Re: What symbolic maths system compliments study of Physics (currently the Feymann Lectures)

From: Richard Fateman (fateman_at_cs.berkeley.edu)
Date: 09/17/04 

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 14:25:39 GMT

I vote for pencil and paper.

I haven't looked at the Feynman lectures in a long
time, but my guess is that learning a CAS at the
same time would be a distraction from the physics.

That is, instead of learning the physics you would
be trying to debug your program... or worse, debugging
the CAS system which is behaving in some unreasonable
fashion (that is, you have encountered a "feature"
that might be considered a bug by reasonable people.)

On the other hand, you may find that a CAS is worth
learning, as David Park suggests. There are a few
choices, and a number of books for each.

Richard Feynman was one of the early users of
Macsyma (circa 1972), using it remotely at MIT
over the arpanet (predecessor of internet). There
were no restrictions at that time on logging in.
You just entered your chosen login name, no password,
and you were given an account.
When we noticed we had a new user named "feynman" there
was some excitement. We did confirm that it was
Prof. Feynman.

RJF

David Park wrote:

> "AaronB" <amino_acid456@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:564024e.0409161620.365e18ec@posting.google.com...
>
>>"Kunle Odutola" <noemails@replyToTheGroup.nospam.org> wrote in message
>
> news:<cibug5$jdf$1@sparta.btinternet.com>...
>
>>>I'm reading the Feymann lectures. I am following the maths but would
>
> like to
>
>>>combine this with learning how to use and apply a tool such as
>>>Mathematica/MathPad/Mupad/MatLab/Maple/Axiom (don't know much about the
>>>strengths and weakness of these tools yet).
>>>
>>>Any recommendations please?. Which would best serve me as a tool for
>>>understanding, documenting and experimenting with the sort of
>
> mathematics I
>
>>>will encounter in the lectures and beyond as my knowledges of physics
>
> grows?
>
>>>Kunle
>>
>>Pencil and paper is usually the best way. It certainly doesn't hurt to
>>know how to use one of these math programs, but in general, you should
>>know how to do the problems by hand first.
>>
>>A.
>
>
> I disagree. You can do much more and much better with a CAS. And the sooner
> you learn the CAS the better. A CAS will allow you to do more difficult
> calculations, do more calculations. I use Mathematica, but other CASs will
> probably also work. With Mathematica notebooks one can make a nice blend of
> text cells, calculations, graphics and animations. I am using Mathematica to
> work through an introductory general relativity text and am able to do ALL
> the text derivations, calculations and exercises by calculation, with no
> word processing mode. I am often able to go beyond the text or improve on it
> because of the capabilities of the CAS.
>
> If you plan a technical career learn a CAS as early as possible and learn it
> well. It will make the technical work far easier. Of course you will still
> have to think. A CAS will not usually solve your problems with a few key
> strokes. Learning how to apply the CAS to your problems will actually force
> you to go through the logical steps of the problem and program general
> routines that you can use in your future work. In other words, a CAS
> documents and organizes what you have learned in a way that you can actually
> apply in the future. It's not just a piece of paper with some calculations
> but an active and interactive document and resource.
>
>
> David Park
> djmp@earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/
>
>

Relevant Pages