How exciting!

I am atrocious at mathematics and held much contempt for the field until I was in college and 'saw the light,' if you will. Since college, I have absolutely fallen in love with mathematics. I learned it was not mathematics I always hated, but the U.S. public education system's method of teaching mathematics.

While I am still quite weak in the matter, I do believe that I will be preordering a copy of this book. Thank you for sharing this.

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erxam 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Genuinely, what is it that you get from studying mathematics?

I get that it's a hobby, but what do you even do with the knowledge you acquire?

I don't exactly fear math (even though I'm complete shit at it) but the time investment required is absolutely massive for something with questionable utility, even just for playing around with. You need a super strong base to even attempt bashing basic problems, so that's easily four or five years of study just to play around a bit.

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tibbar an hour ago | parent | next [-]

For me, math was a way to study structure. I find this sort of thing tremendously beautiful on its own, but as it happens "finding the structure in things" turns out to be quite lucrative in the professional world as well, and I often use various ideas and strategies I chanced upon as a student of mathematics.

	▲	erxam an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I see. I suppose it makes sense if you're in a career position that allows you to freely explore the world.

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srean an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you listen to music ?

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erxam an hour ago | parent [-]

I do, yes. I won't call it a hobby because I don’t create anything, I'm just a mindless rabid stupid cunt of a consoomer who doesn't know how to differentiate his ass from a hole on the fucking ground, but I do spend a lot of time listening to music. I've spent a lot of money on audio equipment.

Even so, if you wanted to bring up time signatures, microtonality or something like math rock… I'm aware of those, but I still think the only thing that matters is that they're tools meant to allow you to express a certain message in the most appropriate ways, not so much an end in themselves.

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srean an hour ago | parent [-]

Sounds a damn good hobby to me.

I don't think hobby requires building anything. Spending time actively engaged is enough. One can enjoy mathematics the way one enjoys listening to music.

On the other hand if you do want to make something, and you happen to know related math then suddenly you can use it.

For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47112418

Building these are neither my hobby, not did I learn the relevant math for the exclusive purpose of making it. But once you acquire a few math razors you start seeing inviting fluffy yaks that were invisible before.

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rramadass 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You might find the couple of books that i mention in my other comments here useful;

Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewart - https://store.doverpublications.com/products/9780486284248

Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel by John Stillwell - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171685/el...

Both of them give a nice tour of various domains within modern mathematics and their inter-relationships which is what i believe is most important to understand for a general reader.

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hirvi74 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Could a clever idiot understand such books? If so, I might be willing to check them out. Thank you for the recommendations either way.

	▲	rramadass 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Absolutely! Any person willing to study and think can understand the above books. As i mentioned, they cover a broad swath of mathematics and are meant for the general reader. You can checkout reviews on Amazon and elsewhere on the web. Mathematics can be approached in two ways; 1) For understanding 2) For techniques of usage. The above books help with (1). Textbooks focus on (2). A very good succinct (< 150 pages!) introductory text for (2) is George Simmons' Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry. It is available at https://github.com/enilsen16/The-Math-Group One word of advice; most people's phobia of mathematics arises from not knowing/understanding the notation. It is just a shorthand language which you need to get familiar with. When you come across a formula, just expand and read it out aloud in your own version of easy English. You will understand better and lose your fear of mathematics. A book like Mathematical Notation: A Guide for Engineers and Scientists by Edward Scheinerman is of great help here. There are of course lots of free resources for this on the web starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbo... and https://mathvault.ca/hub/higher-math/math-symbols/