On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 01:28:05AM -0800, Max Rible <slothman at amurgsval.org> wrote: > On Sat, 2003-02-01 at 19:18, Casey Rousseau wrote: > > Damien Sullivan wrote: > > > > > [snip] > > > Of course, my life has been such that I got to view calculus > > > as basic math, properly possessed by anyone around me. Yes, > > > this attitude leads to problems as I meet more people... > > > > But of course calculus is basic math. Before that it's all arithmetic and > > geometry. :) > > In college, I had the fortune to take a math class that showed how > to derive the real numbers and modern mathematics from very limited > set theory-- just a handful of basic postulates and lots of logic > were all it took to get to arithmetic, calculus, and beyond. > At that point, I finally understood why *every* year in grade > school, math started out with a week of set theory and then > dropped the topic like a hot potato: they were trying to pass on > this beautiful vision, but were utterly failing to do so. Count yourself lucky -- I had set theory dropped on my head my first year of college. Hadn't seen anything like it before. Sucked. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp