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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: 0s | 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. dfxm12 ◴[21 Nov 24 20:02 UTC] No.42208027[source]▶
This sounds like a book I needed for one of my early comp sci classes in college. It was called something like Think Like a Programmer: An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving. Maybe it was this, maybe it was something like this.

I mean to say, just applied scientific thinking is important. Even if you never get into pure math or computer programming, applying concepts like "variables", "functions" or "proofs" is universally useful.