> I did not like, and did not understand, epsilons and deltas.
It's nice to have this perspective validated by someone like Serre! I felt like I was missing something when I first encountered that formalism. In fact, all of my introductory calculus classes sucked and turned me off of math for a few years.
A professor of mine had an anecdote of meeting Serre and complaining to him about Bourbaki style and how hard it is for students.
Serre's reply was "But we never wrote those books for students! We wrote them for researchers to have a handy reference for all proofs of basic results."
jey · · focus · HN ↗
It's nice to have this perspective validated by someone like Serre! I felt like I was missing something when I first encountered that formalism. In fact, all of my introductory calculus classes sucked and turned me off of math for a few years.
robotpepi · · focus · HN ↗
bananaflag · · focus · HN ↗
Serre's reply was "But we never wrote those books for students! We wrote them for researchers to have a handy reference for all proofs of basic results."