Just save your time and read V. I. Arnolds "On teaching mathematics" instead: http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~m

Just save your time and read V. I. Arnolds "On teaching mathematics" instead: http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html He said everything I could possibly want to say as a reply here but probably better then I ever will be able to put it: It is only possible to understand the commutativity of multiplication by counting and re-counting soldiers by ranks and files or by calculating the area of a rectangle in the two ways. Any attempt to do without this interference by physics and reality into mathematics is sectarianism and isolationism which destroy the image of mathematics as a useful human activity in the eyes of all sensible people.