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Sure, here's a fun one ! https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/ https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/ (I'd even replace Strang's "linear algebra" recommendation

Sure, here's a fun one ! https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/ https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/ (I'd even replace Strang's "linear algebra" recommendation with this book.) Imo, proofs are useful in so far as they are enlightening (e.g., the proof that a problem has a minimum is often useful in so far as it tells you how to solve it!) but in many cases they are less so. Math is pretty fun, though, proofs and all, and I'd recommend trying your hand at it as a cool little side hobby! It can often help with "clarity of thought" :) (In many cases, proofs are just one or two lines that tell you something interesting, too, not page-long arguments that are mostly definitions chasing.)

brimble 5y ago
> Math is pretty fun, though, proofs and all, and I'd recommend trying your hand at it as a cool little side hobby! It can often help with "clarity of thought" :) (In many cases, proofs are just one or two lines that tell you something interesting, too, not page-long arguments that are mostly definitions chasing.) I find proofs and identities very hard to read. I assume it's a bit what having dyslexia feels like. I have to turn them, glyph by glyph, into something more algorithmic to make any sense of them. The only math-for-fun I've ever enjoyed are simple recreational math puzzles—proofs, reading or writing, are torture. I actually enjoyed the parts of math classes that mathematicians insist are bad and are the reason kids don't like math—the parts heavy on memorization and drilling the application of an algorithm—far more than anything that came later. Perhaps not coincidentally, those have also proven to be by far the best bang-for-the-buck of all my time spent in math classes over the years. I use that stuff every day.