Hacker News Reader

Comment by todayiamme | Hacker News Reader

Thanks a lot for commenting. Your comment was pretty insightful to me and validated a few of the assumptions I had made.

Although, it is highly unlikely that I will end up at a college which offers such a class (indian education pretty much sucks) I'll search OCW and iTunes U until I find something like that.

I want to play with abstract concepts like you've said, but I have internal problems which I need to overcome before reaching that goal. I can't sit down at stuff at any lengths of time like that until I am really engrossed stuff from my past comes up and I tend to get emotionally strained whenever this happens. I remember stuff that shouldn't be there in my mind in the first place and it is a constant battle to get stuff done.

So, is there any structure you use to get stuff done?

View on HN

Get this book: http://matrixeditions.com/UnifiedApproach4th.html and work through it if you want a rigorous treatment of MV calc and intro analysis.

Or this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0914098918/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp... for regular calculus. Read them, work through the problems, get an answer key, email your solutions to professors asking them to look at them.

You will get a good introduction to analysis (and exposure to many other parts of math) from those two books.

Don't sell Indian universities short. It is very hard to get a job in mathematics, which means that even at "bad" universities the mathematics faculty can be quite good.

That's the problem you see.

No one takes a job in mathematics, down here the trend is to do engineering get a MBA and work in Goldman Sachs. I wish this wasn't so, but it's quite true. There are precious few souls who try to buck the norm, but they are far and few in between.

Most mathematicians end up in coaching institutions which exist for one thing; to "crack" the IIT-JEE for the aforementioned rat race. I really wish I could sell them short, but outside the IISc and TIFR along with a few other research organizations there is hardly any innovation taking place. Most universities are intellectually dead and students study only to get "placements" in some company so that they can prepare for their MBA later on.

I know that this sounds like an excessive generalization, but I live near one of those prestigious IITs and I've worked with a PhD student as well as solicited the advice of a few professors. You know what shocked me? One of them, who is one of the original brilliant researchers and an ex-dean, told me point blank to get the hell out of this country and that my future isn't over here.

I really want to change things, but since I am in this system I simply can't do it. However, at least I can speak the truth. Please try to understand that I am not judging anyone in this context. It isn't anybody's fault. It's just a reflection of how the majority of this society thinks.

You misunderstand me. I am not saying that Indian Universities properly prepare you for a lifetime of success. I am saying that it is certain you can get the mathematical knowledge you want from them. As to whether that is the career you want or whether you want to be a mathematician - I have no idea. But if you want to learn and understand proof-based math, Indian universities are as good as everyone else's, and the good ones are quite good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com