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Slightly unrelated: I have no formal math education beyond what was covered in my engineering degree program. I’ve been playing with the idea of picking up Bou
by dilippkumar 6y ago
Slightly unrelated: I have no formal math education beyond what was covered in my engineering degree program.
I’ve been playing with the idea of picking up Bourbaki’s books and working through them in order.
The goal is to learn math for its own sake - I don’t have any ambitions of turning into a mathematician in the future.
Is this a good idea? If anyone has done something similar, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
- heinrichf 6y agoCommenting as a mathematician who sometimes uses the Bourbaki books as reference for research: this is probably not a good idea. These books have a very dry style and in particular rarely contain detailed examples, motivation for definitions, or intuition for theorems. They are great for reference if you already know the subject, but if you want to learn something, you'd be better off using introductory textbooks for the various fields you're interested in. I'm happy to make recommendations, and you can also look up syllabi for math undergrad at Stanford, Princeton, etc.
- vyraj 6y agoIt's not a great idea, I would argue that those books have not aged well, if they were even good to begin with. I recall they did not even finish them. Also it depends very much on what exactly are you trying to learn, since mathematics is a gigantic field. If you have some topic I could point you to good resources.
- mam2 6y agoNo. Just use normal math books. If you are french i can recommend some.