Recent content by djosey

Thanks for the answers. Well to explain and clarify some more, the situation is that what i have time to do, i do quite well. I'm in france, so the system is different, but I'm guessing I'm getting A's or B+'s for that. However, i don't have time to do everything, so I'm guessing i'll finish the...

Well to give some background info, I'm 25 and currently doing my first undergraduate year in physics. I'm unemployed at the moment, but was working until december and expect to get a new job soon, and that plus me having to relearn lots of high school stuff has led me to expect that...

http://www.khanacademy.org/ For me, the best possible ressource for an intro to high school physics and maths. Not a book though, rather a collection of tutorial videos and assorted exercises, but to me this makes it much more interesting.

From my experience, although you can go far by learning everything by yourself if you have great discipline, you'll never get as far and as efficiently as you could by learning and at the same time discussing with other intelligent and passionate people, and it's probably going to be less fun...

Thanks for all the answers! This is quite fascinating, i had the feeling that the linear algebra i did was kinda opening the way for a much more generalized and abstract approach to numbers, that could shed a new light on many other topics, but i haven't gone to that point yet. I am also...

I think that we are thinking too generally: some things in maths should be learned by hand, some things would immensely benefit from mathematica-like software. The good question is what topic falls in what category, and for whom. People studying maths in uni, for example, need to really learn...

For all of you talking about Euler's formula, i'd recommend looking at: http://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding-of-eulers-formula/ Which gives what to me is a very good explanation, kinda breaks the wonder in a way but deepens the understanding. I don't have a...

Well it's all in the title: i don't understand why we define vectors and complex numbers differently, with different properties (eg vector dot product and cross product and complex multiplication). After all, all a complex number is is a 2-uplet of real numbers, but that's exactly the same as a...

Great video Amanheis, thanks! That's exactly what i was thinking about!

Well I'm pretty much convinced! Some very good arguments here, thanks for the replies. I think the crux of the problem is that integration is a very complex thing to do, not like, i don't know, calculating the fraction of two real numbers. I was convinced the first time someone said that...

Humans can harvest grain by hand perfectly well, should we stop having machines do that for us?:-p More seriously, you misunderstand me: i never said one should not learn integration, i explicitly said i fully support learning what an integral is, I'm merely asking why one learns it in such...

Well I've just installed Mathematica on my laptop, and have been playing with it for a while. And this made me realize one thing: lots and lots of things that we learn in math lectures can be done very easily with a computer! derivation, integration, and probably much much more... This has...

Two words for you: Khan Academy. I know you said you wanted a real book and not an online ressource, but i'd still advise you to look at the website, I've found it great for a not scary introduction to maths.

My personal approach is to memorize as few things as possible, and to focus on understanding the concepts and being able to rederive most things each time you use them. Basic example for calculus, there's a rule for differentiation of products and one for differentiation of quotients, i just...

Wow, many thanks for the number and quality of the answers. And it's mostly good news too:-).