Read this. I'm happy the guy explains the concepts as well as he does; at one point, he writes: "A manifold that bounds cannot have a boundary. For example, the boundary of a disk is a circumference, but the circumference has no boundary (the boundary of the boundary of the disk is zero)." Without the ensuing explanation, that first sentence would have made no sense to me, and I'd have been completely lost.
(Do watch out for the typos in the blog post, though; if you're already feeling off-balance from the terminology, the typos can throw you further for a loop.)
_
This is precisely why I stopped taking math after completing Multivariable Calculus and Differential Equations. Too fricking hard to understand.
ReplyDeleteI kind of wish I'd continued math beyond calculus in high school, but it was not to be, and I'm not sure I could have handled it, anyway. I was never logical enough. The same problem hampers my ability to understand symbolic logic. Or be a lawyer. Or be an analytical philosopher. Or program computers. Damn, I'm just unmarketable, aren't I?
ReplyDelete