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RE: What is the difference between physics and mathematics?

in #science • 7 years ago

Thank you for wonderful feedback.

I'm not a mathematician as well, I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy philosophy - it's a great exercise for mind, and can be something to ponder about when you're bored. :) I can recommend 3Blue1Brown youtube channel for this kind of "conceptual" math. By the way, I also never liked math during my education, go figure...

Thanks for Wigner's quotes, very interesting.

7 years ago in #science by
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     7 years ago (edited)

    That video was A++... I've been surfing around and taking occasional dips into Khan Academy, but I like the way this guy was explaining everything. And even the comments!!

    This is the second comment on the video and I related immediately.

    This video illustrates the big problem with how we teach math in the United States. Teachers and professors leap right into equations and numbers, completely skipping any conceptualization of them such as illustrations or high level explanations.

    For example, I remember back to my algebra class in high school when we first learned about functions. The teacher started to explain how to graph functions, and how to write them using f(x) notation. We learned more advanced concepts such as factoring, completing the square, etc. Not once did the teacher say anything to the effect of "a function is a thing you put a number into and get a result out". They never explained how a graph is a visualization of how a specific function's result changes based on the input. They only described the mechanics of it, and "how to do it".

    It's no wonder when many kids get to calculus that they have no idea what's going on, because they still don't actually understand in their head what a function or graph really is. The unfortunate consequence is that so many people now think they're just bad at math, when really it was just never properly explained to them on a conceptual level, and the ones who did well in high school math were simply the ones who could make the conceptual leaps on their own.

    I unfortunately did not qualify as a 'leaper' and got left behind, aka taught myself the material through Khan Academy the night before the test. My teacher could not grasp the intuitions underlying the formalisms... there were entire sections she could only teach using some heuristic she learned in HER high school days and was incapable of explaining it to us!!

    I digress...

    I'm really hoping Steemit turns out to be a fruitful place to learn a subject like mathematics in a peer-to-peer/collective way. Or at least to find good resources. But looks like it's off to a good start! :)

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