Can You Master Math and Physics Autodidactically?

[DeronTron]

Greetings Friends,

Am a "new fish" here that need some help.

Recently graduated and realized my path in life has lead for me to pursue Math and QFT. Also computer science and programming. Can teach myself nearly anything related to these subjects in particular but need organization to keep attention.

Wanted to know if there is solidarity of other members who can teach themselves math and physics out of textbooks with minimal schooling instruction (autodidacticism) quickly with high retention and if you can provide feedback on what textbooks to use and an organized, extreme study schedule.

Thank You,
-DT

 

[pallidin]

Though not textbooks, MIT video lectures on YouTube(as well as MIT's own site of course) are a great learning resource.
Good luck and welcome to PF!

 

[micromass]

Hi DeronTron!

What do you already know about math and physics?

 

[DeronTron]

Hello pallidin and MicroMass,

Thanks you for responding to me! Began Integration last morning and and I am halfway through Transcendentals Calculus 6e chapters right now. Could not get too much support at school and eventually found a physics friend in an organization, and he directed me to QFT book. I realize I need to learn all the math beforehand like Linear Algebra and Multivariable. I am solidifying physics with calculus to knock out 2 equation with one x. Also think QED is beautiful so I want to explore that after I am great with the friendly physics. All in all, I am not too far yet and I just started this Monday morning with d/dx and finished on Wednesday afternoon.

-DT

 

[cjl]

So you have not had any (formal) calculus, and you just started with differentiation on Monday? Enthusiasm is great, but I think any real QFT/QED will be a bit beyond you at this point. You can't learn all of calculus in a few weeks.

 

[Pengwuino]

You're probably years off from any serious QFT texts. It pretty much draws from an entire undergraduate education worth of material, so that will definitely be a long term goal for you. Keep chugging away, do all your math and then start going through physics texts.

 

[Polyrhythmic]

How can you realize that you want to pursue QFT when you are clearly at a stage where you basically couldn't understand a single bit of it (I don't want to offend you, but you seem to be basically at the starting point of your physics education?).

 

[Pengwuino]

How can you realize that you want to pursue QFT when you are clearly at a stage where you basically couldn't understand a single bit of it (I don't want to offend you, but you seem to be basically at the starting point of your physics education?).

To kinda add to this, remember that QFT is not so much a field - it's a tool used in various fields of physics. Not that that really means much because in the end people all have to study the same foundations and by then you'll have an understanding of what exactly you want to really study.

 

[jakeyboy]

Make sure you do a lot of problems in the textbooks you're reading, especially for math.

 

[DragonPetter]

Yes, I agree with jakeyboy, its important to work through as many problems as you can, and this is the most time consuming part. I don't know how autodialect works, so maybe you can retain everything and use that information "from scratch" to solve each problem you come across, but its much more beneficial to expose yourself to all the different ways the concept can be analyzed to get a true understanding.

Anyone can read through a textbook in a couple days and have most of the material make sense, but when you attempt to use it later on, it will only have stuck well if you worked through the problems and ideas.

 

[med17k]

Yes, I agree with jakeyboy, its important to work through as many problems as you can, and this is the most time consuming part. I don't know how autodialect works, so maybe you can retain everything and use that information "from scratch" to solve each problem you come across, but its much more beneficial to expose yourself to all the different ways the concept can be analyzed to get a true understanding.

Anyone can read through a textbook in a couple days and have most of the material make sense, but when you attempt to use it later on, it will only have stuck well if you worked through the problems and ideas.

So , anyone could read a QFT textbook in a couple of days and make sense of all material in it?