Re:Stepping into math: Open-sourcing our step-by-step solver
by charmonium on Thursday January 19, 2017 @04:11PM
(#13439534)
A part of the push for rigor in calculus is being able to prove results instead of appealing to intuition. They are both important aspects of mathematics when working together (often intuition guides a slower, rigorous, methodical proof), but we don't want people relying on intuition where a proof is necessary. This kind of critical thinking and logical reasoning are both important cross-disciplinary skills that almost every field requires.
Re:Stepping into math: Open-sourcing our step-by-step solver
by Ar-Curunir on Thursday January 19, 2017 @03:59PM
(#13439436)
By "any rigor at all", I meant how do you express the concepts of differentiation without knowing how to manipulate symbols?
https://betterexplained.com/articles/a-gentle-introduction-t...
A note on rigor (for the math geeks) I can feel the math pedants firing up their keyboards. Just a few words on “rigor”.
Did you know we don’t learn calculus the way Newton and Leibniz discovered it? They used intuitive ideas of “fluxions” and “infinitesimals” which were replaced with limits because “Sure, it works in practice. But does it work in theory?”.
We’ve created complex mechanical constructs to “rigorously” prove calculus, but have lost our intuition in the process.
We’re looking at the sweetness of sugar from the level of brain-chemistry, instead of recognizing it as Nature’s way of saying “This has lots of energy. Eat it.”