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jjgreenyesterday at 6:39 PM2 repliesview on HN

You can do it with infinitesimals if you like, but the required course in nonstandard analysis to justify it is a bastard.


Replies

jonahxyesterday at 8:17 PM

Or you can hand wave a bit and trust intuition. Just like the titans who invented it all did!

The obsession with rigor that later developed -- while necessary -- is really an "advanced topic" that shouldn't displace learning the intuition and big picture concepts. I think math up through high school should concentrate on the latter, while still being honest about the hand-waving when it happens.

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zozbot234yesterday at 8:23 PM

You can do it with synthetic differential geometry, but that introduces some fiddliness in the underlying logic in order to cope with the fact that eps^2 really "equals" zero for small enough eps, and yet eps is not equal to zero.

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