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I think there is both a good and bad aspect of this quote, you've done a great job highlighting the bad. The good, is in essence that you don't always need to
by pyromine 10y ago
I think there is both a good and bad aspect of this quote, you've done a great job highlighting the bad.
The good, is in essence that you don't always need to be fully comfortable and in fact will not always be comfortable. I find in mathematics if you try to always strive for total comfort you will never progress, as a lot of the comfort comes from advancing past a topic and upon revisiting it you realize you understand the fundamentals better than you thought.
- bsaul 10y agoTotally agree. My father would always tell that what's important is to truely understand things and not just be able to do the problem. This had two bad side effects : 1/ i just read the course and didn't do the exercises, and 2/ i "blocked" on things like infinitesimal calculus, because i couldn't get my head on its true meaning.
- espeed 10y agoRe: knowing vs understanding, have you read "Richard Feynman on education in Brazil"? http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education
- johnfn 10y agoAgreed, but isn't that irrelevant here? e^i*pi has an intuitive meaning, so we shouldn't be content with our lack of understanding.
- askvictor 10y agoIn every maths subject at uni, I'd do quite well in the exams, but not fully 'getting it'. Then the next semester, in the next subject along the, I suddenly understood it, as if the semester break had given things a chance to arrange themselves, and the context of the more advanced subject made things clear.