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I just graduated high school, I always thought Math was amazingly interesting and I couldn't understand why I wasn't doing so good in school and why topics that
by enen 13y ago
I just graduated high school, I always thought Math was amazingly interesting and I couldn't understand why I wasn't doing so good in school and why topics that I thought would be very interesting appeared boring after the teacher told I had to learn some rules and apply them over and over again to get good grades (I'm oversimplifiyng but you get the idea). We were thought the 'what' and not the 'why'. I was in a computer science high school so we had subjects that you'd find in a CS curriculum in any university - EE, C, OOP and a bunch of other random stuff. So for example when it was time our math teacher had to tell us about sin and cosine the explanation was merely 'oh here's a bunch of ways to calculate your angles, remember them for the next exam'. It was in some other class (something related to EE) that the teacher went deeper and and explained all the magic behind it. I mean, seriously, the Wikipedia page has animations that make it easier to understand than my math books.
I always thought I was stupid for not having good math grades, I question the sharpness of my brain to this day.
Essays like this make me want to pick up Math again and this time learning it the proper (whatever that means) way... learn to think analytical and in terms of pattern making/matching etc etc... not even sure where to start though.
Sorry for my English.
- wfn 13y agoIf you're motivated / curious enough / have enough time, I recommend Spivak's Calculus as a way of learning calculus the, as you say, 'proper (whatever that means) way.' It's basically a treatment of calculus from the perspective of real analysis, having the 'no ad-hoc rule teaching' policy at its foundation. You prove things, build up a non-fragmented edifice slowly, and end up being introduced to analysis such that you can then pick up other things (it's a rather extensive treatment of calculus indeed.) Or so goes my narrative in the midst of frustrations regarding self-motivating to continue individually progressing through the book. :) The 3rd and maybe the 4th editions can be found online by doing an internet search for pdf/djvu files.
- enen 13y agoThanks. I'll definitely check it out.
- jfarmer 13y agoI majored in mathematics at the University of Chicago and Spivak's Calculus was my first-year calculus textbook. It confirmed what I had long believed: what I was being taught in high school wasn't really mathematics. The book might seem very alien at first, though.
- akuma73 13y agoCan anyone recommend a similar book for the theory of probability?
- eru 13y agoFor learning probability the hard way, I recommend you start with measure and integration theory. (Something like http://www.amazon.com/Probability-Measure-Theory-Second-Edition/dp/0120652021/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1377758073&sr=8-21&keywords=measure+integration+theory http://www.amazon.com/Probability-Measure-Theory-Second-Edit... might work.)