Any Maths Lecturers in the House?

[Archie_tect]

Algorithms?

Doesn't sound much like pure maths to me!

I'd suggest that cryptography would be something interesting and lucrative to study later on.

BTW I found THIS LIST from 4 years ago. It might be worth looking at some of those books?

HA! Yes!... them as well!

 

[MartinQ]

Thanks everyone. I'm not a maths sort of person. Not deep anyway. I have to take my trousers off if I need to count past 10.

Without wanting to ask the obvious question, what does your son want to do? Just reading books is, even well written ones, doesn't help you learn deeply. Doing questions etc does.

The zeitz book is good as it's problem oriented. The ukmt Olympiad questions are available and more focussed on geometry and algebra. The latter is essential for a foundation in pure maths. The step (cambridge) exams/problems are similar, but are more aligned with the a level syllabus. All that would keep him busy for the next few months and get him thinking about solving harder problems. Martin Gardeners recreational maths puzzles are well written and numerous.

Programming wise, there is a cipher competition which is being rerun because of the lockdown. The advent of codes are good and have a maths flavour.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Am watching this with interest. Despite having 0 aptitude for math, the subject fascinates me.

The ancient Greeks had no symbol for zero (μηδέν), and did not use a digit placeholder for it. They seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number. They asked themselves, "How can nothing be something?", leading to philosophical and, by the medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero. -Wikipedia

How could it not?

Pythagoras had a problem with irrational numbers. I read that he had a student killed because he suggested the square root of two might not be a rational number. IIRC a rational number is a fraction. An irrational number cannot be expressed as a fraction.

 

[marinyork]

Schaum's outline series I would recommend for doing.

Any book on calculus. Any book on differential equations. Any book on linear algebra. Any book on abstract algebra.

There are plenty of good lecture series on-line if you have the patience from leading universities. MIT opencoursewear is particularly popular these days, but it's not necessarily the best. Watching them is more likely to make your son curious/give confidence than actual skills, but that could be said to be useful, especially over long blocks of time.

I'll ignore the 'pure' maths bit lol.

For the course listed it's all a bit vague, but likely to cover some of the stuff ^^.

Maths courses are very varied the higher you go, I still get snidey comments from lecturers/on-line from people who really should know better 'yeah, but I find it very surprising an undergraduate would have studied that and have that level of knowledge'. Yes, well be bloody surprised.

 

[Reynard]

Former Mechanical Engineering postgrad here...

Among the books I used in my undergrad were Engineering Mathematics by K A Stroud (already mentioned here several times, I see), and Mathematics for Engineers and Scientists - comes in 2 rather chunky volumes, but can't for the life of me remember who it's by. The first volume is A-level-ish stuff, the second volume takes it further into things like 3D surfaces, fourier series and the like.

 

[cyberknight]

@Hugh Manatee
brother just got back to me , he asked his students what they found useful and here it is , 1st one is a book and the others are pdf .
sorry its a screenie as i dont know how to select links from a text

 

[stephec]

Thanks everyone. I'm not a maths sort of person. Not deep anyway. I have to take my trousers off if I need to count past 10.

I do that as well, but I can still only get to ten and a half.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Thanks everyone. I'm not a maths sort of person. Not deep anyway. I have to take my trousers off if I need to count past 10.

Must get embarrassing in the supermarket when counting your change.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

@Hugh Manatee
brother just got back to me , he asked his students what they found useful and here it is , 1st one is a book and the others are pdf .
sorry its a screenie as i dont know how to select links from a text
View attachment 515074

View attachment 515074

Press and hold the text and it should give you an option to copy or send in a fresh text. You’ll then be able to paste it here. This is how it’s done on Android.

 

[cyberknight]

Press and hold the text and it should give you an option to copy or send in a fresh text. You’ll then be able to paste it here. This is how it’s done on Android.

i meant can you actually select a link an open it in a browser in android ?

 

[ClichéGuevara]

Anyone care to sum this thread up?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Pythagoras had a problem with irrational numbers. I read that he had a student killed because he suggested the square root of two might not be a rational number. IIRC a rational number is a fraction. An irrational number cannot be expressed as a fraction.

Rational numbers include the integers which ain’t fractions.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Anyone care to sum this thread up?

What before it increases at a geometric rate?

 

[wafter]

Engineering Mathematics by Stroud is a good primer - Basic & Advanced.

Well, that brings back terrifying memories! Might dig it out at some point to see how much less I can understand now than I did then. I'm thinking after 20yrs the whole thing will read like Chinese

 

[Yellow Fang]

Rational numbers include the integers which ain’t fractions.

9/3, 210/7, -9849/1