[sdiy] OT ( was Re: Waveform analysis into non-sine components)

[Tom Wiltshire]

On 10 Apr 2012, at 22:44, David G Dixon wrote:

> What are "academic maths" and how are they different from "maths"?

"Academic maths" is maths intended for an academic audience of other mathematcians for the purposes of furthering the careers of one or more of those mathematicians. "Maths" is a language used for expressing problems widely used by the public at large. 

> That's like saying that "hideous pages of french are really only intended
> for francophones and don't serve to teach the rest of us anything much"
> ...well, yeah.  

Yeah, that's true, isn't it? Giving someone who wants to learn French a copy of Victor Hugo's collected works and telling them to get on with it isn't a productive teaching strategy.

> Math(s) is(are) a language, and, like any other language,
> one must have a certain fluency before anything written in that language
> makes sense.  Either gain the necessary fluency, or stop trying to read the
> language.

Gaining the fluency is what I'm trying to do, but it would help if key concepts were explained in a language *other* than maths until that fluency is gained - just like learning any other language.

As Magnus said, my objection is that things often seem to be presented to make things more complicated rather than simpler - "There is still a lot to do on the presentation". Quite.

Tom