May I ask why you started by learning category theory?
As far as I’ve heard, learning category theory makes most sense if one knows a lot of mathematics already because it establishes equivalences between different parts of mathematics. I think that humans learn somewhat better in a examples→abstract pattern way and not the other way around, so I’d’ve personally put category theory relatively late when learning mathematics.
But maybe your mind works differently from most humans’ in that regard?
May I ask why you started by learning category theory?
I started it on a whim (someone linked a LW post on it on Twitter) and I found it engaging enough to stick with it. I don’t want to quit it because I am trying to break my habit of abandoning projects I start. It’s also not the case that I am finding it too difficult to progress. I do think I’m slow going, but a more mathematically literate friend disagreed (from their perspective, I was going pretty fast), so I think I should stick with the project, so that I can form a habit of following my projects through to completion.
I like learning about abstract stuff, though I think I would find category theory easier if I knew other abstract maths, but I can always just use the concrete example of Set to try and think about the concept, and then imagine the category theory concept as a generalisation of the appropriate set theory concept.
May I ask why you started by learning category theory?
As far as I’ve heard, learning category theory makes most sense if one knows a lot of mathematics already because it establishes equivalences between different parts of mathematics. I think that humans learn somewhat better in a examples→abstract pattern way and not the other way around, so I’d’ve personally put category theory relatively late when learning mathematics.
But maybe your mind works differently from most humans’ in that regard?
I started it on a whim (someone linked a LW post on it on Twitter) and I found it engaging enough to stick with it. I don’t want to quit it because I am trying to break my habit of abandoning projects I start. It’s also not the case that I am finding it too difficult to progress. I do think I’m slow going, but a more mathematically literate friend disagreed (from their perspective, I was going pretty fast), so I think I should stick with the project, so that I can form a habit of following my projects through to completion.
I like learning about abstract stuff, though I think I would find category theory easier if I knew other abstract maths, but I can always just use the concrete example of Set to try and think about the concept, and then imagine the category theory concept as a generalisation of the appropriate set theory concept.