This is great news. I have his Teaching Company course on fractals,
and found it clear and very informative.
On Feb 1, 2010, at 12:50 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
On Feb 1, 2010, at 1:39 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:
SFI External professor Steven Strogatz:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/from-fish-to-infinity/
Could someone who feels the same way as Strogatz's friend, see
below, follow the series to see if it actually works for them? And
report back to us!
I ask because we often collaborate with folks saying similar things,
and we've spent a bunch of time looking for solutions. Gowers's
"Very Short Intro to Mathematics" and Dunham's "Journey through
Genius" are books that we've tried with some success, but Strogatz
has won several awards for teaching excellence, so this may be the
winner.
-- Owen
Quote: But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens
him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn’t even know
how to pronounce them.
In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He’s not sure what
mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof
is elegant. Sometimes we joke that I just should sit him down and
teach him everything, starting with 1 + 1 = 2 and going as far as we
can.
Crazy as it sounds, over the next several weeks I’m going to try to
do something close to that. I’ll be writing about the elements of
mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there
who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time
from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The
goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and
why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
