3 ms·

Truth be told, at the time I was also reading around 20 other books, it's just that I completed 90% of How To Prove It and around 10-15% of the other books. I w

Truth be told, at the time I was also reading around 20 other books, it's just that I completed 90% of How To Prove It and around 10-15% of the other books. I was so captivated by math after discovering blogs of rather opinionated math professors and students that I downloaded literally over a hundred books (for free) and started designing the perfect curriculum. I would start over many times, over and over, study most of the free time I had between college and programming, watch dozens of lectures, seek lecture notes and additional exercise sheets, and try to solve everything. This particular period lasted about 8 months, after which I stopped studying math and took a long break to resolve some life issues and prepare myself for my first job as a software engineer. I remember reading a few sections from What is Mathematics too. Some chapters on topology and the preface. So, yeah, I also succeeded because I drowned myself in everything possible until I got used to it. It's just that I never felt any frustrations with Velleman's book, so I knew that every time I open it I will learn something new, won't get confused, and the level of difficulty will be just right. That's why I kept coming back to this book and completed most of it, while didn't make much progress in others.

westoncb 8y ago
Oops! My bad! I just realized that you're talking about a different book. I thought you were referring to the book's namesake, Polya's "How to Solve it." I have not had any contact with how "How to Prove it"! Also, interesting how much of a similar way we seem to have gone about learning math. I kept it as my main focus for a similar amount of time, then for as a secondary focus while working on a big software side project for another 7 months or so (I was working at a grocery store for money the whole time), then got my first software engineering job and largely dropped any focused study in mathematics. But now I'm in a position where I'll learn bits of math as I need them for projects or whatever, so it definitely wasn't a waste (and like you mentioned in being able to read stuff off of arxiv, it expanded the range of ideas I can understand). I've actually started getting interested in continuing study again, getting more into applied math this time since I really focused on pure last time. First goal is to get a clear understanding of Maxwell's Equations :)

westoncb 8y ago

Oops! My bad! I just realized that you're talking about a different book. I thought you were referring to the book's namesake, Polya's "How to Solve it." I have not had any contact with how "How to Prove it"! Also, interesting how much of a similar way we seem to have gone about learning math. I kept it as my main focus for a similar amount of time, then for as a secondary focus while working on a big software side project for another 7 months or so (I was working at a grocery store for money the whole time), then got my first software engineering job and largely dropped any focused study in mathematics. But now I'm in a position where I'll learn bits of math as I need them for projects or whatever, so it definitely wasn't a waste (and like you mentioned in being able to read stuff off of arxiv, it expanded the range of ideas I can understand). I've actually started getting interested in continuing study again, getting more into applied math this time since I really focused on pure last time. First goal is to get a clear understanding of Maxwell's Equations :)