I’m gonna be honest y’all, all throughout my life people have given me so much shit for asking why something happens- repeatedly calling me childlike, telling me that’s just the way it is, it is what it is, etc. Shit sucks
Bringing this back to math though, the best math teachers I’ve ever had didn’t see a problem with providing the “why” and when that was given, I kinda succeeded. Who could’ve guessed, I didn’t hate math and thought there was a chance that I could do it if someone explained it in my language!
Trying to relearn some stuff for my own benefit, thought this new comm might be a good place to start my journey so let me know if you have any suggestions!
I read this when I was a child and I think it helped build a lot of intuition about numbers (and Trachtenberg's story was quite inspiring as a small jewish kid)
it explains why the techniques work but it's not particularly deep and is mostly good for getting extremely fast at arithmetic with numbers that seem quite scary due to their size.
Would you mind elaborating a bit more on what kinds of math you're interested in and maybe what you remember connecting with or find particularly inaccessible in your earlier mathematical education?
I've gone through the multiplying by 12, 11 and 6 parts and it's good, but it wouldn't be an American textbook without an obligatory "Communism Bad"
Hmm. Who was being looted, textbook? The Czars and the nobility.
lmao truly
I think college algebra is where I kinda ended. Granted, I passed a discrete course, but it was during Covid so that was basically a farce. I’d probably struggle if you asked me anything about it tbh
I’m probably thinking of some kind of proof based literature but at an elementary level?