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by vector_spaces
1312 days ago
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This is my complaint with a lot of math circles, such as the Math Stackexchange, where the amount of policing the motives of askers makes the site a very hostile place to newer users. Treat users and students in general like adults. Assuming bad faith at the outset makes math communities feel elitist and stifling rather than welcoming and playful. |
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An essential part of reasoning in mathematics comes from the experience of being repeatedly stuck.
Walking through an exciting “maze” for 20 minutes or a few hours most sufficiently motivated people can manage but it get’s harder and harder to endure when days or even weeks pass by and you feel like you have done an exhaustive inventory of every single item of your reasoning, uncountable times, feeling utterly lost. For my part I cannot even imagine being stuck on a single problem for years on end.
So, when there seems to be a reluctance to give away the answer, it is because a big part of mathematics is building up an arsenal of strategies to tackle different problems, and this is best taught through a variety of of build-up problems themselves which really challenge you at your current skill set. This of course widely differs.
It’s easier to get a good estimate if you know something about the person’s background but I can see this inquisitiveness coming off as judgemental and elitist. I’ve mostly found when you clearly can state ‘where’ exactly you feel stuck and which approaches you have tried you are heartwarmingly helped. To try to exactly pinpoint “where” your difficulty lies and patiently hitting the wall (building up a tolerance against immediate satisfaction/frustration) is how you will unlock the problems rather sooner than later.
That being said if someone asks me specifically for a solution which I happen to know, I provide it. Mostly because I don’t think you can force the aforementioned insights and I don’t want to put people into the general atmosphere - which I myself despise - of “explaining oneself”.