Hacker News Reader

When i was in College, my wish when learning Math is that:

- Hey, wait! You don't tell me why we need to learn this concept

Yes, most of my lecturers use Math to teach Math. It's not useful to me, or i can't learn that way.

A wish is just a wish though.

What if the aim is to solve problems that have never been solved before? In which case, you don't know which tools you will need before. You are stuck just learning a bunch of tools and hoping you learned the correct ones.

That's how life is. Some (most) times you don't know what tools you will need in the future.

All tools were created to solve at least one problem. Explaining what that problem is, and how the tool is useful for solving it, goes a long way towards making it easy to figure out the abstract template of tool application. Going a step further and explicitly explaining why the tool works and when it doesn't is the marrow of an actual education that can be used out of context.

Agreed, I wish professors were required to take a course in Basic Pedaegogy for Math, as soon as someone invents it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com