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I have recently got myself back into studying mathematics as a hobby. The last time I studied mathematics for a considerable length of time was 18 years ago! I
by susam 5y ago
I have recently got myself back into studying mathematics as a hobby. The last time I studied mathematics for a considerable length of time was 18 years ago! I picked analytic number theory as the topic for this new hobby. I did a Tell HN [1] too about it 6 months ago. Thanks to that post and the awesome HN community, we now have a book club around it that has been going consistently since then. In fact, incidentally I published a new blog post about it discussing the learning experience about half an hour ago. [2]
I talk about this book club here on HN often, so at the risk of repeating myself, I do want to mention on this thread that as a result of these ongoing book club meetings, I realized something interesting. I realized that studying and learning in a social setting like this ensures constant progress. The risk of discontinuing the learning activity due to other priorities of life becomes lower. No matter what, barring exceptional circumstances, I know that I need to sit with our book club for 40 minutes everyday and work through a few pages of the book together. I think that kind of consistency is very important while learning an abstract topic like this that we are learning purely for the joy of learning! Further, the insights that the book club members share with each other during the group study is a nice bonus!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26366464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26366464
[2] https://offbeat.cc/blog/our-trip-to-the-prime-number-theorem.html https://offbeat.cc/blog/our-trip-to-the-prime-number-theorem...
- AnotherGoodName 5y agoI'm doing the same thing with a different approach. I'm rubber duck debugging my learning by typing things out and going into lots of numerical examples with the help of Python. It's a very verbose way of learning but i can say i now truly understand Euler's theorem and Fermat's little theorem. I'm continuing this right now. The end goal will be to go deep on everything about RSA including the state of the art factorization algorithms. Current start documented here: https://rawcdn.githack.com/AReallyGoodName/RDM/5391c5a90fe39224ef0f1894b9893910765ff76f/hobby.xhtml https://rawcdn.githack.com/AReallyGoodName/RDM/5391c5a90fe39... Edit: All my formatting was messed up. I'll fix it when i finish, i'm sure it's not a mystery that the powers are meant to be superscripted though.
- FeistyOtter 5y agoCan you do rubber duck learning with any topic? I always wanted to learn Fourier transformations and related topics, but I completely forgot all high school and uni math, so I have to start from scratch and it seems like a huge commitement.
- AnotherGoodName 5y agoSure, just type what you need to know, an idea for how to look at it and start playing. The play part is how i get it. eg. Writing python code to generate exponents... Oh now i get why exponents loop under modulo!
- rramadass 5y agoI have just the book for you :-) Buy yourself a copy of; Who Is Fourier?: A Mathematical Adventure (any edition will do) and study it. Check reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. This is a great book written in Manga style which is highly approachable.
- vardhanw 5y agoI created /r/teamdo to enable something like this in general as I felt there is nothing existing. Perhaps there is but I am not aware. Unfortunately just creating a subreddit is not enough, there is hardly any traction.