I have always been terrible at mathematics, terrible. It made school something I would very much like to forget. So today my mathematic skills are severely lacking. However, as an adult I have recently developed an interest for numbers. I guess I can tribute that to watching documentaries on cosmology, physics and quantum mechanics. I often daydream and imagine what life would be if I didn't have an issue with mathematics. Maybe I would be a physicist. Or maybe not, who knows. I just know that I would love to understand the language of the universe, and I would love to use all my resources on research in one of these fields.

After watching

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG1JpC5jels[/youtube]
I had a wow moment. WOW! Imagine working on Pi. Imagine scratching ones head pondering on the same things the fellows in ancient Greece did.

So, I would love to become good understand mathematics but where do I start? ANY advice is appreciated. I would love to learn and understand, but I have no idea of what angle attack I should use. A friend of mine once told me that its quite easy and you just have to "get it" and when you "get it" everything opens up. Now I have often wondered if my lack of understanding has been related to intelligence, but I once did the Mensa test and I scored comfortably above the average but of course not high enough to become a member. Btw becoming a member was not a goal, it was just to find out if I was stupid or not.....that said I would have been proud if I did qualify to become a member But enough of that.....

Mathematics......how do I seduce it? Because it has already seduced me.

I would recommend the Archimedes Palimpsest. It describes how Archimedes would wander around looking at stuff, play games, and how they did maths then - I think far better than we do now.

Also look at the stars and start working stuff out.

Look on amazon for archimedes codex!

hi, im in exactly the same position as you and ive decided to do something about it. ive just ordered gcse mathematics from amazon and im going to learn the basics then hopefully move on to 'o' level then 'a' level. this is the only way to go in my opinion.

good luck and happy learning:)

edit: im also reading an introduction to particle physics and an introduction to the laws of thermodynamics which is interesting but moreso when i can understand the maths fully

I think there are only two ways to learn maths:

1 Be a genius and pick it up immediately
2 Do lots and lots and lots of problems

Also, it's pretty hierarchical - there's certain shit you have to know before you can study certain other shit. No shortcuts. But it's fun and very satisfying (unless I've completely misremembered)

twistor59 wrote:I think there are only two ways to learn maths:

1 Be a genius and pick it up immediately
2 Do lots and lots and lots of problems

Also, it's pretty hierarchical - there's certain shit you have to know before you can study certain other shit. No shortcuts. But it's fun and very satisfying (unless I've completely misremembered)

I think you've misremebered! Fourier analysis and fourier transforms did my nut in..

I have a degree in mathematics, which I am ashamed to say that I have forgotten almost every element of, so I'm actually in a similar boat to the OP - looking for interesting things to think about that do not require advanced technical skills. I dug my old notes out of the loft just the other week as it happens, and it's definitely my handwriting but seriously WTF is any of it about. The intervening years of intense physical and substance abuse have obviously not been kind

Anyway, I'd recommend set theory and geometry as good starting places. You can get into some elegant stuff just picking up a book and without needing to be able to solve complex problems in algebraic topology, or whatever, and geometry has lots of pleasing real-world applications. It won't just be pages and pages of dry and increasingly difficult sums

campermon wrote:

twistor59 wrote:I think there are only two ways to learn maths:

1 Be a genius and pick it up immediately
2 Do lots and lots and lots of problems

Also, it's pretty hierarchical - there's certain shit you have to know before you can study certain other shit. No shortcuts. But it's fun and very satisfying (unless I've completely misremembered)

I think you've misremebered! Fourier analysis and fourier transforms did my nut in..

Not mine. I admit that it is not easy when doing this, but the methodology is simple enough. When solving the problems you get to the difficult parts, as it will not come out as a simple sine or cosine sum, and interpreting the results in a nice short way is not as easy as the books make it to be.

Thank you for the recommendation Clive, will buy

ED209 wrote:I have a degree in mathematics, which I am ashamed to say that I have forgotten almost every element of, so I'm actually in a similar boat to the OP - looking for interesting things to think about that do not require advanced technical skills. I dug my old notes out of the loft just the other week as it happens, and it's definitely my handwriting but seriously WTF is any of it about. The intervening years of intense physical and substance abuse have obviously not been kind

As an "outsider" my impression is that mathematics is like a muscle you need to keep in shape. (?)

Anyway, I'd recommend set theory and geometry as good starting places. You can get into some elegant stuff just picking up a book and without needing to be able to solve complex problems in algebraic topology, or whatever, and geometry has lots of pleasing real-world applications. It won't just be pages and pages of dry and increasingly difficult sums

Excellent advice. Thank you very much

I think you may simply be a victim of the way mathematics is taught. I know that here in the US, there's a definite sense of "we learn mathematics so that we can apply it to real world problems". This leaves out all sorts of interesting theory and leaves the process of proof out of the whole thing. Only when I got to a class on Geometry when I was 13 did I realize what math is all about.

Now I'm pursuing an undergraduate degree in mathematics and seriously considering graduate study. I attribute my interest in math mostly to that Geometry class.

When I was teaching music at a college some years ago, the head of the math department invited me to give a few lectures on the links between maths and music.

It was a lot of fun. I tried to show the students - in as much depth as I could - how certain composers' aesthetic decisions may have been influenced by certain unconscious (or conscious) senses of mathematical proportion. (In the case of Bartók, for example, it's been fairly well established that he quite deliberately and extensively used the Fibonacci series in some of his works.) 

To my surprise, at the end of one of my talks, the head of the department jumped up in the audience, looked around at the students and said "See?! See?! I hope you've been paying attention because this is what mathematics really is. It's not about grinding out numbers."

I don't flatter myself. I have no illusions about my mathematical knowledge or ability; it's pretty meager. But it was encouraging to talk with him afterwards and find out he was sincere about what he said. That playing around with shapes, proportions, the beauty of how the numbers work - all that stuff I loved as a little boy - that was the real stuff. I'm pretty angry that throughout most of my subsequent schooling that got sidelined by mediocre math teachers who themselves were bored by grinding out numbers, but who insisted that that was all there was. 

(I also know they maths is technique-intensive and to really do it you need to know how to grind the numbers. But what I learned from this experience is that that's a means to an end.) 

orpheus,
did you touch on how our scales and chords work in those lectures?

Zwaarddijk wrote:orpheus,
did you touch on how our scales and chords work in those lectures?

Yes, somewhat.

There's a fair chance that grinding out problems will kill your enthusiasm for maths pretty quickly. When that happens, I recommend you pick up a copy of Fermat's Last Theorem, one of my favourite popsci (popmaths?) books for a bit of inspiration.

campermon wrote:

twistor59 wrote:I think there are only two ways to learn maths:

1 Be a genius and pick it up immediately
2 Do lots and lots and lots of problems

Also, it's pretty hierarchical - there's certain shit you have to know before you can study certain other shit. No shortcuts. But it's fun and very satisfying (unless I've completely misremembered)

I think you've misremebered! Fourier analysis and fourier transforms did my nut in..

I feel this. Taking PDE right now...bleh