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I always really liked math in school, cause it was just logic and that appeals to my lazy side. I was good at it too. The last 2 years of high school, however,
by peterjancelis 12y ago
I always really liked math in school, cause it was just logic and that appeals to my lazy side. I was good at it too.
The last 2 years of high school, however, I had picked the 8 hour math options (25% of total course time) and the fun was quickly beaten out of it by having to learn formal ways to write a proof. Saying the same thing in plain language was 'invalid'.
From that point on math felt more like learning a foreign language than about doing logic.
- ww2 12y agoThat is correct. Math is a language more than 'logic'/patterns'/ and any other metaphors.
- axm 12y agoMath is a formalism of everyday logical reasoning. It's the difference between a formal language and English. Learning rigorous mathematics is frustrating at first because the veracity of a statement can seem intuitively obvious but difficult to prove. However it is a key stepping stone to modern mathematics and will considerably sharpen your intuition after you've gone through the process.
- eli_gottlieb 12y agoThat's because your brain implements a weakly truth-preserving plausibility logic, whereas real mathematics makes use of strongly truth-preserving formal logic.