enitharmon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
enitharmon) wrote2006-04-12 03:53 pm
enitharmon) wrote2006-04-12 03:53 pm
Entry tags:
Fun with Mathematics
I found this book
in the local library a couple of weeks ago and I took it home to read, largely because mathematics has been problematical for me all my life.
The book was fascinating, but it was also very frustrating. For one thing, while I don't doubt that Marcus du Sautoy is a very talented mathematician, he isn't much cop as a writer. He repeats himself endlessly and he doesn't pick up a metaphor without flogging it to death. For another thing, it was full of anecdote and name-dropping, but there didn't seem to be an awful lot of actual maths in it.
When I was in my last year at Junior School - what would now be called Year 6 - we had a test every Friday morning. Ten arithmetic problems, and if you got all ten right you got a star. I never got a single star all year. I got a 9 once, but only once I think.
In secondary school I floundered away at the back of the class, struggling where everybody else seemed to take it in their stride and becoming more and more convinced that I was retarded in this field. (There were some things that bowled me over, though, like matrices. For ages after I'd learned the trick for solving simultaneous linear equations by matrices I wouldn't do it any other way, but then matrices disappeared below the horizon after a brief taster in the third year, not to resurface until I was at Uni.) Somehow, however, I found myself doing maths for A-level (only because school and parents wanted me to do physics). At the start I made up my mind to ask when I was struggling. I remember Mrs Lacey's response when I first made up my mind to ask her to go through something again. She said "Everybody else understands it. I'm not going to waste the class's time going over it agaion just for you." So I never asked again.
The worst of it was anything that began "prove that..." or "show that..." I'd end up with pages and pages of scribble, each step in the reasoning perfectly reasonable yet never getting remotely close to the Quod that was to be Demonstrandum.
I got to uni to do physics, and then I was completely at sea. I could feel the contempt of my contemporaries who could it partial differential equations for breakfast and fled for the cover of the student newspaper office, where I spent most of my time. I passed my degree - just about - but I suspect only because of the essay question on every paper.
Anyway, spurred on by Dr de Sautoy, I bought a book of A-level Pure Maths (I always did better at Pure than Applied - I got 4% in my Applied Maths mock A-level paper!) and began to work through iot, systematically. I found two interesting things.
One: That I could do a lot of eat, even work out the trigonometric proofs, handle vectors, and my O-level nemesis, algebraic long division.
Two: That there's a lot of baggage in there, much of it associated with vector analysis. There's been no vector analysis in my Cambridge A-Level syllabus (I did combines, it was in the Separate Subjects but I wasn't clever enough for that)
I'd like to have ago, now, at understanding quantum mechanics. I can cope with the philosophy underlying it, but the maths has always seemed way beyong my read. But is it still possible?
Would anybody care to comment?
in the local library a couple of weeks ago and I took it home to read, largely because mathematics has been problematical for me all my life.
The book was fascinating, but it was also very frustrating. For one thing, while I don't doubt that Marcus du Sautoy is a very talented mathematician, he isn't much cop as a writer. He repeats himself endlessly and he doesn't pick up a metaphor without flogging it to death. For another thing, it was full of anecdote and name-dropping, but there didn't seem to be an awful lot of actual maths in it.
When I was in my last year at Junior School - what would now be called Year 6 - we had a test every Friday morning. Ten arithmetic problems, and if you got all ten right you got a star. I never got a single star all year. I got a 9 once, but only once I think.
In secondary school I floundered away at the back of the class, struggling where everybody else seemed to take it in their stride and becoming more and more convinced that I was retarded in this field. (There were some things that bowled me over, though, like matrices. For ages after I'd learned the trick for solving simultaneous linear equations by matrices I wouldn't do it any other way, but then matrices disappeared below the horizon after a brief taster in the third year, not to resurface until I was at Uni.) Somehow, however, I found myself doing maths for A-level (only because school and parents wanted me to do physics). At the start I made up my mind to ask when I was struggling. I remember Mrs Lacey's response when I first made up my mind to ask her to go through something again. She said "Everybody else understands it. I'm not going to waste the class's time going over it agaion just for you." So I never asked again.
The worst of it was anything that began "prove that..." or "show that..." I'd end up with pages and pages of scribble, each step in the reasoning perfectly reasonable yet never getting remotely close to the Quod that was to be Demonstrandum.
I got to uni to do physics, and then I was completely at sea. I could feel the contempt of my contemporaries who could it partial differential equations for breakfast and fled for the cover of the student newspaper office, where I spent most of my time. I passed my degree - just about - but I suspect only because of the essay question on every paper.
Anyway, spurred on by Dr de Sautoy, I bought a book of A-level Pure Maths (I always did better at Pure than Applied - I got 4% in my Applied Maths mock A-level paper!) and began to work through iot, systematically. I found two interesting things.
One: That I could do a lot of eat, even work out the trigonometric proofs, handle vectors, and my O-level nemesis, algebraic long division.
Two: That there's a lot of baggage in there, much of it associated with vector analysis. There's been no vector analysis in my Cambridge A-Level syllabus (I did combines, it was in the Separate Subjects but I wasn't clever enough for that)
I'd like to have ago, now, at understanding quantum mechanics. I can cope with the philosophy underlying it, but the maths has always seemed way beyong my read. But is it still possible?
Would anybody care to comment?
no subject
One of the reasons I did science at School/Uni was that I knew I could pick up arts/humanities much more easily when I was older, whereas there is a real dearth of stuff regarding maths and science for the returning learner/enthusiastic amateur. I've not seen anything since to disprove my adolescent theory :o/
no subject
I found the OU materials very easy to use, and there's always a tutor available to contact if you need further help.
I'd love to get to teach maths one day.