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> > Surely you must realize that you're protesting this because it has this reputation, though? > > I've never heard anyone make this accusation until I read it

> > Surely you must realize that you're protesting this because it has this reputation, though? > > I've never heard anyone make this accusation until I read it here on HN today. The reputation doesn't seem to be widespread. blinks really? It's kind of a famous thing. Teachers are taught how to cope with math phobia; other subjects (with the exception of dissection) generally do not create this effect. . > How to better teach math is like one of the most studied topics in education since it is so extremely Unsuccessful Many other disciplines are equally important and don't have the desperation for repair that math does It's so bad that it's gotten into popular music a dozen times; you can easily point to Tom Lehrer, Weird Al, even 2 Chainz for broaching the topic . > People learn programming faster since programming is simply easier Keep telling yourself that Remember who's cracking things like four coloring. . > There hasn't, way more effort has been put into making math easy and the math we have is the results of all that work. You seem not to be results focused. . > Nobody pushes back on writing simple reference manuals. The person I was responding to was. Three different people have with me in this thread alone. Notice that you've changed the topic to "reference manuals," which 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 Ostensibly this is the part at which you launch into an explanation about how a simple cheat sheet that says things like " || usually means absolute value or magnitude" somehow isn't possible, even though it totally is Next you'll explain how simple summary symbols like that are somehow harder than Haskell, which was able to produce a cheat sheet just fine In reality, mathematicians just don't have the faintest clue how difficult other fields are, and are too busy patting themselves on the backs for their challenging intellects to realize that their work is under-used due to their inability to produce legends and keys . > Yet still people fail to understand it. You're not producing what's being requested, then you're surprised that what you're actually producing isn't working. . > trying to find shortcuts, trying to do anything at all. All that's being requested is a two page operator cheat sheet. If you'd stop wisely pontificating and just try it, you'd find it's really quite straightforward. I produced one for my students. It's just that my own education in mathematics only goes so far. 𝗜𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁 You are doing the refusing you insist nobody's doing, right now . > You are simply ignorant thinking that there are some quick fix super easy to implement things Not really, no. I've succeeded at this. You are protesting against things that were not requested. Nobody asked for any "quick fixes." Nobody asked for any "magical make understand." These are things you said, not things I said. I said something very simple and very practical. Something that very much can be done. I want a two page PDF which puts operators next to their names, so the load on my memory is lower. Every time I ask that, some math fan goes on forever about how things I never asked for aren't possible, and ties that up with personal attacks. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗴𝘂𝘆𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻'𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗱𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Please keep the insults to yourself. Thanks. . > It is possible that math education could get improved Please stop trying to solve every problem. Nobody asked you to take on that Herculean task. What was actually requested was a simple two page PDF. That's a thing that a single person can do in an hour (well, maybe as a webpage, making an actual PDF is a hassle.) The constant attempt to change the topic to some greater thing blinds you to how easy fixing this actually is. The statisticians can do it: http://web.mit.edu/~csvoss/Public/usabo/stats_handout.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~csvoss/Public/usabo/stats_handout.pdf This isn't far off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbo... Seriously, nobody is saying "solve math education for all people." For `|x|` it would just say "absolute value, magnitude, length, or cardinality." It's a quick reference chart for people who already know the material but haven't actively used it for ten years, and to help know what to google for the rare cases where you don't. It doesn't teach anything. This shouldn't be a big deal, and people keep asking for it because it would *really* help

klibertp 5y ago
> What was actually requested was a simple two page PDF. But this is impossible, because, as I learned today, "math is a small field without money for things like this". Thanks to my discussion here I was able to shift my perspective. Instead of thinking about an abstract thing, like "improving readability of math papers to non-mathematicians", I understood that I have to focus on people! In other words, on a bunch of guys frustrated that other STEM guys earn multiples of what they earn, even though their fields are so much "easier". Why would they help those various others use their work? They worked so hard to create the papers, living in a (shared with a philosopher) one bedroom apartment, writing their revolutionary insights on tissues stolen from McDonalds with a piece of charcoal - while those others can afford to buy computers (and even paper) easily, even though they don't work as hard as mathematicians at all! It's just so unfair, and of course it's not like mathematicians are jealous or anything (not at all! really! honest!), it's just genuinely so much "harder" to do math, that most of those others won't be able to understand no matter what! Even if they actually listened to the masses and did as requested, the mathematicians already know that it would be useless, so there's no point in trying. Also, this is obvious, but worth noting: saying that most people are simply too dumb to ever understand the intricacies of math is not a prejudiced bias, ok, that's simply a conclusion of centuries of research into math education! I honestly stopped expecting they'll do anything sensible ever, unless they really have no other choice. You might win against some people, but you won't ever defeat human nature.
- Jensson 5y ago
  The fact that the teaching material is so horrible is probably the biggest reason learning programming is so easy, because if the teaching material would be any good then the CS grads would actually know difficult things and it would be harder for me to compete. But as is it is trivial to learn what they did, because they don't learn much. For programming it didn't take me long to learn programming well enough to get into Google and work on services with a million QPS or distributed machine learning training, because programming is really really simple. Not because you are good at teaching, no, I just sat and learned on my own just writing programs, all program tutorials and helps were horrible. > But this is impossible, because, as I learned today, "math is a small field without money for things like this". Of course it isn't impossible, that was never the problem here. Mathematicians have written plenty of such cheat sheets, you can find them everywhere just by Googling. Here is one for physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_physics_notations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_physics_notatio... Here is one for math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbo... Can you please understand that you are complaining that nobody created something that many many people have created many times over? I found those by googling "physics notation" and "math notation". Was that really too hard for you? If you want a cheat sheet specific for CS related papers, then that cheat sheet has to be written by someone with a CS background since a mathematician wont know what is useful to you, and neither will he know what quirky notation CS people use in their own papers since every domain of math has its own quirks. What you are doing here is the equivalent of a guy wanting to learn python, and then going to the C++ comitee and complaining that no language is well documented online, and even when the C++ committee nicely shows you that in fact there is documentation of python online you still complain and say that nobody cares about your woes because that python documentation was in fact not easy enough for you to read!

klibertp 5y ago

> What was actually requested was a simple two page PDF. But this is impossible, because, as I learned today, "math is a small field without money for things like this". Thanks to my discussion here I was able to shift my perspective. Instead of thinking about an abstract thing, like "improving readability of math papers to non-mathematicians", I understood that I have to focus on people! In other words, on a bunch of guys frustrated that other STEM guys earn multiples of what they earn, even though their fields are so much "easier". Why would they help those various others use their work? They worked so hard to create the papers, living in a (shared with a philosopher) one bedroom apartment, writing their revolutionary insights on tissues stolen from McDonalds with a piece of charcoal - while those others can afford to buy computers (and even paper) easily, even though they don't work as hard as mathematicians at all! It's just so unfair, and of course it's not like mathematicians are jealous or anything (not at all! really! honest!), it's just genuinely so much "harder" to do math, that most of those others won't be able to understand no matter what! Even if they actually listened to the masses and did as requested, the mathematicians already know that it would be useless, so there's no point in trying. Also, this is obvious, but worth noting: saying that most people are simply too dumb to ever understand the intricacies of math is not a prejudiced bias, ok, that's simply a conclusion of centuries of research into math education! I honestly stopped expecting they'll do anything sensible ever, unless they really have no other choice. You might win against some people, but you won't ever defeat human nature.

Jensson 5y ago
The fact that the teaching material is so horrible is probably the biggest reason learning programming is so easy, because if the teaching material would be any good then the CS grads would actually know difficult things and it would be harder for me to compete. But as is it is trivial to learn what they did, because they don't learn much. For programming it didn't take me long to learn programming well enough to get into Google and work on services with a million QPS or distributed machine learning training, because programming is really really simple. Not because you are good at teaching, no, I just sat and learned on my own just writing programs, all program tutorials and helps were horrible. > But this is impossible, because, as I learned today, "math is a small field without money for things like this". Of course it isn't impossible, that was never the problem here. Mathematicians have written plenty of such cheat sheets, you can find them everywhere just by Googling. Here is one for physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_physics_notations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_physics_notatio... Here is one for math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbo... Can you please understand that you are complaining that nobody created something that many many people have created many times over? I found those by googling "physics notation" and "math notation". Was that really too hard for you? If you want a cheat sheet specific for CS related papers, then that cheat sheet has to be written by someone with a CS background since a mathematician wont know what is useful to you, and neither will he know what quirky notation CS people use in their own papers since every domain of math has its own quirks. What you are doing here is the equivalent of a guy wanting to learn python, and then going to the C++ comitee and complaining that no language is well documented online, and even when the C++ committee nicely shows you that in fact there is documentation of python online you still complain and say that nobody cares about your woes because that python documentation was in fact not easy enough for you to read!