←back to thread

Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

(www.quantamagazine.org)
669 points sonabinu | 1 comments | 21 Nov 24 01:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
Show context
sureglymop ◴[21 Nov 24 11:14 UTC] No.42203121[source]▶
I think for most people the issue is that they never even get to the fun stuff. I remember not really liking math right until university where we had set theory in the first semester, defined the number sets from scratch went on to monoids, groups, rings etc. That "starting from scratch" and defining everything was extremely satisfying!
replies(5): >>42203172 #>>42203330 #>>42203662 #>>42204872 #>>42205203 #
1. yodsanklai ◴[21 Nov 24 11:23 UTC] No.42203172[source]▶
totally agree! in high school, lots of things were vaguely defined. I remember, I didn't fully understand what "f o g" was until I was given the definition of a monoid. Also limits and derivations, once you get the proper definition, you can pretty easily derive all the formulas and theorems you use in high school. Also in high school, we mostly did calculations and simple deductions, but at university we were proving everything. Nice change of perspective.