
Punk Mathematics - sz
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1541803748/punk-mathematics
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m0nastic
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.

~~~
sz
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.

~~~
m0nastic
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.

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mitko
"Math is a framework for solving problems"

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

~~~
samatman
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.

~~~
mitko
"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.

~~~
snikolov
I also think that aliens might well have completely different mathematics. To
me, the most compelling reason to think that is that the development of
mathematics is rooted in our conscious perception of the world around us. Our
conscious perception is rooted in how our brains work, how our world looks,
and how the stimuli from the world are connected to the brain.

Consider for example the theory of differential geometry. Would we care about
objects such as curves, surfaces, and manifolds if they (well, their low
dimensional special cases) weren't ubiquitous in our world?

Would we care about permutations and symmetry if some people hadn't played
around with arranging sets of objects?

Would we care about waves (sonic, fluid, E&M) if we didn't observe water
flowing?

Even problems that seem to be mere puzzles with no basis in the ``real world''
are inextricably linked to the conscious perceptions that we learned to form
by living in the world.

There was a great push to axiomatize all of mathematics beginning in the early
20th century and now it can be said that a lot of mathematics really is a
collection of maps from assumptions to statements.

It could be that alien mathematicians have reached a collection of maps
isomorphic to the one we have, but they ascribe completely different meanings
to them.

Another possible scenario is that within the universe of all mathematics, our
conscious perceptions and cognitive biases have carved out some subset, and
alien mathematicians have carved out another. These two subsets could be so
vastly different that they are mutually unintelligible, and very difficult
(maybe impossible) to translate between the two mathematical languages. Even
if we could translate the alien mathematics to a symbolic language familiar to
us, and check that their theorems are correct, because of the vast difference
in meanings ascribed to these two sets of mathematics, we just might not be
able to understand what the alien mathematics _means_!

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DaemonXI
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?

~~~
sz
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.

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coryl
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!

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joe_the_user
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...

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whackedspinach
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>.

