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

[Karl Ekdahl]

I fully agree with Tom, i suck at maths and remember nothing past 
derivatives, much because it was never explained to me in a good way. If anyone has an online source for learning the basic "grammar" of math 
that actually explains it in human relatable terms i'd love to read it.

My story is pretty much that school ruined maths for me, i always failed 
every math class while at the same time doing much higher math on my 
spare time through programming. I was working with sin/cos based 2d 
& 3d rotational math from age 12 and figured out how derivatives & interpolation 
worked on my own about a year later (programming line functions in 
assembler). School didn't only fail to put math into a relatable context (making it insanely boring despite it being pretty much all i did after school) but even discouraged me from using the knowledge i had. Trying at age 16 to actually embrace maths in school i was told by my math teacher that my understanding was "wrong" even though i applied my knowledge every day at home, knowing my teacher only had a shallow theoretical 
understanding of the concepts (if you don't recite exactly what's said 
in the books it must be wrong right?). I started spending my time 
skipping class going down to the river drinking vodka with my friends 
instead, that at least taught me some social concepts :)

Karl


----- Ursprungligt meddelande ----
Från: Tom Wiltshire <tom at electricdruid.net>
Till: David G Dixon <dixon at mail.ubc.ca>
Kopia: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
Skickat: onsdag, 11 april 2012 5:06
Ämne: [sdiy] OT ( was Re:  Waveform analysis into non-sine components)


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

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