre-calculus".

I know that many places don't have such names for courses in high school. In fact, often it's just called "Mathematics" and you either take it or you don't (obviously there is a spectrum here).

How is a prospective (non-American) student to know what is covered in Algebra 2 in an American high school?

I'm not asking you to change the article, I just hope I can nudge you into realizing that the text as it is now is more difficult than it needs to be for non-Americans.

Post reply on HN