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"At school Feynman approached mathematics in a highly unconventional way. Basically he enjoyed recreational mathematics from which he derived a large amount of
by davidmathers 17y ago
"At school Feynman approached mathematics in a highly unconventional way. Basically he enjoyed recreational mathematics from which he derived a large amount of pleasure. He studied a lot of mathematics in his own time including trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, and complex numbers long before he met these topics in his formal education. Realizing the importance of mathematical notation, he invented his own notation for sin, cos, tan, f (x) etc. which he thought was much better than the standard notation. However, when a friend asked him to explain a piece of mathematics, he suddenly realized that notation could not be a personal matter since one needed it to communicate."
The story is either in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" or "What Do You Care What Other People Think?". I forget which stories are in which book. Both are great though.
- christopherolah 17y agoI thought my symbols were just as good, if not better, than the regular symbols -- it doesn't make any difference what symbols you use -- but I discovered later that it does make a difference. Once when I was explaining something to another kid in high school, without thinking I started to make these symbols, and he said, "What the hell are those?" I realized then that if I'm going to talk to anybody else, I'll have to use the standard symbols, so I eventually gave up my own symbols. -- Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman (http://www.gorgorat.com/ http://www.gorgorat.com/) That said, I'm inclined to say that at some point it makes sense to break backwards compatibility in favour of a better system.