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Reminds me of how, as a kid, I tried to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem. I didn’t have a chance in hell, of course, but my attempts enabled me to learn a ton of adv
by acangiano 7y ago
Reminds me of how, as a kid, I tried to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem. I didn’t have a chance in hell, of course, but my attempts enabled me to learn a ton of advanced math and even finding on my own some results that turned out to be already well known (e.g., Euler’s formula). It's one of the purest forms of learning but as an adult, I no longer have the time or freedom to do it to the same extent. Still, the basic approach is worth keeping. You just need to limit yourself a little so that you don't end up too deep in the rabbit hole, spending a ton of time on things that you really don't need to know.
- codingslave 7y agoI had a similar approach with the following equation: What does the infinite series of 1/(k^2) converge to for k=1 to infinity. When I was in high school, I spent weeks going down this rabbit hole of mathematics, failing to solve it. Years later I discovered that this equation is a special case of the Riemann Zeta Function, which was also first studied by Euler. His proof is really elegant. The funny thing is that with some math equations, sometimes you intuitively can see that there is something important or far reaching about an equation, even if you arent skilled enough in mathematics to discover it. Some kind of curiosity draws you in