Quote (Azrad @ 9 Sep 2013 02:02)
This is a nasty disease I see physics/engineering/math students fall into all the time. You are looking for the magic formula you can blindly follow to solve all problems, without even thinking about them. Trust me, this is a fool's errand. Before you can copy someone's methods, you must understand every single step they preformed and why they preformed it. Otherwise you will not be able to adapt it to the problem at hand. I assure you this is why you are always not sure of your answer and not quite sure what to do next. It is much better to think about each situation separately and come up with your own way to get the answer.
but a little anecdote the problem in post#8 reminded me of:
in the second year of theoretical physics we dealt with a function that had a singularity and the professor's comment was something like:
we really would need to integrate the left part and the right part separately because of the singularity but we know it works because it has been proven by the mathematicians
so yes, the disease of using something without fully understanding it even reaches into (and is taught in) the realms of university
but while in physics and engineering people seemingly live with that, you won't go far in maths if you try that
This post was edited by brmv on Sep 8 2013 08:24pm