{"id":2636,"date":"2014-07-16T18:47:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T01:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/?p=2636"},"modified":"2014-07-16T19:56:55","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T02:56:55","slug":"is-math-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2014\/07\/16\/is-math-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Math &#8220;Hard&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Xs9aGVUZ3YA&amp;google_comment_id=z12bj11j0rf2epn5g04cjvnb1lntxhzxavw0k\">A math major talks about fear &#8211; YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A commenter objected to the statement that &#8220;math is hard&#8221; and I had to respond as follows.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; background-color: #ffffff;\">Some math is hard is and some is not. Memorizing 3+4=7 is not hard, but *proving* 1+1=2 took 162 pages of Russell and Whitehead&#8217;s Principia Mathematica in 1910, and the Fermat-Wiles theorem took 350 years from conjecture to proof (and defeated some of the greatest names in mathematics in the interim). Perhaps what she should have said is that *interesting* math is hard, but that&#8217;s so obviously what she meant that the qualifier is unnecessary. Indeed *nothing* that&#8217;s not hard is worth putting any effort into. (Breathing, at first sight, is not hard and it is only by seeking to perfect it and so &#8220;making it hard&#8221; that yoga teachers give its attention any value.)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A math major talks about fear &#8211; YouTube A commenter objected to the statement that &#8220;math is hard&#8221; and I had to respond as follows. Some math is hard is and some is not. Memorizing 3+4=7 is not hard, but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2014\/07\/16\/is-math-hard\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2636"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2639,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}