Comments on: January Notices

By: Walt

Walt — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 00:16:20 +0000

Sigfpe: I felt the same way about homological algebra. Chain complexes in algebraic topology made sense, but I found homological algebra incomprehensible. The arguments weren’t hard to understand, but the definitions seemed meaningless, the theorems meaningless, and the ability prove non-homological theorems in algebra shocking. It took me years to make my peace with the subject.

By: Ars Mathematica » Blog Archive » Tim Chow

Ars Mathematica » Blog Archive » Tim Chow — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 06:31:12 +0000

[…] In the comments to this post, David MacIver provides an alternative, registration-free link to Tim Chow’s You Could Have Invented Spectral Sequences. […]

By: David MacIver

David MacIver — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:47:38 +0000

For those who don’t have access to the AMS, Timothy Chow has a copy of this article on his website at http://www-math.mit.edu/~tchow/spectral.pdf . It’s actually a version of an article he’s had there for some years.

By: sigfpe

sigfpe — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:23:10 +0000

Up until spectral sequences there were lots of bits of mathematics I found hard, but never anything I couldn’t get past without some perseverance. Spectral sequences, however, were a kind of wall for me. I could go through the motions and even answer exam questions but the whole thing seemed completely mysterious and unmotivated to me. So just reading the quotation from Whitehead in the first paragraph makes my ego feel a little better. I look forward to seeing if I ‘get’ the concept by time I’ve finished the article.