/pt/ – Petrarchan

>>4105 I did some calculus in college, mostly reading directly from Newton and some Leibniz, but I'll confess to being quite poor at it. I'll check out those math history texts. I think it's interesting, but it probably won't provide the mental exercise I'm looking for, which is in the application and thinking about of math. For a second, I confused your Kline with another author, Jacob Klein. The latter wrote some interesting text and lectures on Greek mathematics and its relation to contemporary mathematical philosophy, which I 100% recommend if you're interested.

>>4135 This is very interesting, I had never heard of this group! How well will a novice do, just jumping in?

>>4138 Bourbaki's intended audience are not novices, but rather undergraduates, graduate students, and professors who are familiar with mathematical concepts.

>>4139 That's what I thought, was just curious about its accessibility. Maybe there's a Bourbaki for Dummies. I was always pretty decent at set theory though, compared to more algebraic mathematics. >>4141 It would be nice to have an in-person mathematics study group (I find online groups pretty abhorrent), but not many people are interested in doing that for fun. Myself included. There's a lot I would rather be doing lol. But some part of me thinks if I don't bother doing the areas of intellect I do not find attractive or easy, I'll wither away. Khan Academy is good, but it's pretty textbook. Good for studying for an examination. Not very interesting or stimulating though.

>>4141 It's not what you're looking for exactly but check out a collection of Martin Gardner's math puzzles.

>>4139 That's what I thought, was just curious about its accessibility. Maybe there's a Bourbaki for Dummies. I was always pretty decent at set theory though, compared to more algebraic mathematics. >>4141 It would be nice to have an in-person mathematics study group (I find online groups pretty abhorrent), but not many people are interested in doing that for fun. Myself included. There's a lot I would rather be doing lol. But some part of me thinks if I don't bother doing the areas of intellect I do not find attractive or easy, I'll wither away. Khan Academy is good, but it's pretty textbook. Good for studying for an examination. Not very interesting or stimulating though.

>>4141 I'd recommend competition math for that, in American high schools they have the AMC tests & they were always quite fun. You don't need any calculus for any of them, but it can help a bit sometimes This website has those problems & their solutions https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_Problems_and_Solutions It also has the math competitions past AMC, AIME and USAMO which are really tough (& draw from all parts of math) Similarly, you can also find Putnam exam for all of undergrad, and I think the MIT integration bee has some interesting problems, and there are obviously a million other math competitions you can find the old problems and solutions for I recommend actually setting a timer and then grading yourself at the end all at once if you're gonna work on a test that's within reach (probably AMC or AIME), otherwise I think it sometimes can be helpful to work through someone's answer to a hard problem and understand how all the results that it draws from work But I think that it can be a bit more helpful as a jumping off point for a more focused study of a subject, because I think a lot of the time competition math uses a lot of weird discombobulated math trivia, which comes naturally if you have the foundations, and seems very strange & impossible to remember if you don't I hope you find what you're looking for! ps someone offered an online linear algebra textbook, reminded me that I can vouch for paul's online math notes for calc 3, it's what we used in high school

>>4144 This guy seems good, for desiring a leisurely interest in math. Do you have any specific books or collections to recommend, or are they just a try one out kinda thing?

>>4145 I liked khanacademy well enough but I tried it out on two separate occasions--with years in between--and worked through K-6th/7th grade before fizzling out. Some of that could be due to my own scheduling/goal-setting/task-orientation whatever you want to call it. I get so hung-up in my head over sticking to a consistent schedule, or rather the minutia of building one. In my head, I am realistically imagining this as a many years longterm endeavor. But my hiccup is finding that Correct, Right pathway to go about things. Seems my best bet is to work out of a textbook and ask the internet questions. Is it weird that I've always been attracted to girls good with numbers because of my deficiency?

>>4146 I have 'Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles' and 'Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions.' The former is more approachable, the format being self contained puzzles with no prerequisite knowledge, each followed by a short but clearly written explanation of the answer. The latter has overall a higher level of difficulty and the puzzles themselves have more pre-amble and explanations of mathematical concepts. I think a lot of his stuff in book form is adapted from his long running newspaper column, so bite-sized pieces is the running theme.

>>4180 Ok, thanks for the titles. I'll try to find him at my local town library, or my college library. Are you a mathematically inclined person? Do you find him useful for exercising your mathematical knowledge?

>>4192 I would say I have pretty good mathematical aptitude but not really that much mathematical knowledge. For me, the puzzles are an interesting diversion but not a replacement for serious study. It sounds like you're somewhat torn between desire to improve your skills/understanding efficiently and a desire to find an angle that is as engaging as possible. Between the two poles, this is much closer to the approachable/engaging end than the efficient improvement end. I haven't taught myself math from books, but in other disciplines I find that self-study with a textbook can feel very different in nature than book study in a class. Have you already tried the most straightforward approach of picking a textbook and trying to work through it yourself?

>>4200 Yes, that is how I feel. No, I haven't just worked out of a textbook. Mainly because I am unsure where to start without a convenient curriculum and because I find textbooks a bit dreadful. Maybe I just have to pick somewhere? Or a topic I always found tedious or annoying.

>>4206 Some more ideas about where to start: (I don't claim particular expertise but maybe you'll see something you like) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTnEG_WGd2Q This math YouTuber suggests starting with Discrete Mathematics with Applications by Susanna Epp, and has a variety of other recommendations as well. No presumed pre-knowledge. https://exeter.edu/mathproblems/ These problem sets combine lateral thinking, ability to turn a word problem into an appropriate equation, and traditional calculation skills. I had a class in high school that used these problems heavily and found them engaging. Some pre-knowledge required. https://ocw.mit.edu/search/?d=Mathematics&s=department_course_numbers.sort_coursenum MIT's set of freely available course material for various college level math courses. MIT undergraduate courses are usually paced quite aggressively, but may still be accessible to you if you are enterprising. (Also look at https://mitxonline.mit.edu/) https://linear.axler.net/ An open access Linear Algebra textbook. Can't vouch for it, haven't read it. Don't know where to start? Could just pick a random discipline like linear algebra and hop in...

>>4209 These are some great resources, thank you!

>>4215 Setting a schedule / regular study hour or block without having an external motivation (i.e., grades) is also my problem. If that's what you mean. Even in school, studying was hard for me to bother doing, especially if it wasn't something like a worksheet. I've studied French for many years and am extremely poor at it, mainly because I cannot just sit down and run through memory cards or memorization without wanting to kneel over. The textbook does seem like the most straightforward and educational route. No, that doesn't seem that strange, I think. Do you find many women who are math geniuses?

>>4262 >>4295 It's admittedly been a few years, but I have already gone through all of Eculid's Elements. More recent geometry, like Lobachevsky, is also very interesting and worth a study. If you haven't, also look at Apollonius of Perga, who create propositions involving conic sections. They're quite interesting.

>>4262 >>4295 It's admittedly been a few years, but I have already gone through all of Eculid's Elements. More recent geometry, like Lobachevsky, is also very interesting and worth a study. If you haven't, also look at Apollonius of Perga, who create propositions involving conic sections. They're quite interesting.

>>4630 Curious about mathematics (not Western) -- can you elaborate? I promise not to be disrespectful.

>>4632 seconded

>>4632 Sure, ok. Hebrew. It's not my favort people or anything (Hebrews), BUT they're the only ones who have a working system for integrated "conventional (descriptive) speech" and arithmetic - and I'm big on not doubling work. So I want the same language for my groceries, as for operational syntax, and for denotational syntax, and this stuff "works" with just 22 letters without spaces - not Greek symbols, Latin variable names, a ton of punctuation, logic symbols and so on and so on and so on fuck you too many symbols, ASCII? I need LESS. (Although tbf at this point I have 27 letter symbols and about 12 punctuation marks and spaces that I do use... that's not the point, I can also write untyped Lambda Calculus in LATS syntax[a] and make do with that, but I can't make a useful shopping list with just the letters L A T and S.) That said it was a minefield to get into bc what's called "gematria" is a knockoff (both the Greek version and the pop-Jew mysticism woo-woo) and some other factors like terribly few "male role models" (e.g. non-clown public speakers/authors) and a lot of fakes (95+% of rabbis are shit), and you have to contend with a whole "new" people and deal with xtian (& izlamic) seething whenever you let on that you don't categorically hate kikes for everything. Or learn that local Jews know nothing even of Hebrew to the point that it can be more difficult to respect them... sometimes I reach a point where it's a relief to find a new Jewish comedian[b], because I need convincing that "all Jews aren't somber ignoramuses, all the time, about everything"... Back on topic: Basically it's all in the notation, grammar, syntax, spellings even... avoid 99% of everything called "kabbalah" like the plague, a good dictionary[gh] has more to learn in it than a shelf of zohar. That's the whole thing actually... like, "correct denotational syntax implies correct operational syntax" and vise-versa, very much so, in this domain. More specifically, it has combinatorics / permutation and base-1000 modular arithmetic pretty centrally or at least on the level I'm learning. E.g. the simple notation for the letter A and the value 1 is the same as for value 1000, e.g. 1001 = aa = b = 2; the value 1 has a name but it can also be pronounced as "a", "e", "i", "u", "o", "oa", "ay"... the value 2 as ba, bi, vu, voa etc.. It doubles as phonetic notation. And focusing is usually left implicit, so it's a system designed for *many possible calculations* where the focusing ("narrowing down the proof space") is explicitly the reader's responsibility... multiple correct answers, which are distinct (replaceable in the sense that you can put on different clothes, or choose different ingredients that do also end up constituting a dish). But there are many many incorrect answers too! Like all the ingrammatical ones lol, all the ones that are "not a statement of correct Hebrew grammar and syntax". Also it's a language for meditation... but what that means is meditative learning. So uhm. Meditative dictionary reading? That counts[+1]. There are some hints at Lambda Calculus being somewhat analogous to it, but I don't believe it really works to go in with that "angle", esp. not all the time... like in LC everything is a function, but in Hebrew everything is a verb and a noun and a value and a word and... so Lambda Calculus is a nice break, because it's more simplistic and light and more fit for instructing my computer to do stuff. [a] it's LAST but applicative order swapped & "S may only contain S or T", this makes it ergonomic and bijective with ULC + de Bruijn indices and without gay "muh DNA is ALSO four letters" spiel: https://xtao.org/last.html [b] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJI5AkvT_AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnDT0Su7JIw [gh] https://archive.org/details/le-nouveau-dictionnaire-dhebreu-avraham-even-shoshan-vol-1-a-6/page/n27/mode/2up