Recently I glanced through this rather professional book: Adventures in Group Theory, which explains the math behind the Rubik Cube and other games. Abstract algebra and Groups are not high school Algebra 1.
Part of the difficulty of abstract algebra is that most of the time it lacks answer to the question: "so what?"... and gosh, most books are too formal too tough too boring. This book seems to be more approachable. I like the "Adventure" in the title. Math... ought to be an adventure of some sort.
No, I didn't buy it and dive into it yet although I have some curiosity. There are two quantities to balance: 1) curiosity 2) laziness. if (1) > (2), then I will buy and read. But laziness often overcomes effort, making (2) a low value, especially for non must-do items.
Ok, does the word "abstract" in abstract algebra scare you? Well, you already deal a lot of with abstraction. In children's learn-number books, you see pictures of things: pencils, apples, etc. Children needed those solid objects in the beginning. When you grow older you can deal with numbers (an abstraction of quantity) directly. Then you deal with "solid" operations: add, substract, multiply, divide and you can invent your own operations. In elementary school you deal with actual numbers, beginning in high school you deal with variables which stands for some numbers (more abstraction here). Well how about deal with operands and operations in general? (even more abstraction) Ok, we observe: some operations are communtative, you can switch the order of operands a+b = b+a, some are not, such as matrix multiplications. Some operations are associative, you can do one first then another (a+b)+c = a+(b+c), but some operations are not... That is my introduction talk of abstract algebra. :)
When my curiousity > laziness, I will learn new things.
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