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Bigup DJ
Nov 8, 2012

Xyven posted:

You're probably thinking of A Mathematician's Lament. There are some problems with the article, particularly in how it over-romanticises the subject, but the overall point it makes is good.

I'm really curious how that's a problem. Could you talk more about it?

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Bigup DJ
Nov 8, 2012

ikanreed posted:

I feel like everyone who "gets" math goes through this thought process when they're exposed to other students who "don't". You see people with a half-page of formulas scrawled on notes. You can tell that their plan (to get a good grade) is to go back over that list of formulas and commit as much to memory as possible.

People would be baffled that I'd take no notes, take no "cheat sheets" to tests, and score better than them. I was baffled too, until you start seeing those formulas as what they are: a crutch. A replacement for the natural and true form of mathematics wherein you connect one concept to another by a series of relationships.

The "quadratic formula" has no place in a society with computers, but learning or inferring that a quadratic equation produces two roots because it crosses the x axis twice, and that those roots get closer together as the parabola gets "tighter" and further apart as it gets "lower", and seeing the magic of how those two factors come out of the equation. That is an understanding that can't be broken by a flawed human memory. And can be applied without having hard numbers.

And you can see that relationship in all sorts of things that happen if you start looking. But as a set formula, it's nothing. It's meaningless. And has to be memorized by rote, and fails at being especially useful even for that.

Oh yeah I agree completely! I'm asking what the problem is with it "over-romanticising" the subject, and more importantly how he came to that conclusion in the first place. He was using it as a pejorative and I'm curious why.

Edit: For the record though I don't agree that it over-romanticises maths, or that there is such a thing as over-romanticisation unless it's papering over something which has the potential to do serious harm to people.

Bigup DJ fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Jul 26, 2014

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