Just dusted off my old maths books
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How long have you held onto your wife?
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Have you told your wife that you are comparing her to a bunch of old books?
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other. Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Have you told your wife that you are comparing her to a bunch of old books?
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other. Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
Well, it's better'n a bunch of old bags, innit?
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
I needed a FFT implementation for an AI audio project a few years ago. Thinking I could do it from the math got me into my old books. Clapping the first book closed, I sneezed away the dust, and was cured in a hot minute. CP articles and 3rd party libs are not for the lazy, they're for the pragmatic.
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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Just curious, why would you hold onto those books for so long?
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other. Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
ZurdoDev wrote:
Just curious, why would you hold onto those books for so long?
Have you taken a look to the new books? I did (helping out the son of a friend). And there are very, very few that are better than mine back then.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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ZurdoDev wrote:
Just curious, why would you hold onto those books for so long?
Have you taken a look to the new books? I did (helping out the son of a friend). And there are very, very few that are better than mine back then.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
Nelek wrote:
Have you taken a look to the new books?
No.
Nelek wrote:
very few that are better than mine back then.
But are you ever going to read your old text books?
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other. Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
I assume I still have mine on a shelf somewhere. For me, it is the Anatomy and Physiology books and history books. I find the aches and pains drive me to reinvestigate the names of the muscles that hurt or the battles referenced by politicians in their rambling speeches. When I do pull out a math book, it is driven by the need to calculate the amount of seed needed to seed a lawn or the geometry to calculate the height of a tree.
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
I would be in the same place, but had a girlfriend and then my kids who needed help with Calculus, so it's not so dusty. My bugaboo is Quantum Mechanics and Gravitation. I just got a book on Quantum Computing to help me get back into it.
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
I've had similar experiences with calculus and digital control theory. I stumbled onto a library book that is a good alternative to my college books Barron's E-Z Calculus. It's based on a somewhat juvenile story, but it does the job. Having plenty of college calculus in my distant past, this was a great refresher, and I'm sure I learned things I never really understood the first time around. It's an enjoyable approach to getting back up to speed. I've since downloaded a digital version of the book which is a great goto when riding on a plan (when we get to do that again). Good luck.
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
I recommend going back until you get to the easier stuff. Remember that "Algebra" was created to simplify calculus (By standardizing many rules/approaches/etc). By the time I finished Calc 4... My Algebra was pretty IMPRESSIVE. I minored in math, so I kept going. (My last math class: "Concentric Geometries in Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Spaces" is WELL beyond me today, and was a bit of struggle). Also, bear in mind that we TEACH Calculus at roughly the same speed as it was DEVELOPED. Kinda insane, but not really when you think about it. University was a Floating IQ Test. Since in the USA, businesses were NOT ALLOWED to test IQs to do their hiring. They used Universities as a proxy. In the end, what you learned was NOT as important as what you chose and how you did when you applied yourself. Interviewers then look for nuances, like how you handle failure, etc. To avoid getting the super-geeky cry babies that don't play well with others (while other companies, like TI, would lap some of those up for fun, LOL).
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
"The slope of a curve" haunts me to this day. My book: Forgotten Calculus. I now just watch my dog lean into curves while we're driving.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
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I'm teaching a friend's high-school age kid software engineering. This week we're going to study sorting: bubble, binary insertion, quick and merge. Bubble is trivial, but I'm dreading the others. What's worse, he's very bright and thinks I know what I'm talking about. :sigh: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
You're so screwed :D
cheers Chris Maunder
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Just curious, why would you hold onto those books for so long?
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other. Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
Those books are like old, old friends. I had some of the best and worst times with those books.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Those books are like old, old friends. I had some of the best and worst times with those books.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Those books are like old, old friends
My question still stands. Why hold onto them? :-D
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other. Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it. Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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This is something that I've been doing in my retirement. What I do is come up with a personal set of notes for any subject, with the complete derivation & proofs of applicability. I have substantially finished notes for Algebra (i.e., regular Algebra, not Abstract Algebra), Linear Algebra, Trigonometry, Analytic Geometry, Geometric Optics & Special Relativity. I happen to be in the middle of Calculus, and to give an idea of how thorough my notes are, I've derived every integral formula that one would find on the inside cover of a Calculus book :omg: :omg: and have even gone through the epsilon-delta proofs :omg: needed to be able to prove that a certain function is continuous (a necessary condition for calculus to work). I delved into Linear Algebra quite deep, proving that all the stuff that was simply lectured as fact in the typical "Differential Equations & Linear Algebra" course for non-mathematicians, like why the determinant of the product of a pair of matrices is the product of the determinants of those matrices (something that simply wowed me when I learned it) and similarly about rank (and how to determine it) and finally about null space and how it really ties into the eigenvalue problem, and also why & when a matrix can even be diagonalized via eigenvalues, and finally why the mechanical vibration problem works having a pair of matrices instead of just a single one. I studied Mechanical Engineering, and so there is plenty of stuff to review (i.e., at least the advanced "basic physics" engineering science material), etc. For regular Algebra I was able to grok how Lagrangian resolvents can be used to get formulae for the cubic & quartic polynomials - including an extraordinarily geeky delving into those formulae. :wtf: I even derived the method of partial fractions, which is used in Calculus, and why it works. Last but not least, I've even examined isohedra (i.e., all the different shapes that can used in Dungeons & Dragons). There are still a few classes of shapes I need to go through.
Nice! My differential Topology books are the ones I'm keen to get back to, though I'm going to need some serious quiet time to get into them. Special Relativity was no drama: it's the General Rel. that got messy.
cheers Chris Maunder
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As a long retired structural engineer I was interviewed for a school project the other day by a pair of fourteen year olds. Embarrassing. 'Nuff said. However I can still remember the almost spiritual feeling when my maths teacher demonstrated Euler's Identity. I doubt if I could recreate the derivation but you've prompted me to try. Thank you.
I had a teacher in grade 12 prove that over time the moon's orbit will settle down so that one face always faces Earth. It was simple, elegant, and fitted on one board. It was probably the first proof I saw that caused a fairly big shift in my brain. Something went 'click' and that was it for me. Good times, eh?
cheers Chris Maunder
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
I got rid of my math books decades ago (except for the 16th edition CRC). And wouldn't you know it, I got involved in embedded devices that do a fair amount of audio processing. The DSP coding peaked my interest so I picked up a few books on it (really like the Richard Lyons book!). Was fun to learn new stuff but boy I sure wish I remembered all the math I took in college.
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
Nope - Bessel functions are still as meaningless to me now as then, as is the wave-function of a quantum particle constrained to the surface of a sphere (one of the questions in the exam for my second year quantum mechanics course - I was mentally scarred by that...).
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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For 20 years I've been saying "I'm going to pull out my old university maths books and relearn what I did during those painful 4 years". For years and years I kept procrastinating until this weekend. I'm starting with the simplest and my favourite, [Calculus by Michael Spivak](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/328645.Calculus) (the classic!) and, well... I don't feel as smart as I used to. I seriously thought I'd pick up the book (and this is an entry level to Calculus) and breeze through it in an hour or so, nodding wisely, reminiscing over proofs by induction, mucking around with limits, breezily finding the derivative of tan(Θ) from first principles, and then crack a beer and feel that I still had it. No, that didn't happen. I got to chapter 2 and proved d/dx(xn) = n.x(xn-1) and then had to have beer and a lie down. Anyone else opened that box past glories and been slapped with the reality that yes, that stuff was and still is hard work?
cheers Chris Maunder
I recently dug out my Calculus and Linear Algebra books out for my 16 year old who is just starting Calculus this semester with hopes of doing well enough to take Linear Algebra in a year. I looked over the books before I gave them to him and I realize that other than moral support I will be of no help to him in any of his future math. The difference with my experience is an additional 19 years of math memory loss. Glad to have a son who is academically much smarter than the old man, we just need to work on the common sense part of it all.
