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by alejohausner 808 days ago
When I studied group theory, I would have been so much happier if someone told me we were talking about nonzero numbers, or invertible matrices, or functions. A little of bit of concreteness would have helped enormously to motivate the topic.

When I took real analysis, I would have been so much happier if the teacher had presented some historical context: what pitfalls had mathematicians fallen into by misunderstanding infinity?

That’s just how my brains work. I need some context. I suspect other brains are like mine too.