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“A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart is a fantastic short read up next for #bookstr

This was a spontaneous read after I watched some videos about Newton and Fermat and Euler and wondered, where did the brilliant minds go.

In using a lot of AI this year I’ve frequently been thinking on path dependence. That’s a huge topic for another post but I wanted to know how these great minds were educated back then that Leibniz and Newton could independently discover Calculus.

Any way, just something I’d never really thought much of, but mathematics was basically a hobby for most of these guys. Like you play Wordle or watch football, these guys would sit down after a long day at The Mint or as a Judge or whatever and discover new maths and physics. There was no path dependence for them back then.

Lockhart makes major criticism of mathematics as it’s taught today in rigid, rules-based, notation heavy gobbledygook without context, without meaning, and removed from actual problems to be solved.

His lament is that Maths is an art, which is meant to be fun, meant to be play, but the way it has been systematised and formalised and made mandatory learning of rules and formulas and shorthand without context, taught by the most uninspiring box-checking teachers who never explore maths for fun, has completely ruined the field. Sapping all joy out of it, the mental games we can play with it, the learning for the sake of learning, and the wonder in patterns of a realm beyond us.

Lockhart has some very basic solutions which will never reach standardised education but I really appreciated this short book regardless.

I excelled at maths as a kid competing at national level but by the time I got to High School and had a math-heavy schedule for my Uni path, I fucking hated it and nearly failed one of my two graduating math classes.

Lockhart’s lament resonated with me because I can still remember those early years where I did it for fun, and then I recalled that High School experience which was exactly as he described.

It’s inspired me to study Euclid’s Elements next year and see if I can rediscover some of the joy of mathematics for myself.

Highly recommend anyone with kids give this a read. It’s only 2 hours, very approachable, and it might save them from having the joy sapped out of maths as happened to me and I’m sure many others.

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Discussion

phil 1w ago

Sounds interesting. I also had a similar experience with maths at school. I did pretty well with it up until the last couple of years of high school, and I had to do some at Uni as part of my CS degree where I hated it and didn’t do well at all. I agree that a lot of the problem comes down to the way it is taught particularly at higher levels and it is very uninspiring.

StackSats.IO 1w ago

Being divorced from reality I think is what kills it. When you’re made to memorise formulas without knowing how they were arrived at, why, what problem was being solved - you’re not really learning anything.

This short extract is a good example; being taught nonsense by uninspiring robots is bound to kill one’s interest in a subject.

phil 1w ago

Exactly, and I think this is an issue with the way a lot of subjects are taught, not just maths. At least from my experience and way of learning, I find it very difficult to just remember formulas and facts. It’s often more useful to have a deeper understanding of how they were arrived at, why they are important, and how they are used rather than just memorising the actual formula or facts itself - these can be easily be looked up as needed.

StackSats.IO 1w ago

See I’m the opposite, I can memorise very well. But memorisation and recall is itself a skill, one that isn’t taught basically at all anymore, but which I managed to teach myself through interest in the subject.

But nobody is interested in a formula for the sake of a formula. They could be interested in it’s application or it’s history or weird quirks, but learning a formula itself is basically like learning how to say something in a foreign language but you don’t know what it means - you can remember it to pass a test, but won’t remember it 5 years later.

With maths there is tons of interesting stuff, a good teacher could easily make fifteenth century nautical tables interesting to a class of teenage boys even if it is pointless, but as Lockhart laments - their job is to teach the syllabus so those boys are ready for whatever bullshit they will be forced to learn in next year’s curriculum and all that does is sap more and more joy out of kids every year until everyone despises maths, which nobody should because maths is actually really fun!

Give this one a read Phil, it might reawaken something in you too.

https://annas-archive.org/md5/fdf0bef74e46b0bbba426246a7f2782a

phil 1w ago

Memory and recall is an interesting thing in itself. I find I have a very good memory for some things - I can often recall events or even conversations I’ve had with someone many years later in a lot of detail after others have forgotten. I don’t remember formulas and facts well though..

I’ll definitely have a read of this book!

jimbocoin 🃏 1w ago

I had a similar experience of physics. Loved it through HS, started college with a second major. But at junior level quantum mechanics, it just wasn’t fun anymore.

StackSats.IO 1w ago

Was it the way it was being taught or the subject matter itself that wasn’t fun any more?