Europeans made calculus difficult because they did not understand it. The infinite series of the Indian calculus did not fit their religious idea of mathematics as eternal truth, hence perfect. (Newton made a mistake in his physics just because he did not understand the calculus, and that physics has only recently been corrected.) Read more…
This talk announced below was to have been webcast live.
Update: The videos were long ago taken down by USM, and my versions do not work any more.
The videos are now posted at
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEK1FCrLHjU
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFf5co3G3R8
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zomZU949Cnw
Anyway, the video is now online at the USM website at
http://www.usm.my/index.php/en/about-usm/usm-videos/video-on-demand.html
My version is at
http://ckraju.net/videos/videos.html
There are no subtitles so I should perhaps explain that the persons on the dais are (from left to right) Prof. Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli Razak, VC, USM, CKR, Dato’ Saifuddin Abdullah, Deputy Minister for Higher Education, Malaysia, S. M. Mohammed Idris, Chairman, Citizens International, and Prof. Ahmad Shukri, Deputy VC, USM.
Don’t miss out the prize I have offered of RM 10,000 (about USD 3300) for reliable primary evidence on Euclid (with the caveats attached).
The long comment (about Needham) was very strange, and I did not want to be rude. But, on second thoughts, that is what I should have done, and that is what I should do in future.
Of course Needham studied the scientific revolution, and not the industrial revolution. The questioner was afraid to use the right term, since I have already shown that the Copernican revolution and the Newtonian revolution are bogus. (more…)
A more detailed account of calculus without limits for those with a background in formal maths is here in this series of six presentations at the maths department of the Universiti Sains Malaysia in early Feb.
Got a little time off only on my last day in Penang, when I visited the charming snake temple. Saw a huge python, the monocular cobra, king cobra, and pit vipers, all on the loose.
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After seeing the Three Idiots, I felt I should blog about my experiences with IIT. I was always more interested in science than in engineering, and was put off further after seeing (and hearing) how my brother lived at IIT, Powai where he then was. I shuddered at the thought of spending five prime years of my life there. (Those days the course was five years.) I gave the IIT entrance test under parental duress, and on the explicit condition that I would not be forced to join if I cleared it. I spent about a week preparing, and did clear it, but did not join. (Since, today, people readily tell lies, they may not believe me, so my call letter is given below.) (more…)
Most people dread or dislike learning mathematics. What a pity for a subject which means by derivation the “science of learning”! On my theory, math became difficult, when it got entangled with the post-Crusade Christian theology of reason, used as a weapon against Islam. The way to make math easy, therefore, is to disentangle it Read more…
Dear Mr Pitroda,
It was nice to meet you again at the FICCI gathering a few days ago.
There wasn’t enough time for me to clarify what I was saying, so let me do so here.
1. First, I agree with you that a major change is needed in the current system of higher education and research.
2. However, for the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) to make the right recommendations, you need to know the real causes of past failures. So what went wrong? I could find no NKC document which studied the past record of knowledge management in India, as I have done.
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