I had to study a lot of maths in higher secondary and engineering. There were 2 maths subjects for 2 years after secondary school and 3 maths subjects in the first two years of engineering. Despite studying so much maths, graduate school was a rude shock for me. I just couldn’t wrap my head around of a lot of lectures.

The problem was the way maths was taught. Most of the teachers taught maths as an end in itself, mostly devoid of the most important question: “why”? I believe the teachers had given up on the why or they just didn’t care. I have horror stories of sitting in a classroom with teacher babbling about negative frequencies or how the solution of some differential equation is so easy while I sat there screaming in my head.

In most of the cases, there was a 2-3 line plain English that would make the little bulb in the head go up. Something that would clear the air and calm down your blood pressure and the world would start making a lot of sense. Alas, such epiphanies were very rare. I started having them during my own studies.

I probably have an OCD about this. If I had to spend a lot of time rot learning something where I don’t see the ‘why’ part, I keep feeling extremely uncomfortable. This feeling would take me on a lot of afternoons desperately going through books and blogs and anything else on the topic that I can devour. I’m generally not interested in solving maths puzzles or going too deep into the topic. But that one big insight which clears crux of the matter is what I’m after.

I am going to write down some of these epiphanies as notes to self in a series of posts.