Comment by laurus
9 years ago
I have been inspired by some of your past posts suggesting a path for studying mathematics and doing graduate level work, and have changed my direction to try and follow what you suggest. Is there any way I can get in touch with you privately? (I'm not looking for help with specific technical questions if you're concerned about that.)
Are you doing the "Get the book. Read the book. Do the exercises." method? If you are, what's your experience?
I have had some books stored up since forever, and graycat's post did motivate me to finally get around to reading them, but I find it hard to integrate into my daily routine. His 24h challenge killed my productivity for a day, and I can't really afford to get distracted by some tricky proof when I'm supposed to do something else.
Yes, I'm working through a few books that way. I didn't see his 24h challenge so I'm not sure what it is, but what has been effective for me is blocking off a few hours every day to work on this stuff. I haven't gotten to the really difficult material he's talking about yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes. Good luck to both of us!
The exercises are here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024640), he challenged the commenters disagreeing with him to do these exercises in 24 hours. The tone was pretty abrasive, TBH, but I found the questions interesting enough that I tackled them in earnest.
I posted my solution attempts, so don't scroll down too far if you want to try them on your own ;)