Oh, yeah, I actually already knew about the Spivak pronouns! That’s partly why I chose them for myself on here. And also because I like them.
But yeah, Spivak is great! My geometry/topology course my first year of grad school had us working out of Spivak’s “A Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry”. In hindsight, a very tough book to learn from, rather old-fashioned, but my professor was like a billion years old, so it makes sense he would choose an old book!
that makes sense, I just had to share on the improbability that you didn’t already know 😅
and that’s awesome - I’m so jealous, I would have loved to have taken a topology course let alone a graduate level topology course 😭
I do remember Spivak’s writing being poor pedagogy but succinct and elegant, it does seem like some kinds of mathematicians are like this but it’s inaccessible and leaves too much work for the reader, esp. students. I always felt like an outsider that way in math, like my brain just didn’t work the way everyone else’s did. I really enjoyed Morris Kline’s Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, placing math in its larger humanistic context was really compelling and I found it made me much more invested in learning and understanding the math.
And Paul Lockhart’s Mathematician’s Lament, Measurement, and Arithmetic have radically changed the way I view and interact with mathematics and has been really helpful for me.
Oh, yeah, I actually already knew about the Spivak pronouns! That’s partly why I chose them for myself on here. And also because I like them.
But yeah, Spivak is great! My geometry/topology course my first year of grad school had us working out of Spivak’s “A Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry”. In hindsight, a very tough book to learn from, rather old-fashioned, but my professor was like a billion years old, so it makes sense he would choose an old book!
that makes sense, I just had to share on the improbability that you didn’t already know 😅
and that’s awesome - I’m so jealous, I would have loved to have taken a topology course let alone a graduate level topology course 😭
I do remember Spivak’s writing being poor pedagogy but succinct and elegant, it does seem like some kinds of mathematicians are like this but it’s inaccessible and leaves too much work for the reader, esp. students. I always felt like an outsider that way in math, like my brain just didn’t work the way everyone else’s did. I really enjoyed Morris Kline’s Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, placing math in its larger humanistic context was really compelling and I found it made me much more invested in learning and understanding the math.
And Paul Lockhart’s Mathematician’s Lament, Measurement, and Arithmetic have radically changed the way I view and interact with mathematics and has been really helpful for me.