3 ms·
I feel this was a response to this recent submission as perhaps an example of a math text that is less traditional? (Could be interesting to look at the discuss
by dpflan 9y ago
I feel this was a response to this recent submission as perhaps an example of a math text that is less traditional? (Could be interesting to look at the discussion and see how this text holds up?)
Why do many math books have so much detail and so little enlightenment? (2010)
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14338411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14338411
- arglebarnacle 9y agoIt's an interesting comparison to be sure, but I'm not sure Street-Fighting Math has a lot to offer graduate-level pure math texts (the subject of that post). I own and love the book, and did a lot of pure math in my math undergrad degree. But SFM is closer to the tradition of Martin Gardner's long-running "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American than real higher pure math education. I think that's because it hinges on giving you tools to "hack" problems in physics, geometry and calculus that leverage intuition about quantities and space. There are branches of pure math where this matters a lot, but frankly it's not going to help you learn about Lie groups or category theory. It's not clear to me that the style and approach of SFM is helpful in this kind of very abstract context where a detailed understanding of unfamiliar sorts of concepts and mechanics is crucial.
- dpflan 9y agoTrue. The title alone lets you know it's not teaching you braid theory. But in terms of providing a different perspective to read, teaching, learning mathematics - that is where the comparison or interesting bits could lay. Also, have you (or anyone here) taken the Stanford course "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking"? > http://online.stanford.edu/courses/mathematical-thinking-winter-2014 http://online.stanford.edu/courses/mathematical-thinking-win...