> Authors (actually publishers) use that chapter to list the skills you should have to keep up with the book contents. More often than not, it’s misleading, dow

> Authors (actually publishers) use that chapter to list the skills you should have to keep up with the book contents. More often than not, it’s misleading, downplays the expertise you need to have, and it sets the bar unrealistically low. Opposite is often true for math textbooks. The authors of such texts overhedge unnecessarily, imo. Open a textbook on, say, differential geometry. The prerequisite are: at least one course of real analysis, facility with linear algebra, knowledge of general topology, some familiarity with complex analysis, bla bla bla. If you are anything like me, upon learning about these prereqs you run off to learn all the ins and outs of nets and filters in topology and end up having studied and finished a textbook on functional analysis. When in reality all that was required for profitable reading of the original textbook on diff. geometry was ability to multiply two matrices together and not up and run in fear when coming across a phrase like "...by compactness argument".