About Portia Mabedla

I am an Mathematical Technology and Project managements graduate. I'm now working as a insight

Mathematics or dreams, which is more real? Izibalo okanye amaphupha, yeyiphi eyona iyinyani?

Translated from here.

Mathematics or dreams, which is more real? Izibalo okanye amaphupha, yeyiphi eyona iyinyani?

Mathematics can sometimes seem dream-like, at least on first encounter. Later on, one gets
used to a new mathematical object, and it seems everyday. I remember how strange the idea of
a group was to me, how mysteriously it grew from three almost trivial axioms to a forest
of subgroups and quotient groups and equivalence classes and so on. Of the few dreams I
now recall, there was one with a huge hall full of people, perhaps a giant cave, and I was descending a long,
rickety staircase — or was I sliding down a cable? — feeling myself among a heretofore
completely unsuspected part of humanity, who perhaps nobody from above ground had ever seen.
Groups were a bit like that, and saying that a square had a symmetery group did not
make them appear any less unexpected.

By | August 17th, 2015|Uncategorized @Xh|1 Comment