21 I 2023

29 VII 2021

got vaxxed today and spent the rest of the day with bf

sleep: trash. been falling asleep at 4am again, "i'll try to go to bed before 3" my ass

concentration: alright. i'm as always extremely productive and i didn't find it hard to focus recently

no phone time: alright. i'm so immersed in my work that i forget to check the phone and i don't really feel inclined to talk to people or look at social media anyway

didn't do any pure math today, did some applied instead, which was working on SVM with friends from my uni. we got stuck on solving the quadratic programming problem but we're almost done

tomorrow i'm planning to go back to the chapter about operations on topo spaces, finish the art comission I got and finish some functionalities in the digital animation project i'm doing with bf. much finishing, this is how i like things to be

29 X 2022

another exhausting week finally over! fortunately I have two extra weekend days, so I can rest and do my homework without stressing over it

I found another promising youtube channel about learning. and "insanely difficult subjects" sounds about right when it comes to everything that's happening in math

I wish there was more content about learning math specifically. the tips I see, however good and useful for studying memory-based stuff such as biology or history, don't seem to work for math

for now my best method is to study the theory from the textbook, trying to prove everything on my own or if that fails, working through the proofs, coming up with examples of objects and asking (possibly dumb) questions that I then try to answer. afterwards I proceed to solving exercises

recently I've been studying mainly commutative algebra, in particular the localization

we didn't spend much time discussing local rings so I had to find some useful properties on my own. the whole idea of "local properties" is an interesting one and I definitely want to read more about it

I find it to be much more elegant to study localization through its universal property and exact sequences rather than through calculation on elements. it's funny how you can cheat so many of our homework problems by knowing basics of category theory and a little bit of homological algebra

I wonder if it's possible to learn math using mind maps, never actually tried. here is my attempt at doing that for one of the subjects in complex analysis:

other than studying I had to prepare a presentation for one of my courses

the topics were given to us by the professor so I thought it would be boring and technical, but I got lucky to discuss the possible generalizations of the Jordan theorem

now I'm gonna talk about something more personal

this week has been difficult because my brain doesn't enjoy existing. some days I had so many meltdowns and shutdowns, I could barely think and speak, let alone study difficult subjects in math. it's really disappointing, as I thought it got better after introducing new medication, but apparently I still can't handle time pressure and I break very easily when emotions become overwhelming (which they frequently do). one of the most discouraging parts of a neurodivergent brain is that you can't always say "alright then I'll just work harder" when you see that the situation requires it. you can't, because your brain has a certain threshold of "how much can you take before you snap" and no tips for studying when you're tired can change that. if you try, you'll just have a meltdown and your day is over, the rest of it must be spent regaining your strength and all you can do is hoping that tomorrow will be better

I wish I could always simply enjoy math and see it as an escape route from a confusing world of human interaction and unpredictable emotions, but whenever there is a deadline or grading criteria, I can hardly enjoy it anymore. I know that this is not what it's always gonna be, the further I go the less deadlines and exams we have, so I must wait and one day it might be okey

since june I've been trying to discuss accommodations regarding adhd and autism with my university but the process takes forever and I'm slowly losing hope that I will ever have it easier

nonetheless, I'm willing to do everything to achieve the goal of spending my days alone working on developing some new theory. just a few more years and I might start living the dream

rb this with ur opinion on this shade of pink:

me when Čech cohomology

i love math. i hate math. i can do it all day, everyday. i cannot solve a single question. it's my favorite subject. I would rather kms than open the book. it's beautiful and everything makes sense and it's the best. it's fucking useless and nothing is logical and it's the worst. it's the loml. it's my arch nemesis.

i’m starting a collection

I have a bunch of followers and mutuals that I never even talked to and I know some of you guys are very into math too, so let's get to know each other, shall we?

if you feel like you'd enjoy talking to me then go ahead, write me a message! I just realized I never said something like this and I would really love to have conversations with like-minded people

if this feels familiar, you can reblog this post to invite people to talk to you

good point! I should add to my list the golden rule of asking yourself "does this thing that I'm currently trying actually work for me". in the meantine I had a conversation with a friend who said that for her not caring about the aesthetics of notes decreases the effectiveness of studying, my perspective definitely isn't The Only Correct One

the best method is the one that works. it's perfectly okay to benefit from notes, from making them pretty, it's also perfectly okay to limit the notes. it was a surprising discovery for me that taking notes doesn't help with my learning, because my whole life I've been told to always take notes. but of course this isn't going to work for everyone, thank you for pointing this out

tips for studying math

I thought I could share what I learned about studying math so far. it will be very subjective with no scientific sources, pure personal experience, hence one shouldn't expect all of this to work, I merely hope to give some ideas

1. note taking

some time ago I stopped caring about making my notes pretty and it was a great decision – they are supposed to be useful. moreover, I try to write as little as possible. this way my notes contain only crucial information and I might actually use them later because finding things becomes much easier. there is no point in writing down everything, a lot of the time it suffices to know where to find things in the textbook later. also, I noticed that taking notes doesn't actually help me remember, I use it to process information that I'm reading, and if I write down too many details it becomes very chaotic. when I'm trying to process as much as possible in the spot while reading I'm better at structuring the information. so my suggestion would be to stop caring about the aesthetics and try to write down only what is the most important (such as definitions, statements of theorems, useful facts)

2. active learning

do not write down the proof as is, instead write down general steps and then try to fill in the details. it would be perfect to prove everything from scratch, but that's rarely realistic, especially when the exam is in a few days. breaking the proof down into steps and describing the general idea of each step naturally raises questions such as "why is this part important, what is the goal of this calculation, how to describe this reasoning in one sentence, what are we actually doing here". sometimes it's possible to give the proof purely in words, that's also a good idea. it's also much more engaging and creative than passively writing things down. another thing that makes learning more active is trying to come up with examples for the definitions

3. exercises

many textbooks give exercises between definitions and theorem, doing them right away is generally a good idea, that's another way to make studying more active. I also like to take a look at the exercises at the end of the chapter (if that's the case) once in a while to see which ones I could do with what I already learned and try to do them. sometimes it's really hard to solve problems freshly after studying the theory and that's what worked out examples are for, it helps. mamy textbooks offer solutions of exercises, I like to compare the "official" ones with mine. it's obviously better than reading the solution before solving the problem on my own, but when I'm stuck for a long time I check if my idea for the solution at least makes sense. if it's similar to the solution from the book then I know I should just keep going

4. textbooks and other sources

finding the right book is so important. I don't even want to think about all the time I wasted trying to work with a book that just wasn't it. when I need a textbook for something I google "best textbooks for [topic]" and usually there is already a discussion on MSE where people recommend sources and explain why they think that source is a good one, which also gives the idea of how it's written and what to expect. a lot of professors share their lecture/class notes online, which contain user-friendly explenations, examples, exercises chosen by experienced teachers to do in their class, sometimes you can even find exercises with solutions. using the internet is such an important skill

5. studying for exams

do not study the material in a linear order, instead do it by layers. skim everything to get the general idea of which topics need the most work, which can be skipped, then study by priority. other than that it's usually better to know the sketch of every proof than to know a half of them in great detail and the rest not at all. it's similar when it comes to practice problems, do not spend half of your time on easy stuff that could easily be skipped, it's better to practice a bit of everything than to be an expert in half of the topics and unable to solve easy problems from the rest. if the past papers are available they can be a good tool to take a "mock exam" after studying for some time, it gives an opoortunity to see, again, which topics need the most work

6. examples and counterexamples

there are those theorems with statements that take up half of the page because there are just so many assumptions. finding counterexamples for each assumption usually helps with that. when I have a lot of definitions to learn, thinking of examples for them makes everything more specific therefore easier to remember

7. motivation

and by that I mean motivation of concepts. learning something new is much easier if it's motivated with an interesting example, a question, or application. it's easier to learn something when I know that it will be useful later, it's worth it to try to make things more interesting

8. studying for exams vs studying longterm

oftentimes it is the case that the exam itself requires learning some specific types of problems, which do not really matter in the long run. of course, preparing for exams is important, but keep in mind that what really matters is learning things that will be useful in the future especially when they are relevant to the field of choice. just because "this will not be on the test" doesn't always mean it can be skipped

ok I think that's all I have for now. I hope someone will find these helpful and feel free to share yours

i was supposed to mention something short about this one medieval guy who invented graphing functions and i just spent like all afternoon just reading about his work with zero words written because it’s all so interesting???

he was a theologian, as many mathematicians were in the past, and the first quantities he graphed were “temperature, pain, and grace” ??

he showed to know about integration by explaining that feeling pain twice as intense for a given amount of time is technically the same as feeling the less intense pain for half the amount of time, because the graphs of both pains across time were rectangles of the same area.

and he classified things as linear or non linear and said that the latter were qualities to describe a soul “occupied by many thoughts and affected by many passions”

it’s always so cool to learn how natural philosophers viewed the world. they draw conclusions that come from their religious or spiritual ideals but that are ultimately the basis of how we understand math or science today.

yes! the same goes for teaching btw. people who just recite the textbook to you are not good teachers. the key to a good explanation of a concept is understanding why someone does not understand it in the first place. and doing that to your own mind when trying to learn something is the point of good learning

also maybe it’s just bc i have a very autistic interest in sociology and human behavior but i like to understand why people think and behave the way they do. it’s been an asset to my ability to advocate for myself and for others. if i know why someone believes something rather than just what they believe, i can have an actual conversation with them. so it always boggles my mind when ppl insist it doesn’t matter why someone believes something, they’re Just Wrong And Should Change Their Mind. like yeah if i could snap my fingers and make someone not transphobic i’d do that but i live on planet earth so the only thing that is gonna potentially get someone to change their mind as long as they’re not too far gone is having an honest conversation with them. i have changed several minds this way, including my own parents, so it’s frustrating to see ppl discouraging this.

in a way. over the last two years or so. mathematics has become the altar at which I pour out my private grief, and transmute it to something like solace. it does not particularly matter to me if I am ever any good at it. what matters is that the effort I apply to it is rewarded by understanding. I have no natural aptitude for it; I am climbing this hill because it was the steepest and least hospitable to me. there is less agony in the gentler slope, but less valor