When I try to convince people like Scott that they’re actually very good at math, they often say “No, you don’t understand, I’m really bad at math, you’re overestimating my mathematical ability because of my writing ability.” To which my response is “I know you think that, I’ve seen many people in your rough direction who think that they’re really bad at math, and say that I don’t understand how bad they are, and they’re almost always wrong: they almost never know that what they were having trouble with wasn’t representative of math.”
I do currently think I’m really bad at math, which may very well be true, but I do also find it very plausible that I’ve so far only been exposed to unsatisfactory math curricula/teachers, and then had a sort of vicious-cycle of reinforcement, where I would get insecure about my weakness in “math” (especially relative weakness), and learn to hate the “math” and feel helpless about learning it, which in turn would make it harder to learn and increase my relative weakness.
Still, I might not be too far gone. Can you recommend anything I could try that you consider more representative of math?
What Is Mathematics? was the only one I was able to find from a local library. I’ve put a request in for it and I should be getting it soon. Thanks for the recommendation; if it helps me to not hate math then I might be able to do something actually useful for existential risk reduction.
Also, “What is Mathematics?” is more serious than the other two. “The Shape of Space” is probably the easiest and most fun, and “The Enjoyment of Math” is a collection of almost completely independent small pieces that don’t assume any background, but some of them are a bit involved for something that doesn’t assume any background.
I do currently think I’m really bad at math, which may very well be true, but I do also find it very plausible that I’ve so far only been exposed to unsatisfactory math curricula/teachers, and then had a sort of vicious-cycle of reinforcement, where I would get insecure about my weakness in “math” (especially relative weakness), and learn to hate the “math” and feel helpless about learning it, which in turn would make it harder to learn and increase my relative weakness.
Still, I might not be too far gone. Can you recommend anything I could try that you consider more representative of math?
Thanks!
I would recommend trying these books (at high school level or earlier, depending on when it becomes possible to follow them):
H. Rademacher & O. Toeplitz (1967). The Enjoyment of Math.
J. R. Weeks (2001). The Shape of Space.
R. Courant & H. Robbins (1996). What Is Mathematics?
What Is Mathematics? was the only one I was able to find from a local library. I’ve put a request in for it and I should be getting it soon. Thanks for the recommendation; if it helps me to not hate math then I might be able to do something actually useful for existential risk reduction.
These are available on Library Genesis.
Also, “What is Mathematics?” is more serious than the other two. “The Shape of Space” is probably the easiest and most fun, and “The Enjoyment of Math” is a collection of almost completely independent small pieces that don’t assume any background, but some of them are a bit involved for something that doesn’t assume any background.
Thanks, these are great!