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"Maths... as its taught in school is often... boring, pointless, painful, beside the point, and doesnt show people the things that... are the most beautiful about abstract math, and what the point of it is..."
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Eugenia ChengAbstraction is about digging deep into a situation to find out what is — Eugenia Cheng
"Abstraction is about digging deep into a situation to find out what is at its core making it tick. Another way to think of it is about stripping away irrelevant details, or rather, stripping away details that are irrelevant to what were thinking about now. These details might well be relevant to something else, but we decide we dont need to think about them for the time being. Crucially, its a careful and controlled forgetting of details, not a slapdash ignoring of details out of laziness or a desire to skew an argument in a certain direction."
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Eugenia Cheng
Eugenia Cheng
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Eugenia Loh-Gene Cheng is a British mathematician, educator and concert pianist. Her mathematical interests include higher category theory, and as a pianist she specialises in lieder and art song. She is also known for explaining mathematics to non-mathematicians to combat math phobia, often using analogies with food and baking. Cheng is a scientist-in-residence at the School of the Art Institute
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"[I]n order to study anything logically, we have to ignore all the pesky details that prevent it from behaving logically, and... move into the idealized world... rather than the real world of things... [T]his... is what... abstraction... is..."
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Eugenia ChengQuote
"Infinity is a Loch Ness monster, capturing the imagination with its awe-inspiring size but elusive nature. Infinity is a dream, a vast fantasy world of endless time and space. Infinity is a dark forest with unexpected creatures, tangled thickets and sudden rays of light breaking through. Infinity is a loop that springs open to reveal an endless spiral."
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Eugenia ChengQuote
"If youre only presented with... things you dont care about... then you wont care about having those things made easier, and so if all the problems... given are dumb... problems that dont... have anything to do with real life, then everyone.., especially young people... will immediately see that were just talking a load of rubbish..."
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Eugenia ChengQuote
"Id like to talk about abstract mathematics and my experience of making it... palatable to people who may have had very bad experiences of it..."
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Eugenia ChengQuote
"We will never be able to encompass everything by rationality alone... [T]his is a necessary and beautiful aspect of human existence."
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Eugenia Cheng