Re:The dirty secret of mathematics: We make it up as we go a...
by trasz on Friday September 16, 2022 @07:27AM
(#32864697)
What you describe is probably the least efficient way to learn math - or anything else for that matter - because you’re trying to learn things you can’t, at that point and for a while afterwards, reason about. They don’t have connection to anything else. Compare that with the opposite - learning stuff you can already mentally associate with parts of known reality.
Re:The dirty secret of mathematics: We make it up as we go a...
by zozbot234 on Friday September 16, 2022 @07:53AM
(#32864869)
> learning stuff you can already mentally associate with parts of known reality.
This is not always feasible or effective. Sometimes it's just better to start by doing some simple reasoning about things in isolation, and build the proper connection and context afterwards.
And no, this is rarely the most intuitive or contextual way to learn math. Another analogy - a library doesn't sort their books by which ones were best reads or most influential, but by topic and author. Similarly, math curriculums are organized by a hierarchy of which theorems can prove the next theorem with no explanation of which ones are important. Organization doesn't always provide intuition.