Punk Mathematics

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1541803748/punk-mathematics

by sz • 16 years ago

139 17 16 years ago

DaemonXI• 16 years ago

I'd be interested if he had given me a reading from the book. I don't understand exactly what he's selling me - a cool version of a Dummies book, perhaps?

sz3• 16 years ago

It's a cool math textbook, yes.

What I love about it—his main point—is his conjecture that it's not a far step from the "challenge everything" mentality of the original punk movement to "challenge everything" mentality that the brightest kids engage math with. Just apply some rigorous thinking.

It's a different way to approach math, directed to an audience that typically doesn't do a whole lot of it.

m0nastic3• 16 years ago

I've watched a bunch of Kickstarter videos the past few days for various projects, and I think their model is fantastic.

I think the idea of a Punk Math book is pretty interesting, but honestly, I think he should do a lecture series (I think his personality would really come across better in that medium). He seems like a sort of Bill Nye for mathematics.

tommynazareth• 16 years ago

He does a podcast with another guy. It's not very technical, but it is pretty entertaining. I think they're taking a break through the summer.

m0nastic3• 16 years ago

I'm listening to the first episode right now. So far I dig it.

edit: I just realized neither of us posted the link to the podcast. It's at: http://www.mathforprimates.com

sz3• 16 years ago

Exactly! Maybe he and Salman Khan should get together and do something.

This could be a great candidate for a multimedia textbook... 10-minute videos + notes + interactive proofs?

Virtually nobody knows what "math" actually is before college. Even in college I suspect the number is still low. If nothing else his project has the potential to fix that.

m0nastic3• 16 years ago

Yeah, I was terrible at math in college. To be honest, I was terrible at everything, but math especially. It wasn't until a few years ago that I started to take an interest and go back and learn the things that I struggled with then.

Ten years seemed sufficient enough for me to place enough value on math that I was able to overcome whatever my original deficiency was. I'm all for finding a way to teach math that helps others in the same way.

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

I helped out with some punk math classes at Portland Freeskool circa 1997.

Math is pretty DIY since you don't need many resources.

'course by the folks from that era are scattered to the wind, as is normal for such scenes...

coryl• 16 years ago

Kickstarter is starting to look like an excellent pre-sales engine. Look at all the money he's already "raised" without even a product. Just a nicely edited video pitch, and he's off to the races!

whackedspinach• 16 years ago

These kind of "cool" textbooks really interest me. I wonder if it would be comparable to something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whys_(poignant)_Guide_to_Ruby.

mitko2• 16 years ago

"Math is a framework for solving problems"

I've never heard a better concise (one-sentence) description of what mathematics is.

samatman• 16 years ago

Prayer is also a framework for solving problems, albeit less useful in the general case. The description is not sufficient.

Personally, I'm quite influenced by Pi's "Mathematics is the language of nature", though the sentiment dates at least to Galileo. For those of us who believe that alien intelligence must BY DEFINITION have recognizable mathematics (because we have no other way to recognize intelligence), this points to that universal quality, and also hints at the improbable success of mathematics in describing and predicting the physical universe.

davepeck• 16 years ago

(I want to apologize. I am reading HN on an iPad. I decided to upvote this comment and instead fat-fingered it down, apparently to zero. Why do the voting arrows disappear after a vote is cast?)

mitko2• 16 years ago

"Prayer is also a framework for solving problems"

Agreed. They stay on top of different assumptions: Prayer supposes that there is "god" that can overrule everything, mathematics stands on top of axioms.

Mathematics, even though can be amazingly beautiful in certain cases, is nothing more than a collection of maps (theorems, problems) from assumptions (axioms,definitions) to statements(solutions, proofs).

One of the awesome things about it is that the axioms and definitions are extremely portable to many different domains (in nature). The notion of "number" can be applied to almost everything around us, euclidean geometry laws fit pretty well (yet not perfect) the surrounding physics reality.

Yet, aliens may have completely different mathematics, built on completely different set of axioms, applicable to their needs and easy to process for their "brains". IMHO, it is a little arrogant of us humans to assume that alien intelligence would have the same type of mathematics as us.

bhiggins• 16 years ago

How about math is the study of interesting axiomatic systems?

Punk Mathematics

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