These scary large math symbols aren’t scary at all and easily explained. The scary parts of maths lie elsewhere. They are discrete, nonlinear or high dimensional and sometimes even the numbers are complex… Or worse.
I recommend this video and the channel in general. The guy can explain even the most complicated and abstract mathematical concepts in a perfectly clear and understandable way.
…
I had to watch the video on quaternions three times to grasp the concept.
Knowing that no matter how many times you read the theorem, there’s no fucking you’ll memorize it for the exam. Oh, and also there are at least 20 of them, and you don’t know which one they are going to ask.
The education system creates scarcity of knowledge to increase the profit of investment and spending, everything complex can be broken down into simple forms.
Everything dealing with capitalism ends up sounding like a conspiracy theory. You’re like “of course people wouldn’t actually take this thing we, as humans, need and sell it,” when suddenly air has been commodified and those who can’t afford it are dlseen as not deserving of air.
Yea that’s not explained better than a math teach. They just swapped notation common in math, for notation common in one specific programming language. it’s only easier for the audience who happens to be familiar with programming in general, and that language in particular.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone with any sort of programming background, even just as a hobbyist, who doesn’t understand that for loop notation, whether or not they know the specific language it’s from. (I couldn’t even tell you what specific language that’s from, because that notation matches so many different ones.)
I have a 15 year old son; he definitely has not seen summation in math classes yet, but he has far more than enough programming experience (even just from school) to understand the for loop.
The biggest difference (other than the existence of infinity) is that the upper limit is inclusive in summation notation and exclusive in for loops. Threw me for a loop (hah) for a while.
i thought this was pretty weird too when i found out about it. i’m not entirely sure why it’s done this way but i think it has to do with conventions on where to start indexing. most programming languages start their indexing at 0 while much of the time in math the indexing starts at 1, so i=0 to n-1 becomes i=1 to n.
My abstract math professor showed us that sometimes it’s useful to count natural numbers from 1 instead of 0, like in one problem we did concerning the relation Q on A = N × N defined by (m,n)Q(p,q) iff m/n = p/q. I don’t hate counting natural numbers from 1 anymore because of how commonly this sort of thing comes up in non-computer math contexts.
yeah thats a good example and it shows weird the number 0 is compared to the positive integers. it seems like a lot of the time things are first “defined” for the positive integers and then afterwards the definition is extended to 0 in a “consistent way”. for example, the idea of taking exponents an makes sense when n is a positive integer, but its not immediately clear how to define a0. so, we do some digging and see that am+n = aman when m and n are positive integers. this observation makes defining a0=1 “consistent” with the definition on positive integers, since it makes am+n = aman true when n=0.
i think this sort of thing makes mathematicians think of 0 as a weird index and its why they tend to prefer starting at 1, and then making 0 the index for the “weird” term when it’s included (like the displacement vector in affine space or the constant term in a taylor series).
I think gamedev or I guess graphics programming, visualize maths pretty well. I literally quit high school because I could never make any progress in several areas, including math class. But once I read/watch more about gamedev, programming, graphics programming on my own, I got to understand many mathematical terminologies better than I have ever been taught in any school.
I don’t know her, so maybe my question is stupid, but does she explain math without using code?
I, honestly, am too stupid to programing, I don’t understand it.
I understand summary, not the second one
I don’t know anything about the original post author, but product notation is the same as summation notation except that instead of adding each new term to the running total, you’re multiplying each new term. You don’t have to know programming to see from the code samples that the only difference in the code is += vs *= (well, maybe it would help to know that * means multiply; I honestly dont rember how common-knowledge that is).
Yeah they might as well have written it in assembly… Some people are just not very good at understanding that others don’t have their knowledge/ease of understanding certain things, especially people who are very good at what they do, the ability to simplify is as much a skill as understanding complex concepts!
Sort of; a lot of what she does is computer graphics, which just happens to be applications of math she explains. There is still code, but sometimes the “code” is a flow graph in Unreal Engine or Blender.
i hate that we all got so frightened about math. it’s genuinely fun to learn how it works when you’re not being forced to in a school setting, which was just a fucking nightmare for no reason. i had this former navy DI lady teacher in gifted kid algebra [so already a year ahead] yell at me for asking questions; she wasn’t going to ‘hold my hand’ thru the homework, which was quite literally her fucking job
Sorry you were put through that. Aggressions are no place for learning
My family and school were god awful at teaching. It was all forced (rote memorisation) learning and not me actually learning. I needed things taught slowly and broken down. I have wanted to learn the more advanced technical maths long ago, but now I am an adult and need to find a safe, quite and gentle environment where i can
anybody reading this, please do not give suggestions or advice in replies. thank you.
i completely agree. this sentiment was echoed pretty well in a (nontechnical and accessible) paper i read a few years ago. he says the current approach is like forcing people to learn music, but only teaching them how to read sheet music and not letting them touch any instruments. it hides the creativity and problem-solving of the discipline and reduces it to memorizing formulas.
Im sorry you had awful teachers, but not all of them are bad. I had amazing teachers that were very worried for the students to learn. In contrast I had very shitty classmates that just didn’t care and would blame the teachers for their laziness.
It’s surprisingly easy. I used tl give maths tutoring to finance my university degree. What I’d do is let the kids do one exercise task from their school books to see where their difficulties were. While they were on it, I quickly read through the relevant sections in the book, and it was so easy every time that I knew everything I needed to know after a few minutes. Like literally stuff that took weeks at school within minutes.
School just sucks and makes it really hard to learn anything. Almost everything kids learn at school is actually really easy.
Well it’s harder for them because they are kids and their brains are still developing. You’ve had a lifetime of experiences to draw from where you use math concepts subconsciously many times a day.
Totally true. They haven’t learned to learn yet, they aren’t learning because they want to, or even because they need what they learned.
But the point I was trying to make is, that many adults are still afraid (and many even strongly so) of maths, because it was hard for them at school. But it probably wouldn’t be hard for them now.
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You can reduce this readable code into one line of confusing python list comprehension that runs 100x slower!
I don’t think you can use python list comprehensions in this case, since you don’t want a new list, but rather reduce it to a single value.
What’s wrong with list comprehensions? Do I just have Stockholm Syndrome at this point?
I would skip the square brackets and just use a generator expression:
sum(3*n for n in range(5)).Yes, the classic readability of c style for loops.
How about some Haskell
let numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] let sumOfNumbers = sum numbers
These scary large math symbols aren’t scary at all and easily explained. The scary parts of maths lie elsewhere. They are discrete, nonlinear or high dimensional and sometimes even the numbers are complex… Or worse.
Quaternions are the closest you’ll ever get to lovecraftian horror in real life.
It’s very Lovecraftian that you saying this only makes me want to learn about them even more
I recommend this video and the channel in general. The guy can explain even the most complicated and abstract mathematical concepts in a perfectly clear and understandable way.
…
I had to watch the video on quaternions three times to grasp the concept.
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What’s so scary about hypercomplex numbers exactly?
Knowing that no matter how many times you read the theorem, there’s no fucking you’ll memorize it for the exam. Oh, and also there are at least 20 of them, and you don’t know which one they are going to ask.
Ah, well, I’m just a bit dumb, so for me it’s not different from many other things. While the general idea is quite easy to remember.
Let’s start with how their equation was originally carved into a stone bridge by a crazy mathematician in a fit of madness.
WHAT ok now I’m interested
True story!
I have no idea what these math things are but I understand the code perfectly lol
Theyarethesame.png
Came here to say the same!
freya is not a random internet people
The education system creates scarcity of knowledge to increase the profit of investment and spending, everything complex can be broken down into simple forms.
Sounds as a conspiracy theory
Everything dealing with capitalism ends up sounding like a conspiracy theory. You’re like “of course people wouldn’t actually take this thing we, as humans, need and sell it,” when suddenly air has been commodified and those who can’t afford it are dlseen as not deserving of air.
Better then
It’s about math teachers, not English teachers.
xor
Yea that’s not explained better than a math teach. They just swapped notation common in math, for notation common in one specific programming language. it’s only easier for the audience who happens to be familiar with programming in general, and that language in particular.
I think the concept of a for loop is easier to learn, even for non-programmers, as biased as I may be.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone with any sort of programming background, even just as a hobbyist, who doesn’t understand that for loop notation, whether or not they know the specific language it’s from. (I couldn’t even tell you what specific language that’s from, because that notation matches so many different ones.)
I have a 15 year old son; he definitely has not seen summation in math classes yet, but he has far more than enough programming experience (even just from school) to understand the for loop.
I think its Java.
Could also be Javascript or C#.
Or C or C++
Java/C# would have types before the variables:
Only if they’re declared in the snippet.
It’s any C derivative language.
The biggest difference (other than the existence of infinity) is that the upper limit is inclusive in summation notation and exclusive in for loops. Threw me for a loop (hah) for a while.
Nah, look at the implementation above:
Means it’s inclusive.
You’re probably referring to some other implementation that doesn’t involve such fine control, like Python where
range(4)means[0 1 2 3]Oh yeah, I meant generally. Isn’t it most common if not best practice to say
for (i = 0; i < whatever; i++)?Fair. I guess to accommodate zero-indexing so that it still happens
whatevertimes, notwhatever + 1times.i thought this was pretty weird too when i found out about it. i’m not entirely sure why it’s done this way but i think it has to do with conventions on where to start indexing. most programming languages start their indexing at 0 while much of the time in math the indexing starts at 1, so i=0 to n-1 becomes i=1 to n.
My abstract math professor showed us that sometimes it’s useful to count natural numbers from 1 instead of 0, like in one problem we did concerning the relation Q on A = N × N defined by (m,n)Q(p,q) iff m/n = p/q. I don’t hate counting natural numbers from 1 anymore because of how commonly this sort of thing comes up in non-computer math contexts.
yeah thats a good example and it shows weird the number 0 is compared to the positive integers. it seems like a lot of the time things are first “defined” for the positive integers and then afterwards the definition is extended to 0 in a “consistent way”. for example, the idea of taking exponents an makes sense when n is a positive integer, but its not immediately clear how to define a0. so, we do some digging and see that am+n = aman when m and n are positive integers. this observation makes defining a0=1 “consistent” with the definition on positive integers, since it makes am+n = aman true when n=0.
i think this sort of thing makes mathematicians think of 0 as a weird index and its why they tend to prefer starting at 1, and then making 0 the index for the “weird” term when it’s included (like the displacement vector in affine space or the constant term in a taylor series).
I think gamedev or I guess graphics programming, visualize maths pretty well. I literally quit high school because I could never make any progress in several areas, including math class. But once I read/watch more about gamedev, programming, graphics programming on my own, I got to understand many mathematical terminologies better than I have ever been taught in any school.
removed by mod
test
He’s missing the sigh() function call at the start of the main body of the loop.
Invented in the 50s, Fortran = FORmula Translating language. It was basically created to solve this sort of problem.
I don’t know her, so maybe my question is stupid, but does she explain math without using code? I, honestly, am too stupid to programing, I don’t understand it. I understand summary, not the second one
I don’t know anything about the original post author, but product notation is the same as summation notation except that instead of adding each new term to the running total, you’re multiplying each new term. You don’t have to know programming to see from the code samples that the only difference in the code is
+=vs*=(well, maybe it would help to know that * means multiply; I honestly dont rember how common-knowledge that is).I think it would be much better to write it in another language, but here’s another way to do the second one (this is on Visual Basic):
Yeah I don’t really think that helps anyone that didn’t understand the above example, sorry.
Yeah they might as well have written it in assembly… Some people are just not very good at understanding that others don’t have their knowledge/ease of understanding certain things, especially people who are very good at what they do, the ability to simplify is as much a skill as understanding complex concepts!
For the case that n = 0 (before the first run of the loop), x(0) = 1.
For the first actual case, n = 1. X(1) = x(0)*3*n = 1*3*1 = 3.
For the next case, n = 2. X(2) = x(1)*3*n = 3*3*2 = 18.
For the next case, n = 3. X(3) = x(2)*3*n = 18*3*3 = 162.
For the next and last case, n = 4. X(4) = 162*3*4 which I’m not computing. The computer value of x(4) is the value of the product loop.
If that doesn’t help, I could try helping again to rephrase, but I’m not sure what else to add.
Sort of; a lot of what she does is computer graphics, which just happens to be applications of math she explains. There is still code, but sometimes the “code” is a flow graph in Unreal Engine or Blender.
deleted by creator
i hate that we all got so frightened about math. it’s genuinely fun to learn how it works when you’re not being forced to in a school setting, which was just a fucking nightmare for no reason. i had this former navy DI lady teacher in gifted kid algebra [so already a year ahead] yell at me for asking questions; she wasn’t going to ‘hold my hand’ thru the homework, which was quite literally her fucking job
Sorry you were put through that. Aggressions are no place for learning
My family and school were god awful at teaching. It was all forced (rote memorisation) learning and not me actually learning. I needed things taught slowly and broken down. I have wanted to learn the more advanced technical maths long ago, but now I am an adult and need to find a safe, quite and gentle environment where i can
anybody reading this, please do not give suggestions or advice in replies. thank you.
My advice is to keep something to yourself if you don’t want to listen to peoples opinions about it.
i completely agree. this sentiment was echoed pretty well in a (nontechnical and accessible) paper i read a few years ago. he says the current approach is like forcing people to learn music, but only teaching them how to read sheet music and not letting them touch any instruments. it hides the creativity and problem-solving of the discipline and reduces it to memorizing formulas.
Im sorry you had awful teachers, but not all of them are bad. I had amazing teachers that were very worried for the students to learn. In contrast I had very shitty classmates that just didn’t care and would blame the teachers for their laziness.
Turning 35 in a month and I’ve just started learning maths again after being afraid of it because of a similar situation to yours.
It’s surprisingly easy. I used tl give maths tutoring to finance my university degree. What I’d do is let the kids do one exercise task from their school books to see where their difficulties were. While they were on it, I quickly read through the relevant sections in the book, and it was so easy every time that I knew everything I needed to know after a few minutes. Like literally stuff that took weeks at school within minutes.
School just sucks and makes it really hard to learn anything. Almost everything kids learn at school is actually really easy.
Well it’s harder for them because they are kids and their brains are still developing. You’ve had a lifetime of experiences to draw from where you use math concepts subconsciously many times a day.
Totally true. They haven’t learned to learn yet, they aren’t learning because they want to, or even because they need what they learned.
But the point I was trying to make is, that many adults are still afraid (and many even strongly so) of maths, because it was hard for them at school. But it probably wouldn’t be hard for them now.
It’s not about being frightened, it’s just that i know only a handful (mostly esoteric) languages with worse syntax.