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The first day at University, my Maths Professor told us: "We will asssume you never knew about Maths and we will start fron the beginning". We defined what a n
by davido 18y ago
The first day at University, my Maths Professor told us: "We will asssume you never knew about Maths and we will start fron the beginning".
We defined what a number is, what addition is ... and from theorem to theorem we reached some very high and complex domains in Maths a few years later.
The process of understanding each step, each demonstration and ultimatly each concept - starting from scratch - made few students among the group Maths masters.
- yters 18y agoThat is really neat. I've never had that experience, and I definitely envy you.
- cool-RR 18y agoYou can just attend calculus 101 when the next semester opens, in any university.
- rsheridan6 18y agoThey didn't do that in my calc 101 class. Maybe at Princeton or something.
- ars 18y agoYou mean audit a class? Not sure why you got downmodded, as far as I know you most universities allow people to audit as much as they want. Edit: Never mind, you go the downmod for saying calc 101 - it's certainly not a 101 class.
- wensing 18y agoNot 101 (technically it was labeled 161), but at the Univ. of Chicago (where I went), Spivak was the first Calc class on the honors track--i.e. the honors variant of 101. And that course did exactly what he's talking about.
- cool-RR 18y agoIn the two universities I attended, the Technion and HUJI, it was as I described. In fact, I did not know there existed such a thing as a first-year calculus course that doesn't include defining "number" and "addition" from the ground up. So maybe not just any university, sorry.
- andreyf 18y agoStart here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory#Basic_concepts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory#Basic_concepts
- wensing 18y agoSounds a bit like Spivak to me. http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098896 http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098896
- mooneater 18y agowhich university was that?
- gaius 18y agoSounds like my first lecture in Fluid Dynamics. 2 hours later, we all agreed that yes, fluids flow :-) It's very important before undertaking advanced study to know not only how to do something (which is just cranking through the machinery by rote) but why it works and what that implies.
- tdavis 18y agoThat sounds amazing. On my first day of Calculus, the Professor began by assuming we already knew Calculus because he was retiring after the Semester and had pretty much lost the will to teach. He ended up using the word "obviously" a lot and I dropped the class a couple weeks in.