TP or NP? Trial ballon goes up

[Ian Livingston]

I wonder if there is a formula to explain why it is that I failed basic
algebra 1 twice, once in h.s., and once in college, yet performed at the
top of the class in every other subject I studied?

Arguments that mathematics is just another language for talking in a sort
of shorthand about observations made in the real world doesn't make it any
more accessible. French, Spanish, and Greek have the same qualification,
but they are relatively easy to pick up. Algebra just makes no sense. I
stand with Laurie Anderson on the principle that x=x, not y base 8 times z
to the minus fourth power. Efforts to crystallize experience, which is
fluid and non-repeating, are purely mystical and have little real meaning.
The results of "progress" based on changing reality into something else
have been, well, catastrophic, to euphemize the result.

Yes, I feel quite justified writhing that last sentence out of a computer
keyboard and broadcasting it online.

As for P, well, both Kit and Yashmeen leave behind potentially brilliant
careers in math to pursue lives of experience.


On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com>wrote:

> In all honesty I'm surprised I made it through Algebra 2...  I often feel,
> for lack of a better Mathematical Knowledge perhaps, that Pynchon uses
> Mathematics and Physics (& metaphysics among others) as a Trope.
> Those of us who look inward, whether reading deeply Formulas or Poetry,
> run the very real risk of Abstraction... remember Slothrop's terrible fate,
> not allowed to die but be scattered... I think this sort of abstraction, I
> think of Mason's Melancholy, is certainly a lively topic among the Great
> Writers & Thinkers, all who walk along very tangible Precipice, whether
> Gnostic or  Mathematical....?
> Still working through AtD, I had the same problem with M&D, I've read the
> first 3/4s of it several times but simply don't want it to end, Pynchon is
> such a delight to read.
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Ready for your next dose of ROFL at a plister? Feel an itch to flame and
>> ridicule for downright
>> absurd arguments drawn from my Back to AtD reading, that great, great
>> book?
>>  Me, you talkin' about me? yes, I am.....
>>
>> As I've too-oft stated, I believe a great book comments on life
>> ultimately and life opens out in unexpected ways because
>> of such books, the great authors. The associations are almost endlessly
>> rich---see Shakespeare if Pynchon isn't him. But
>>
>> Below is a NYTimes essay that is getting lots of comment, lots of
>> controversy, lots of the equivalent of flaming by many,many.
>> Seems that, in itself, it is a good plist conversation topic.
>>
>> BUT, my outlier comic--to most of you, I bet---annotative skit is to say:
>> as a kind of oblique, real world footnote --an associative annotation so to
>> speak--
>>  this guy's argument against algebra and higher level math (except if
>> interested or needed for other intellectual pursuits) but FOR
>>  the necessity of MORE math (statistics, measurement--see Wa Po on
>> Quantitative movement---)
>>  dovetails with my reading of a theme in AtD: mathematics beyond what we
>> use in everyday living abstracts us from this pendant world and is useless
>>  (or in P's vision, too often leads to actual harm). Abstraction
>> from the physical, tangible world is BAD SHIT in AtD, I say, and is a
>> through-theme from the personal life of the characters to the abstract
>> notions
>> that lead to war.
>>
>> C'mon lurkers and those who haven't yet commented on my 'radical' [read
>> Stupid?] notions. Let me have it.
>>
>>
>> In the Opinion Pages Andrew Hacker writes, “Making mathematics mandatory
>> prevents us from discovering and developing young talent.
>> Is Algebra Necessary?
>> http://www.nytimes.com/
>> As American students wrestle with algebra, geometry and calculus often
>> losing that contest the requirement of higher mathematics comes into
>> question.” — —
>>
>
>


-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
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