I read "GEB" by Hofstadter after I finished my A levels (UK, aged 18). I picked up a random book in the school library to fill in 20 mins before going out on a pub crawl (as you do). Once we had finished off the Abingdon Ock Street crawl in fine style and the hangover had subsided, I devoured it. I'd never read anything like it before - what a communicator of ideas.
A few unwise life style choices later and I find myself running a small IT company for the last 25 odd years.
I'll never get beyond undergrad engineering maths n stats but it's works like GEB and the Natural Numbers Game (and I see there are more) that allow civilians like me to get a glimpse into the real thing. There is no way on earth I could possibly get to grips with the really serious stuff but then the foundations are the really serious stuff - the rest simply follows on (lol)
Whom or whoever wrote the NNG tutorials are a very good communicator. The concepts are stripped to the bare essentials and the prose is crystal clear and the tone is suitably friendly.
Yea I’ve run through that a couple of years ago - was brilliant, had a lot of fun. But I mean to stay up to date and somehow contribute from the sidelines
Sort of. Except for "weird logic classes", people would not bother to informally prove (i.e. no computers / strict system) such elementary things. But we can and should ask whether in fact that is the best curriculum structure.
(My making an easy fun game of proofs, I hope we can introduce them far earlier in the school curriculum. How many people in this world really understand the difference between reasoning and charismatic rhetoric? I don't blame anyone that isn't given the way we are taught.)
https://adam.math.hhu.de/#/g/leanprover-community/NNG4