3 ms·
From the brief description, this sounds to be quite basic. Looking forward to hearing if Terence has treated the explanations differently. :-)
by alok-g 8mo ago
From the brief description, this sounds to be quite basic. Looking forward to hearing if Terence has treated the explanations differently. :-)
- hirvi74 8mo ago> this sounds to be quite basic. It should be according to Tao's own comment at the bottom of the blog: "This book is for a general audience, without necessarily having a college-level math education. It is aimed more at adults than at children, but some children with an interest in mathematics may be able to get something of it."
- travisjungroth 8mo agoI just really liked that question and response.
- ngcc_hk 8mo agoBasic … that kind of word give me nightmare in my mind when you talked about maths … still remember a book called “elementary set theory” …
- ecshafer 8mo agoI remember a joke along the lines of "elementary" meaning that someone somewhere has solved it before.
- taneq 8mo ago"Any question in maths is either unsolved or obvious."
- esafak 8mo agoMy favorite example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Number_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Number_Theory
- kleiba 8mo ago"The word `basic’ in the title is closer in meaning to `foundational’ rather than `elementary’ [...]" (quoted from that same wikipedia page).
- vmilner 8mo ago"The title is the same as that of a very well-known book by Professor L. E. Dickson (with which ours has little in common). We proposed at one time to change it to 'An introduction to arithmetic', a more novel and in some ways a more appropriate title; but it was pointed out that this might lead to misunderstandings about the content of the book." G.H. Hardy and E. M. Wright "An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers"
- raegis 8mo agoThe one math majors joke about is Serra’s A Course in Arithmetic, which is definitely not for young children.