Comment by ggm
3 days ago
I want to say yes, but I have two counters. One is that math nerds at school insisted on intimidating for the win and I just hated it.
The second is notation. I had a snob teacher who insisted on using Newton not Leibniz and at school in the 1970s this is just fucked. One term of weirdness contradicting what everyone else in the field did. Likewise failure to explain notation, it's hazing behaviour.
So yes, everyone benefits from maths. But no, it's not a level playing field. Some maths people, are just toxic.
The different notations in calculus are unfortunately a historical accident and you're going to see all of them if you do anything with it (it's certainly not true that everyone in the field uses the same notation). I agree that it's frustrating but so are irregular verbs in Spanish/French/other languages - you can't really change it.
> One is that math nerds at school insisted on intimidating for the win and I just hated it.
Only an adult can look and see what that was - immature, insecure little boys, desperately trying to show off as bigger/more mature or kick down anybody showing any weakness or mistake. Often issues from home manifesting hard. Its trivial to look back without emotions, but going through it... not so much.
If my kids ever go through something similar (for any reasons, math nerds are just one instance of bigger issue) I'll try reasoning above, not sure if it will help though.
> Only an adult can look and see what that was - immature, insecure little boys, desperately trying to show off as bigger/more mature or kick down anybody showing any weakness or mistake. Often issues from home manifesting hard. Its trivial to look back without emotions, but going through it... not so much.
I'm not so sure that adults always get it or rise about this. This happens in the workplace all the time.
> One is that math nerds at school insisted on intimidating for the win and I just hated it.
For me the worst part was the teachers that encouraged that behavior and did the same.