Mathematics Stack Exchange
Mathematics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [soft-question]

For questions whose answers can't be objectively evaluated as correct or incorrect, but which are still relevant to this site. Please be specific about what you are after.

For questions whose answers cannot be objectively evaluated as correct or incorrect, but which are still relevant to mathematics.se.

12079 questions
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Mathematical beauty of $e^{i\pi}+1=0$

I know this is a soft and opinion based question and I risk that this question get's closed/downvoted but I still wanted to know what other persons, who are interested in mathematics, think about my question. Whenever people are talking about the…
MrYouMath
  • 15,833
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"Free-available" universities beyond Russia.

There is an absolutely amazing place in Moscow where anyone can listen to lectures in Russian, discuss math in Russian and, eventually, try to pass exams (of course in Russian). What makes it rather interesting is that one doesn't even need to…
davidoff303
  • 417
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Problem-solving speed in undergraduate math courses

I am an undergraduate student studying mathematics. So far, I've found that I enjoy assignments with interesting and difficult questions I can think about for a long time, but in a time-sensitive testing environment, I'm not able to perform at the…
TheProofIsTrivium
  • 1,337
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mathematical existence

When a mathematical notion is said to exist, it seems that there is a lot of freedom in what this particularly means, a freedom which accounts I think for why some people are finitists or ultra-finitists. How would you define mathematical existence?
user7485
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Can there be such a thing as a classification of classification theorems?

Can there be such a thing as a classification of classification theorems?
user7485
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Meaning of the word 'linear' in mathematics

What exactly does 'linear' mean. For example, Hilbert space is a linear space. What is the difference between a linear and a 'non-linear' space. I am starting a self-study of linear algebra so this word is extremely important, but what exactly…
JohnPhteven
  • 2,007
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Intuitionism and circles

I know next to nothing about intuitionism, so my question is probably silly :) As I understand from Wikipedia, intuitionism (at least finitism) doesn't 'trust' in the existence of irrational numbers, because they cannot be constructed (at least in…
Aleksei Averchenko
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Which topics and textbooks to learn elementary school arithmetic and beyond?

I'm an adult who tries to learn math from the ground up in his free time. I've decided to start with arithmetic, but I don't know where to go next. I'm a type of person who learns by reading. I want to understand math, not to memorize it. What…
Mahmood Muhammad Nageeb
  • 151
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What interior design features involving math or logic are good ideas?

What interior design features that involve mathematics or formal logic, or things related to mathematics or formal logic (things about the subjects count as well) are good ideas?
user376034
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Abstraction and Genaralization

This is a (bit funny) ultra-soft question regarded to a type of thinking that is puzzling me. Suppose $a(p_{1}, p_{2}, p_{3}, p_{4}, ... , p_{n}, Q)$ denote: from the items $p_{i}$, find a common pattern in the direction (direction of pattern)…
user335595
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(Soft Question) Formal name for something one is taking the limit of

When you are taking integral you have an integrand. When you are taking a sum you have a summand. Is there an analog of this for limits? How should one refer to $f(x)$ in the expression $\lim\limits_{x\rightarrow\infty} f(x)$?
Jürgen Sukumaran
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which job to find to increase teaching experience

If you don't have enough teaching experience, what kind of job you should try to find to increase the teaching experience. Now many jobs have set requirements for teaching experience. It seems contradiction, Without appropriate job we can't increase…
hao
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How do you stay sharp after graduating?

So I received my math bachelors back in 2013 and am now in the "real world". But my job doesn't require the upper level math I learned, i'm not in research. My notion is that there are a lot of people in the same position I am where I feel like my…
jimo
  • 253
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Convex Hulls vs Shrink Wrap

I was recently explaining to a friend what the convex hull of a set of points is using the analogy of an elastic band around a set of nails hammered into a board. I was about to say that we can generalize this to three-dimensions by replacing the…
Perce
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Ask for some advice in proving Calculus problems

Recently, I have done some exercise about single variable calculus. Most of them are solved by theorems like Lagrange/Cauchy mean value theorem, Rolle theorem, and Taylor series. And most of the time I can't solve the question if I haven't seen…
Rowan
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