Throughout my education, my focus was just on understanding problems for the sake of exams. I never pursued problems as an exercise to stimulate my mind and seek a path to find real solutions.
In last few years I have felt a pressing need to re-learn mathematics with a different perspective – look at Mathematics as set of ideas and not as set of formulae. I must admit that I am now in love with Mathematics. Same has happened with Physics too.
Here are few things you can do to understand Mathematics better.
- Get a good understanding of history of Mathematics. The Greek and Babylonian inventions, which took several centuries to mature, are covered in high schools. But if you understand the context, you will appreciate what a breakthrough that idea was when it was invented. Several problems lingered for few hundred years before getting solved. It took almost 2000 years for calculus to answer the questions of change and motion. So what is the most effective way to quickly learn history of Mathematics? – Watch “The Story of Mathematics” by “Marcus Du Sautoy”
- Get a good idea of the ideas. Yes. Mathematics is all about ideas. How did they originate? A very enjoyable way of doing this is to read two books – “What is Mathematics” by Richard Courant, Herbert Robbins and Ian Stewart and Mathematics – From the birth of numbers, Jan Gullberg
- Start solving interesting problems. You can find many places on the net to do so. One example is – http://projecteuler.net/
Try this new path. I assure you that mathematics will never be your nightmare but favourite pastime.