The Missing First Page of Most Maths Notes

A lot of maths notes feel like they start on page two. You see a theorem, then a proof, then an example. But mathematics didn’t descend from the heavens in perfect notation. It was made slowly, and often painfully, by people who couldn’t leave a problem alone. So here’s a post on why I think every maths topic should begin with four things: the problem it was invented to solve, the person behind it, the core intuition, and only then, the formal theorem.

‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’

I’ve recently started playing video games again. That might sound trivial, but for a long time it wasn’t something I felt “allowed” to do. Somewhere along the way, games got under the category of being “unproductive”, and with that came the kind of guilt that lingers even when you’re supposedly relaxing. I’m very grateful to … Continue reading ‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’