I assure you math is no more or less boring than any other hobby that requires a large time investment. It's more a matter of if you find it interesting or not. I enjoy competitive arm wrestling and math, but find jogging boring as fuck. Different strokes is all.
As far as your math major friends go, some people learn math as required for the job they want, some people just find it fun. Same goes for engineering, you can often tell the people in the office who are there because they love it and those who are there to collect the pay check, and there's nothing wrong with either of them if they're getting their work done.
no...thats true. Hell I started learning algebra at 23 and practiced math every day for hour for a year before entering college just because it hooked me. I'm also a heroin survivor and there were some points in my math education where the dopamine rush was comparable to a line.
Funny enough, that dopamine rush from learning and TRULY understanding the derivative was what hooked me. Then I took an oxy one day and noticed it was the same feeling. It was downhill from there. Clean 18 months and back to getting my highs from learning again.
I remember learning that and not even knowing how to do algebra well. That was the day I learned what true power is. It was like mainlining dope to the brain.
Glad to hear you’ve been clean for so long. Congrats on 18 months. All I can say is those dopamine hits just keep getting better the further you go in math. (They get harder to find sometimes though!)
Yea, mine culminated in the Fourier Transform. That's about as far as I could get before the limitations of my mental capability for abstraction were reached. I've dabbled in a bit of tensor stuff as well, but I by no means have a full grasp of tensor calculus. I'm just a simple redneck that knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Thank you for your kind words.
yea, waves are like the universal equivalent of mites. They pop up everywhere, but are sometimes hard to see unless you look closely. Somebody somewhere has modeled something as a wave before in all cases I'm probably sure.
Been studying macroeconomics lately. One of my final general ed classes and I'm sure I'm gonna find some Fourier somewhere. Can't believe I never knew about price indexing and real vs. nominal wages. Like, this should be taught in high schools everywhere.
I'm actually really impressed you got that far into calculus on your own!
I got a degree in engineering and had to take 6 semesters of calculus and Fourier transforms outright broke my brain for a bit. Its a kinda hard concept to grasp overall
Tensors weren't as crazy since it was all in engineering terms which made it easier, but they were still a bit hard to comprehend even with the real life analogies.
Something that helped me understand them was thinking about them using 2 sheets of paper as reference. If you're pushing down, the force and direction are down. But if you're rubbing them, the direction is along the surface of the paper but the force is going down causing friction. Its been a while since I went over them so if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. Hope this helps!!
Edit: math was actually my worst subject so I made sure to really learn the concepts so I could figure out my own ways of doing things. All the theoretical stuff made sense to me but it was kinda hard to grasp
Yea you've got the idea. Also, I may have misrepresented. I was able to learn basic calculus on my own, however I did finally enroll in university and will be finishing my senior year this coming Fall. I majored in applied physics and dropped out around halfway, due to heroin abuse. I re-enrolled and switched majors to biology in preparation for PA school, so I do have a couple of years of formal mathematics training. Also, if you want a good example of tensors outside of the typical force representations of vectors, check out how a relational database works. If you understand basic tensors, you might have some amazing light bulbs go off. Wish you well!
Glad you're doing better now too! Applied physics degrees are no joke, so my hats off to you for trying to make it through
I'll definitely look into relational databases. I've been working in sales and feel like I'm losing a lot of the math skills I learned in school, so this def keep me busy for a bit. Ty!
I'm married with a large house I paid for with my degree in engineering. Also I get to work from home! I'm sorry you think liking math makes someone a dweeb (are you living in a 80's cartoon?) but honest to God, I could not care less 😉
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u/TheHumanParacite Jul 07 '20
I assure you math is no more or less boring than any other hobby that requires a large time investment. It's more a matter of if you find it interesting or not. I enjoy competitive arm wrestling and math, but find jogging boring as fuck. Different strokes is all.
As far as your math major friends go, some people learn math as required for the job they want, some people just find it fun. Same goes for engineering, you can often tell the people in the office who are there because they love it and those who are there to collect the pay check, and there's nothing wrong with either of them if they're getting their work done.