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from the how-to-learn-mathematical-thinking dept.
Technology Review is running an unusual book review -- books about learning math, pure math, not applied math, https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/24/1071371/book-reviews-math-education/
The author admits to being adrift,
As a graduate student in physics, I have seen the work that goes into conducting delicate experiments, but the daily grind of mathematical discovery is a ritual altogether foreign to me. And this feeling is only reinforced by popular books on math, which often take the tone of a pastor dispensing sermons to the faithful.
An initial attempt led to a MasterClass by a "living legend of contemporary math", but the master is seated in a white armchair with no blackboards, pens or paper and does not enlighten.
A side story covers a writer for the New Yorker who plans a year to go back and learn the high school algebra/geometry/calculus that escaped him, but mostly fails. For backup he has a niece who is a math professor...but after months without getting it, he complains. Her answer?
"For a moment, think of it as a monastic discipline. You have to take on faith what I tell you." Where his niece and others see patterns and order, he perceives only "incoherence, obfuscation, and chaos"; he feels like a monk who sees lesser angels than everybody around him.
I won't spoil the end, but the author does make some progress with books by mathematician and concert pianist Eugenia Cheng, starting with "Cakes, Custard and Category Theory", where each chapter starts with an analogy to baking.
Unfortunately, for the SN audience, the article does not include any car analogies...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 11 2023, @10:36PM (3 children)
>That's the curse of schools: what they teach is godawful, boring, nasty and stressful.
Doesn't have to be. I've had both kinds of teachers / professors. Mostly like you describe, but also the occasional gem who shows the beauty and makes you want to learn the fundamentals underpinning it. Some have it easy with the subject matter, like Marine Biology, but I've seen it done for math (differential equations, in particular) too.
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(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday June 11 2023, @11:51PM
It doesn't have to be, but we're too cheap to pay for teachers that have the necessary knowledge to even attempt that. So often they're teaching stuff that is just below their highest level of education and not thinking too deeply about it because there's a ton of things that they're expected to to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2023, @12:49AM (1 child)
I think by the time you get to grad school, the lessons are more about whether the prof even knows his subject or is bullshitting and/or getting a psychological kick out of crushing your soul. All the faculty seem to do is namedrop about social connections and how it's all about "soft skills", while being 95% useless at hard skills. I think at some point in the last 20 years the part where a researcher actually had to become expert got skipped in favor of wearing a suit and switching their language to contracts and deliverables.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 12 2023, @03:10AM
Don't forget to marry money, the real rock PhDs I know married money then attempted to prove their worthiness through some entrepreneurial venture. The ventures were a crap shoot, but the inlaw inheritance worked every time.
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