Re: obtaining notes on classic textbooks

Stephen J. Herschkorn <sjherschko@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A strong suggestion: Get over this do-it-in-orderness. Almost always,
if you just move on, your brain keeps working in the background on the
question you couldn't get. Then comes the aha moment as you brush your
teeth.

I'm trying, but the habits of a lifetime are hard to change. Sometimes I
think I went into programming as a profession because of my predilection
for step-by-step, do-one-thing-at-a-time solutions. Unsurprisingly, I
like procedural languages much better than other approaches. But I see
your point. Sometimes I do skip over things and keep going. But if I
finish a chapter with two or three problems of a twenty-problem exercise
unfinished (or without absolute certainty that all the solutions are
correct) it *really* bothers me. I'm trying to get over that, though.

Besides, you can always ask for hints here on sci.math. As long as you
assure people it is self-study and show what you've tried, people in the
know are often very generous here. How did we ever survive before the
Internet?

I've already picked up a good bit just from reading sci.math. Sometimes,
when reading about something in a book, I'll remember something I saw
here that was beyond me at the time, but which suddenly makes sense.
One very valuable piece of advice I found here some time ago was
that it's OK to go back and re-read earlier chapters of a math book
when necessary. I always felt guilty about that; backtracking always
felt a little like cheating, because I thought I was supposed to "get"
everything the first time through. But then I read something here about
how math books aren't meant to be read straight through and that skipping
around as needed was expected. That was very reassuring.

--
Wayne Brown (HPCC #1104) | "When your tail's in a crack, you improvise
fwbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxx | if you're good enough. Otherwise you give
| your pelt to the trapper."
e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0 -- Euler | -- John Myers Myers, "Silverlock"
.

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