4 ms·

How would you go about learning the most important thing that you have an eye on nowadays? Because if there are no important topics, yes, I would stop to ponde

How would you go about learning the most important thing that you have an eye on nowadays? Because if there are no important topics, yes, I would stop to ponder.

jyriand 6y ago
Few days back I stumbled upon a video about Ramanujan [0] and the: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ..(to infinity) = -1/12.(Turns out the proof in the video is incorrect or at least not concise enough, because you can't do that with divergent series). So that got me curious and I wanted to understand what's going on. How can 1 + 2 .. etc equal to -1/12 and not infinity. So I went on small binge watching videos to get an intuition and understanding about this. This led me to Riemann Hypothesis and Euler's identities and complex numbers etc. Now I have a list of books that I want to skim/read to get a historical context around these problems. I don't take any notes just yet, because I don't know what is important and what is not, I just jump into the stuff and hope that when I come out of the other end I will at least have a understanding why it equals -1/12. It's like panning out gold, there might be some gold nuggets. And maybe, just by pure chance, I come up with some ridiculous ideas how to disprove Riemann Hypothesis ;P (I think I have to revisit Gödel, Escher, Bach and Gödel's Incompletness Theorems to prove that it's not provable). - [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww EDIT: Sorry to all facepalming mathematicians who happen to read this comment.
- ganafagol 6y ago
  I'd recommend you study some real math for this. Popular science articles and books are great entertainment but are distinctly different from the real deal. You don't become a surgeon by watching Dr. House or a historian by watching the history channel. Don't expect to understand math by reading a wikipedia article. To really get it, you need to dive deep and get your hands dirty.
  - sabas123 6y ago
    To add to this, people underestimate how long it might take understand material on a proper level. My favorite quote in Axler's linear algebra done right was that if you take less than an hour per page, your doing something wrong. I agree with him. Don't get me wrong, learning math is definitely worthwhile, but please don't think you can skim some books and gain profound insights without hard work.

How would you go about learning the most important thing that you have an eye on nowadays? Because if there are no important topics, yes, I would stop to ponder.

jyriand 6y ago

Few days back I stumbled upon a video about Ramanujan [0] and the: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ..(to infinity) = -1/12.(Turns out the proof in the video is incorrect or at least not concise enough, because you can't do that with divergent series). So that got me curious and I wanted to understand what's going on. How can 1 + 2 .. etc equal to -1/12 and not infinity. So I went on small binge watching videos to get an intuition and understanding about this. This led me to Riemann Hypothesis and Euler's identities and complex numbers etc. Now I have a list of books that I want to skim/read to get a historical context around these problems. I don't take any notes just yet, because I don't know what is important and what is not, I just jump into the stuff and hope that when I come out of the other end I will at least have a understanding why it equals -1/12. It's like panning out gold, there might be some gold nuggets. And maybe, just by pure chance, I come up with some ridiculous ideas how to disprove Riemann Hypothesis ;P (I think I have to revisit Gödel, Escher, Bach and Gödel's Incompletness Theorems to prove that it's not provable). - [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww EDIT: Sorry to all facepalming mathematicians who happen to read this comment.

ganafagol 6y ago
I'd recommend you study some real math for this. Popular science articles and books are great entertainment but are distinctly different from the real deal. You don't become a surgeon by watching Dr. House or a historian by watching the history channel. Don't expect to understand math by reading a wikipedia article. To really get it, you need to dive deep and get your hands dirty.
- sabas123 6y ago
  To add to this, people underestimate how long it might take understand material on a proper level. My favorite quote in Axler's linear algebra done right was that if you take less than an hour per page, your doing something wrong. I agree with him. Don't get me wrong, learning math is definitely worthwhile, but please don't think you can skim some books and gain profound insights without hard work.