Saturday, June 30, 2012

Wisdom Of The Week

After all these years, E.O. Wilson unfazed still stresses on importance of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (this is one my all time favorite books). 


"If you bit short in your mathematically skills, don't worry about it. Most of the scientists today are mathematically semi-literate. 

I didn't take algebra until my freshman year at the University of Alabama, they didn't teach it before then. I finally got around to calculus as a 32 year old during my tenure as a professor at Harvard. While I sat uncomfortably in the classes with undergraduate students little more than half my age and couple of them were my students for a course I was teaching on evolutionary biology; I swallowed my pride and learned calculus."


Last year while taking the Stanford ML class, calculus made my life miserable (Khan academy helped me eventually on getting the basics right). Now Coursera is planning to offer Introduction to Calculus this August - signup now (& its free!)



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