A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart

A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart (read by Angela Harders)

[OkayDoood]

I came from Tibees video on this same essay. Thanks for reading it... Exactly what I searched for!

[bookmate]

This is the book for which I started to love math .

[SnakeAndTurtleQigong]

This story changed my entire perspective of mathematics.
Truly. Thank you for sharing this.

[karolissad.]

AAAAH I FEEL THIS ESSAY SO FUCKING MUCH I STARTED CRYING.

I am a 9th grader who learned a lot of math just through youtube. For example I got curious about sin, cos and tan (long before we actually heard about it in math class) and found it out, then started playing around with the idea, and figured out that sin of 90 i 1, cos of 90 is 0, and tan of 90 would be undefined by using the triangle analogy. Checked with a calculator, and was filled with awe and excitement when I was right!

And nowadays I actively dislike homework, but I do math in my freetime for pleasure! I find that the mathematical precision of everything helps me excape from the nuance and uncertainty of the real world.

The above was a sentence that I fully came up with alone before listening to this essay. I actually resonate with FUCKING EVERYTHING said in this book, and I don't know how to feel. Should I be happy that I know what math's is about? Should I be sad that the majority will never know this art? Should I spread the word to spread awareness? Or will awareness of something no one can control not change anything? No, that's wrong, cause the more people know, the more they'll actually be curious as to what is this 'art' I'm talking about, and actually WILL find out! I don't know how to end this rant, it's 3 am and I'm sobbing because of mathematics.

"There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics."

-Bertrand Russell

[KashTheStampede]

The difficulty that you had figuring out how to read the "two column proof" exactly demonstrates Paul's point.

[squeeerle]

This reminds me so much of things Maria Montessori said.
Thank you so much for making this video. I am a homeschool parent and my inspiration is renewed to help my kids discover.

[NosurfOfficial]

Thank you, I love audio reading while doing chores/mundane stuff and was afraid I was going to have to spend an hour visually reading this myself.

Literally everyone should be required to read/listen to this before entering Algebra 1. Would prevent so much pain and self-loathing.

[karolissad.]

Here I am romanticising math again at 2 am when I should definitely be sleeping.
I got a cool proofs book "proofs: a long-form mathematics textbook" by Jau Cummings, and finished an excercise that was really tough, saw a way to approach a proof to a thing, and (because I was home alone) I was actively jumping around in my house in excitement after I finally realised a solution after a good half-hour of contemplating the problem. Now I'm here, having written 6 and a half pages in my notebook on why one case is false. The excitement wore off by then and I checked to see the answer and the it was literally 3 paragraphs long, but I dont mind it. I came up with an original idea on my own and wrote out the proof for it and im happy. I was in the shower just now having felt that wave of happiness of finding something new by myself. It felt like getting back together with a lover that has been away for a month, that you didnt even realise how much you missed.
This was the dumbed down version of this comment. I originally wrote like a novel here about this book, my obsession with the author and was slowly getting to the problem that I solved and it still ended up an enormous comment😅

[jeffreyirland]

I have heard of this paper but I didn't who the author was or the name of the paper. I heard of the points being made in the paper and I resonated with those points. Thank-you for bring it to me, and even better, reading it to me. .... Thank-you.

[franky]

Thank you for uploading this!! God Bless You ❤️

[tonyxiong]

My gosh... I should of looked for an audio book of this... this would have saved me so much time... Also maybe I'm the only one but i do not resonate with the dude who wrote this. Talk about beating a dead horse beyond beating it.