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

[Scott Gravenhorst]

Karl Ekdahl <elektrodwarf at yahoo.se> wrote:
>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. 
>
[...]

+1 here.  There is definately a divide between theoretical mathematics and applied mathematics
(assuming I'm using the term "applied" correctly).  Many math teachers come from the
theoretical standpoint because (I assume) that is what they find interesting.  Good for them,
but I had an experience similar to Karl's doing much of my "real" math learning on my own.  In
one case, I developed an algorithm for a single pole lowpass IIR filter on my own that turned
out to be exactly the one I read about years later.  To theorists, all the pretty symbols are
just amazing, but so much of that turns out to be implemented as rather simple sequences of
repeated adds and multiplies.  My math weakness almost put me off buying my first FPGA
development board thinking I might never be able to code a synthesizer or comprehend
principles of DSP...  Hah!  Now, it's a challenge to which I regularly look forward.

So I +1 the notion of math explained by humans for humans.  A picture is truly worth a
thousand words (or a thousand pretty math squiggles).

This statement quite bothered me:  "Either gain the necessary fluency, or stop trying to read
the language." because it didn't consider the possibility of failed teaching.  Math for the
sake of mathematicians is fine - for mathematicians.  But if they (math teachers) expect
people of a wide variety of talents and experiences to understand math as a useful tool, then
perhaps it behooves them to teach it that way.

-- ScottG
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-- Scott Gravenhorst
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