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

(www.quantamagazine.org)
669 points sonabinu | 3 comments | 21 Nov 24 01:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.632s | source
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mbbbackus ◴[21 Nov 24 15:21 UTC] No.42205153[source]▶
I've been reading the author's book, Mathematica, and it's awesome. The title of this post doesn't do it justice.

He shows that math skill is almost more like a sports talent than it is knowledge talent. He claims this based on the way people have to learn how to manipulate different math objects in their heads, whether treating them as rotated shapes, slot machines, or origami. It's like an imagination sport.

Also, he inspired me to relearn a lot of fundamental math on MathAcademy.com which has been super fun and stressful. I feel like I have the tetris effect but with polynomials now.

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1. chankstein38 ◴[21 Nov 24 19:28 UTC] No.42207727[source]▶
Would you say the book ventures more into the practical side of learning this stuff or is it closer to the tone of this article? I found this article hard to gain anything from. A lot of just motivational cliche statements and nothing really groundbreaking or mind altering. If the book is better at that, I'd love to read it. If it's stories and a lot of fluff, I'd rather skip. So I'm curious what you are getting from it and how practical and applicable it feels to you?
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2. jolt42 ◴[21 Nov 24 19:55 UTC] No.42207952[source]▶
Agree. The article turned me off as well. No specific example, felt like an ad.
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3. burnte ◴[21 Nov 24 20:35 UTC] No.42208359[source]▶
Yeah, I quit reading it because it didn't talk about the book, it felt like a meta article.