Re: Midnight Breakfast

Andreas Tovornik wrote:
Penelope Periwinkle wrote:
On 8 May 2006 10:41:10 -0400, Diorite <diorite@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

For a mathematician math is a toy, or a work of art. I haven't got that kind of imagination. I'm one of those applied math type people who see it as a useful toolkit. I learned more math in science classes than in math classes because there was meaningful context. Oh, this is what it does...

Excellent insight. I probably leaned more math in science
classes, too.

Were you leaning sideways, backwards, or to the front predominantly?

My experience with math became bad when a whole lot of symbols
ended up on the blackboard and things were just done on that
blackboard and not explained, not applied to anything, and not
given a reason. I could not grok the symbols, and I could not
see what they stood for because nothing about it was intuitive.
I have always learned things best hands-on, and not being able
to grab an integral, for example, and bend it to my will was my
undoing. Apparently, I'm in good company...

I think I was very lucky to have a computer (well sort of) class where the professor described the old way of doing really complicated integrals: you traced the curve on a piece of brass sheet, then cut it very carefully and weighed the part from under the curve.

I still lost the trail once it came to actually doing linear equation or large integrals, but I could imagine that I understood it a bit.

paul

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