Re:The Most Common Errors in Undergraduate Mathematics (2009)
by magicalhippo on Thursday November 19, 2020 @03:51PM
(#25154197)
> Most math is about symbol manipulation and numbers are really only at the end.
During the first semester at uni, the math prof was going through some non-trivial (at that stage) "real-world" example involving definite integrals.
After what felt like 10 minutes of manipulating integrals and such we got to the final "x = ..." equation, upon which he turned away from the blackboard and said "and then you can just plug in the numbers and calculate the result, but that's not really interesting". And so the lecture continued...
During the first semester at uni, the math prof was going through some non-trivial (at that stage) "real-world" example involving definite integrals.
After what felt like 10 minutes of manipulating integrals and such we got to the final "x = ..." equation, upon which he turned away from the blackboard and said "and then you can just plug in the numbers and calculate the result, but that's not really interesting". And so the lecture continued...