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The more you know, the more you realise you don't know
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I've been doing maths all my life and loving it. When I hit A level I realised there was a lot more to it that I didn't realise... and now hitting university I feel like a complete pleb. Have you noticed as you learn more about a subject, you only feel like there's so much more left to be learnt?
Or am I actually regressing mentally, so soon I won't be able to do simple addition (although, I have been wondering in my mind, what is the general proof for 1 + 1 = 2)
Or am I actually regressing mentally, so soon I won't be able to do simple addition (although, I have been wondering in my mind, what is the general proof for 1 + 1 = 2)
Post edited by JustV on
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Argh!
well there's two 1's in the number 2, you have to count two numbers to get to the number 2..if you add 1+1 you get 2..simple.
does maths get a bit philosophical then?
there is a proof and it's one or two pages long I reckon. Saw it once.
You're not alone dude. When I started having Maths in Uni i was OVERWHELMED!!! My math teacher teaches in LIGHTSPEED, just everything very general and abstract and WE have to calculate the maths examples then at home. Every few lectures we start a new topic...
and at home you sit for HOURS and it's twisting your brain.
it makes gcse science seem like primary school level
Oh don't get me started on that. Mrs T, being a mathematician has been wound up countless times by me arguing that Maths is entirely based on arbitrary assumptions.
Remember though, it's not meant to be easy; even Einstein, I'm sure, had to try hard in order to understand physics the way he eventually did. And he was a genious.
1 + 2 + 3 + ... + n-1 + n = sigma crap
where n is infinity then the sum is infinity. I can understand if you keep adding nunbers it will just get higher and higher to infinity but the proof is mindboggling. I like applied.. I can follow where he goes with that, though he uses about 4 substitutions per proof, and these are straightforward ones like for compound interest he uses four blackboards worth of writing. *cries*
I'm hoping that soon enough my maths mind will kick in and I'll start to be able to understand what they're writing about.. at the rate they're going I'm trying to take notes so much that I'm not listening to what they're saying.
Learning maths at uni is like learning another language as well as a subject, because you can't write in normal anymore, have to use the correct notation, and it's fairly difficult. Am not faring especially well, me
physicists dont worry about such silly things, so I wouldn't know
how you can understand maths is beyond me.
and i can't believe i just read that at 7:50 in the morning. :crying:
going from
sin x and cos x (sinus and cosinus)
over to arcsin x and arccos x
Hyperbolic funktions: sinus hyperbolicus x and cosinus hyperbolicus x
to Arsin x and Arcos x.
Cyclometrical- and Areafunctions (-> arsinx, arcosx)
Logarithm functions (log and ln).
exponential and potential functions
f(x) = a^x | f(x) = x^b and with e^x (e being the euler'sche number)
rational functions (dividing one polynome through another)
We add together infinite progressions (yes, you can do it),
we approximate functions to a certain degree (so they are easier to grasp).
We have to write functions as a progression to approximate them, or add all elements together.
We completed already, symmetrical operations and permutations of molecules, complex numbers, probability theory.
ugh, If I only know. the only thing I know that I got 39 A4 pages of handwriting after 4 weeks, and the lecture ends in january.
It's tough, but I knew that beforehand.
Oh to be back in those good old days!
I love my subject in that maths has no bearing on it in any way. That and I like the way that with Russian, you can kinda make it up as you go along and chances are you'll be right.
As for all that maths crap earlier - :eek2:
You make my head hurt and you make me want to :crying: with all that maths langague. And I did some of that stuff at A level.
i've done my maths gcse 4 times and still not managed to get a C.
then i went out with a maths teacher.
I actually understood my lectures today :hyper:
Mind you, none of them were calculus. I think calculus is evil. I admire Newton, but seriously, couldn't he have made it easier . In my world, we would use numerical methods and computers to do everything. Trial and improvement, I say, what's the use of exact answers when you can have ridiculously quick, ridiculously simple, ridiculously accurate approximations?
Damn that man.
I'm wondering if it's the way it's taught at York. Everyone I know that does maths there, which is a fair few, have problems with it. Whereas when I did maths at Newcastle it's was the topic I found easiest. But hang in there with it and you'll get it, uni isn't meant to be easy.