Maths

A mathematician is hardly a reasonable person. More like a feral philosopher or a logician gone rogue.

I recently subscribed to the The Great Courses Plus, so that I could bring myself up to speed on the Math needed to do my 12th standard exams. All these years, whenever I’ve tried to teach myself trigonometry (or other people have tried to explain it to me) it has always been an exercise in frustration, followed by the general exhortation to just mug it up. My brain sadly is not wired that way. I can and I will mug it up. But I do want to know what the first principles are, so that I have the ability to derive what I need. I need to understand. ...

Listening to Marcus du Sautoy’s A Brief History of Mathematics this weekend. In two hours, and ten episodes, du Sautoy spans the gamut of mathematicians from Leibniz & Newton the 1690s to the ensemble Bourbaki the 1930s Brief, rampaging and hugely entertaining, this is well worth a listen!

I don’t know. I grew up saying Maths. But the world around me is increasingly favouring Math. I think I’ll stick to Maths and use Math where I think it’s more apt … like when I say [Math Forge][1]. [1]:

The more I delve into learning Maths, the more I feel like a blacksmith. Life has problems and Maths gives me the tools to solve them. And if I don’t have the tools? I just make new ones using my math forge à la the blacksmith :)

So far so good. I’m finally “getting” trig. Moving on to calculus. Hopefully once I get through that, I will have time to practice regularly. Most surprising part; I’m having fun :)