Learning Maths - where to start???
I sent some correspondance to an online friend the other day whom I know is a dabbler in many intellectual pursuits. I wrote to him because I've started to get interested in learning mathematics - I have to admit that I'm a dummy at maths. I'm quite good with numbers and simple creative numerical analysis but, when it comes to some of those "math sciences" I have no idea. What I wanted to know is... Is Mathematics similar to computer programming languages?
He returned my correspondance with some useful pointers as to where I might head to find out more about maths and also chimed in with a listing of some of the different streams of maths:
number theory ... probability and statistics ... complex analysis ... calculus and differential equations ... game theory ... real analysis ... cellular automata ... set theory ... logic ... numerical methods ... combinatorics ... geometry ...
The problem with Maths is that it seems so damned big! Surely maths is like learning a massive programming language - you learn the keywords, the syntax, the loops and conditionals, variable usage, and the common algorithms. In fact, I also imagine that the different Math streams which I've shown above could probably be compared to different streams of programming within a language...
database programming ... game programming ... windows applications ... web applications ... framework building ...
Each particular stream has it's own "objects" and terminology but each one uses the core features of the language and "the framework" to solve different problems."
I guess the trick to learning Maths is that, like programming, you need to know where to start. Let's see, I can count... I know my simple times tables... I sorta remember long division and Pythagoras' theorem; hrmmmm let's see I think that I'll start with set theory!