"How mathematics works rests on no absolute timeless standard, despite what many assume today, given its precision and efficacy"
Exactly this is key to teach people to like math, stop trying to train me in it. It's like math has become so saddled with politics or ego that people want to train everybody in the same system of values and they are willing to lie to get you to use to the same symbols, the same way of thinking, etc.
Disclaimer, I'm really bad at math. But I hate how math and physics are taught, it should always be taught from a spirit of exploration as if you are discovering new islands or continents and you get to name the things you discover.
Try getting a math professor to admit that he doesn't actually have an intuitive understanding for any of the stuff he teaches. I believe the vast majority probably don't have any such understanding but they are understandably scared to admit it. It's a cycle of lies.
Who are you to say that I have to use that particular symbol or term to describe this math?
People have a large stake in interopability between mathematicians so they teach us these symbols as if they are facts of nature when in reality they are just arbitrary drawings that people invented to name stuff that they found in nature. Fields of math stack on top of each other because they happen to work together but in reality we dont know why. They just do and it's interesting that they do so we keep doing it that way because it works and hasnt broken yet and it's useful. There were cultures that did math with a completely different set of symbols, not just symbols but even way of thinking. Multiplication, addition, entire base ideas were thought of differently. Yet our current way of doing math is taught to us as dogmatic, accept it or you are a troublemaker. No wonder people dont like math, nobody wants to be a slave to somebody else's ideas and value system.
Every math class should start with something like "This is the symbol for addition: '+'. This was invented by some person, you could use something else, you could try to find some other way to add numbers but the way we teach you to think has proven to be fairly fast and convenient so we teach it."
That in my opinion is how you make people interested in math because you treat them as equals instead of subjects to be trained in your favorite cultural way of doing math.
Math should be seen like a weird natural phenomenon that we observe, from the getgo. From childhood on. Explain it like that and I believe kids (and adults) will love to discover more about it.
Exactly this is key to teach people to like math, stop trying to train me in it. It's like math has become so saddled with politics or ego that people want to train everybody in the same system of values and they are willing to lie to get you to use to the same symbols, the same way of thinking, etc. Disclaimer, I'm really bad at math. But I hate how math and physics are taught, it should always be taught from a spirit of exploration as if you are discovering new islands or continents and you get to name the things you discover. Try getting a math professor to admit that he doesn't actually have an intuitive understanding for any of the stuff he teaches. I believe the vast majority probably don't have any such understanding but they are understandably scared to admit it. It's a cycle of lies. Who are you to say that I have to use that particular symbol or term to describe this math? People have a large stake in interopability between mathematicians so they teach us these symbols as if they are facts of nature when in reality they are just arbitrary drawings that people invented to name stuff that they found in nature. Fields of math stack on top of each other because they happen to work together but in reality we dont know why. They just do and it's interesting that they do so we keep doing it that way because it works and hasnt broken yet and it's useful. There were cultures that did math with a completely different set of symbols, not just symbols but even way of thinking. Multiplication, addition, entire base ideas were thought of differently. Yet our current way of doing math is taught to us as dogmatic, accept it or you are a troublemaker. No wonder people dont like math, nobody wants to be a slave to somebody else's ideas and value system. Every math class should start with something like "This is the symbol for addition: '+'. This was invented by some person, you could use something else, you could try to find some other way to add numbers but the way we teach you to think has proven to be fairly fast and convenient so we teach it." That in my opinion is how you make people interested in math because you treat them as equals instead of subjects to be trained in your favorite cultural way of doing math. Math should be seen like a weird natural phenomenon that we observe, from the getgo. From childhood on. Explain it like that and I believe kids (and adults) will love to discover more about it.