Post by @blakestacey@awful.systems

2026-09-17 22:12 UTC

Real analysis is definitely the kind of course that can benefit from an on-ramp. It’s often a student’s first encounter with proofs that involve a lot of machinery: theorem after theorem of epsilon-delta business to establish something that you didn’t doubt in the first place. I think it’s easy to get lost in the details there, particularly if care isn’t taken to explain what confusions these methods were devised to avoid.

Replies (1)

@istewart@awful.systems 2026-09-19 00:14

The OpenStax textbook covers the development of the general equations of the various conic sections. If the Stewart book covers that in such detail, it must be jammed into the appendices or exercises someplace. I’ll have to find the time to go over that, at least; I still don’t have a great intuition for hyperbolas. Levi-Civita_symbol and the Einstein summation convention Yes, this looks like what I need to understand the negative j term in the cross product formula. Cambridge looks to have the 3rd edition of Boas’ book up for download, so I have a copy now. We’ll see how well I comprehend it, I feel like I’m missing the concept of index permutation to really understand the Wikipedia article. I don’t know how much traffic we’d get if we tried to cultivate a math discussion here. I did make an account on Mathstodon too and perhaps I should spend more time there. Tutoring at this level is sparse, at least at a community college. There’s one tutor for my class available via Zoom, and the instructor himself is apparently teaching 5 classes when he’s only under contract for three. If I signed up for 5 classes as a student, I’m sure I’d be setting off all sorts of alarm bells in the registration department, if they even let me go through with it.

Open ##4756400