Learning about maths

Potency

I am currently in transition year and I want to improve my maths. I got an a in my jc, but that really means nothing in the world of maths on the internet! Maths at school is crap. All I could find was either childrens puzzles or complicated formula. Logic and reasoning is the area i want to improve in. Any advice? Thanks

ZorbaTehZ

Well, if it's a good book that you're looking for, then an excellent introduction to mathematical logic is this book. It starts off very tamely, so I'd say an eager transition year student should be able to follow it quite well.

Potency

Ok thanks for the link. I forgot to mention it's also to get start on computer programming. Obviously learning a language will help me, but I want to have the logical skills to code useful programs... If that makes sense

Fremen

Donald Knuth's "the art of computer programming" is the classic in the field for computer scientists. Not really for beginners though.

You could try killing two birds with one stone by working through the problems at http://projecteuler.net. If you can manage them, you'll walk through a CS degree.

I read "the mathematical experience" by Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh when I was in school. Interesting stuff.

Potency

Fremen wrote: »

You could try killing two birds with one stone by working through the problems at http://projecteuler.net. If you can manage them, you'll walk through a CS degree.

That's funny, because I came across that site a while back and wanted to know how to improve at them too!

Thanks for the titles

LeixlipRed

Had forgotten about project euler, I can't programme at all but I keep meaning to get into it. I have an old copy of maple on this pc, will that do the trick for me programming wise or do I need something else?

rjt

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Had forgotten about project euler, I can't programme at all but I keep meaning to get into it. I have an old copy of maple on this pc, will that do the trick for me programming wise or do I need something else?

Yeah, that should be fine. Most languages are fine, and some problems you can solve by hand anyway.

LeixlipRed

Ah yeh, I've done a few by hand, most of the first few problems are quite simple, just require some number crunching. Cheers.

LeixlipRed

Actually I don't have a new version of maple that works on this thing. Is there anywhere online I can run little programmes like those required or something simple I can download? Preferably something that doesn't involve me having to learn a whole language from scratch.

Fremen

Python's pretty handy, it was the first language I learned. Most of the project Euler problems don't need a whole lot of technical programming, just for-loops and if-statements.