What does Veeky Forums think of this book?

Link here if you want it for free (people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/)

Other urls found in this thread:

bookdepository.com/Historical-Introduction-Philosophy-Mathematics-Reader/9781472525673
bookdepository.com/From-Frege-Godel-Jean-Van-Heijenoort/9780674324497
bookdepository.com/Cambridge-Companion-Frege/9780521624794
bookdepository.com/Cambridge-Companion-Bertrand-Russell/9780521636346
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

I am not a fan in general of entire books just teaching you how to do a basic proof. A full coverage of rudimentary proof methods takes up about a chapter worth of pages.
The only real purpose of a book like this is padding out an "intro to proof" module into a full semester instead of two weeks.

This book in particular is worse at the same problems most of these have. The writing itself is padded to hell, the majority of the "proofs" they train you on are uninteresting bullshit (flip to page 103 for the eye-popping "if 7x+9 is even then x is odd") and the proofs themselves are written so stiffly that they make the hamburger method you learned in HS look avant-garde.

I'm using it as my first introduction to set theory and it seems alright so far. Its the only text I've seen with both exercises and solutions for set theory, which is nice.

I get where you're coming from but I think you know jus as well as I do that there are vast swathes of the population for whom elaborate, precise, logical argumentation which drives toward a particular conclusion is a strange and frightful enterprise, which requires slow development and hand-holding. Accepting this premise, I am therefore in support of these types of books existing, because about eighty percent of the population could actually use them, and say about fifty percent might actually get something out of one of these books if they internalize the ideas, even if it's just a rudimentary, albeit working, understanding.

That said, I have just one of these types of books on my shelf, bought as a curiosity once: Polya's How To Solve It. I've never read it, but I've flipped through it a few times and now I seem to remember why: /I already know all this stuff. I am not this book's core audience./

zybook on discrete math is better

People struggle with proofs at the beginning. They need to build up maturity somehow.

They could just start proving things.
Concepts in Euclidean geometry aren't that hard to comprehend.

See my above post . As a presumably already-educated person, you are underestimating how difficult it really is for the supermajority of the population, as I've already suggested, and even well-meaning young people of some intelligence, to get how doing proofs works. In this particular disciplines (mathematics), certain contrived jargon is entailed, and the doer has to be able to read and look past that in order to actually do activity.

Furthermore, all experience hath shewn that when people suck at doing something, they tend not to want to do it, or to try to avoid doing it unless absolutely necessary. The point being that where you and I delight in proving something, the average person does not, or if he can, then he has not been trained to appreciate the possibility of deriving pleasure from the activity (or more commonly he doesn't have the autist-bent for it, which is a different but not unrelated matter from general intelligence).

Strictly speaking, yes, your entire post here is correct. But you miss culture, and how we benefit by teaching precise thought to the general public. You also miss that the brainlet horde misses that the substance of Euclid, say, is not in "circle", "straight line", etc, but instead in demonstrating how (yes) rigorous argumentation toward some concrete end works, and then building upon the one result to justify later results. How to, given the first principles, argue a thing to ground, and then on top of arguing it, actually show it.

Why do you type like you wear a monocle
stop this shit

The supermajority of the population doesn't need to know how to write a proof. Proofs are only necessary for people intending to study higher mathematics, so when talking about how good or bad this book is an audience of mathematics students is the only useful one to consider.

Your central premise that "proofs are only necessary for people intending to study higher mathematics" is clearly false, and it goes to your whole false read and false bristle at my authoritarian, stuffy tone, which (your misread, not my tone) skirts the substance of the argument. Per your above, you also falsely confine a specific form of tight rational thinking to an audience of would-be mathematicians. It astonishes me that you haven't thought this through.

Does your aunt, or mine, need to know how to prove that pi is irrational? Nah, not necessarily. But that is just one specific example among many. Mathematics /in general/ necessarily entails applied logic, which goes into everything - politics, physical sciences, squishy social feels, and so on.

I'm not encouraging a society of cold autist robots (not completely anyway - okay, maybe partially :^). I'm instead encouraging a society where people are taught how to think logically, and at length and that there is pleasure to derived from the activity.

"Proofs", divorcing the word from its mathematical content, are quite necessary to legal arguments (albeit different assumptions), logic, general reasonable thought-patterns, and so on. This puts the lie to your wish to wish to relegate specific rational activity to some irrelevant corner. We should instead scientistically advocate specifically rational, scientistic activity for most.

your tone is not "authoritarian and stuffy", it's ridiculous and pretentious, and for anyone reading it it looks like you're absolutely retarded

>"Proofs", [...] are quite necessary to legal arguments [and other nonsense]
fuck off, the topic is introductory books on mathematical proofs

>bristle at my authoritarian, stuffy tone

And yet I won't because you know that I am right, because it goes like this.

The thread starts out innocently enough asking for thoughts on a mathematical intro-proof book (maybe) which I haven't read. Some user (you?) expresses a reasonable dislike of such books. I counter that such books, although they may be "cute" and annoying to educated people with some mathematical background, yet have value. Another post (you?) bristles harder, and now we're into full argumentation, which I love best.

The argument escalates. Who is who? This is something that must constantly be checked on Veeky Forums, so as to be right, and above all not to lose an argument.

I'm not fucking off because you have very clearly not thought through the implications of logic into everyday life. Logic has a political component which goes into the things that I have intimated, and once you've thought about these things, you'll get it too, albeit with some more bristling, maybe days later.

The central point of the argument in this thread thus far has been this: logical thinking is good, and it's good for the general public to learn how logical thinking works in mathematical terms. The big tell in your post is that you can't connect the process of a legal argument with a mathematical argument. You can't make that leap into praxis. It all uses logic brah. If you autistically sit in your one corner and refuse to engage its other uses, then you abdicate what is supposed to be a Universal Principle, and here I win the argument again. Get mad again.

>My argument was that those books still have value
Oh, fuck off. They obviously do, I agree with that. I disagree with everything you say though, because you keep spewing retarded shit like the autist you are.

>it's good for the general public to learn how logical thinking works in mathematical terms
>the general public who can't solve quadratic equations in college is going to find value in this
really makes you think

how many fedoras do you keep in your closet
there must be at least a dozen

man people who type like this get laughed at on r/atheism

you don't sound intelligent, you sound like you're all muffled because your head is 7 feet up your ass

again with the emotional fuck-offs, mm-mm-mm, now let me enjoy some emotional gratification of my own. But you've usefully conceded something even more central, which goes to my first post: /in principle, it's good to teach ~100 iq people basic ideas of mathematical logic, and totally along the lines of what I'd initially said, but yet which this post initially bristled (yes I like that word) against.

This is a silly post.

This is a silly post. Are you even saying anything?

Suppose x = 2k1 +1 such that 7x+9 = 2k2

> 7x+9 = 2k2
> 7(2k1+1) + 9 = 2k2
> 14k1 + 7 + 9 = 2k2
> 14k1 + 16 = 2k2
> 2(7k1 + 8) = 2k2

It works out for me

Jeez Louise, you're insufferable.

Oh shit this autist has become a regular

You're not entirely stupid though, any book recommendations?

I bought this and How to Prove It last week, they should be arriving soon along with some sourcebooks in mathematical philosophy and logic.

Apart from all the autism here today, has anyone had any good experiences with these proof books?

I'm in my third year of a mathematics degree but thought I'd polish up on my proof skills over the semester break to be more prepared for research next year.

Is it best to get a good general textbook and work on proofs from there?

It's a good book for intro. It does exactly what it's designed for.

I like the way you think! How about you follow me into this room and we can discuss your future!

>tfw a vcu student
is there actually a professor using this book, and for what course?

>Proofs are only necessary for people intending to study higher mathematics
Sorry but I have to disagree with this on two counts

One, there are students who may not yet have committed (or even considered committing) to studying higher mathematics, whom we must expose to proofs

Two, there are disciplines that you might not consider "higher" mathematics but still have great uses for proofs. "Computer science" comes to mind

>bought a free book
If you are in your third year, you should already be feeling comfortable with proofs. But How To Prove It >> any other intro to proofs

Thanks man.
It was cheap and I got it along with a good few other books as an add-on sort of item; besides, I can't seem to read from a screen with any great focus whatsoever. Fuck me, right?

Can someone tell me how this works?
10(pow)1.423200 is 26.497202

How can one multiply 10 1.423200 times?
I understand 10(pow) integers but what the fuck is decimal?

>mathematical philosophy
How is this book called? Seems like interesting stuff

Here's a link senpai: bookdepository.com/Historical-Introduction-Philosophy-Mathematics-Reader/9781472525673

And another to the logic one: bookdepository.com/From-Frege-Godel-Jean-Van-Heijenoort/9780674324497

One more thing:
Cambridge Companions are great places to begin if you're lost. I wished I started my study of Kant in particular with one of them.

As far as logic and mathematically philosophy is concerned, these are great:
bookdepository.com/Cambridge-Companion-Frege/9780521624794
bookdepository.com/Cambridge-Companion-Bertrand-Russell/9780521636346
And so on for Quine, etc.