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I learned this technique while reviewing high school math to take the GRE, and really enjoyed it. I find it elegant and easier to derive than the usual formula
by coyotespike 5y ago
I learned this technique while reviewing high school math to take the GRE, and really enjoyed it. I find it elegant and easier to derive than the usual formula - I prefer not to memorize equations. And with just a little practice, it was easy to work through manually on my whiteboard (no scratch paper allowed).
Of course it is not some big discovery in fundamental knowledge - but it is a helpful pedagogical advance and I am happy Po-Shen Loh has advertised it.
- bee_rider 5y agoI have absolutely horrible memory, which I hold has served me fairly well academically. The need to occasionally re-derive basic formulae serves as a nice refresher -- at least in engineering (probably the weight of redoing everything would get too heavy if I'd ended up as a mathematician). Remembering too many rules makes math feel arcane. I tutored math for a bit, and as far as I can tell the quadratic formula serves as significant marker along the path of math as an exercise in just remembering things, unfortunately.