Street-Fighting Math is undergoing some routine maintenance, we will be back on the streets soon!
About this course
Too much mathematical rigor teaches rigor mortis: the fear of making
an unjustified leap even when it lands on a correct result. Instead of
paralysis, have courage: Shoot first and ask questions later. Although
unwise as public policy, it is a valuable problem-solving philosophy
and the theme of this course: how to guess answers without a proof or
an exact calculation, in order to develop insight.
You will learn this skill by mastering six reasoning
tools---dimensional analysis, easy cases, lumping, pictorial
reasoning, taking out the big part, and analogy. The applications will
include mental calculation, estimating population growth rates,
understanding drag without differential equations, singing musical
intervals to estimate logarithms, approximating integrals, summing
infinite series, and turning differential equations into algebra.
Your learning will be supported by regular readings that you discuss
with other students, by short tablet videos, by quick problems to help
you check your understanding, by weekly homework problems, review and
and a final exam. You will work hard, and, by the end of the course,
have learned a rough-and-ready approach to using mathematics to
understand the world.
All required readings are available within the courseware, courtesy of
The
MIT Press. A print version of the course textbook,
Street-Fighting
Math, is also available for purchase.
Prerequisites
Algebra, trigonometry, and some knowledge of single-variable calculus.
Course staff
Sanjoy Mahajan
Sanjoy Mahajan is Visiting Associate Professor of
Electrical Engineering at MIT, and Associate Professor of
Applied Science and Engineering at Olin College of
Engineering. In former lives, he was a faculty member in the
Physics Department at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Associate Director of
the Teaching and Learning Laboratory at MIT. He helped found
the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape
Town, where he was the first Curriculum Director and taught
the first courses in physics and computer science.
Isaac Chuang
Isaac Chuang is a professor of Physics and a professor of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. His
research focuses on quantum information and quantum
computation. Professor Chuang leads the NSF IGERT on
Interdisciplinary Quantum Information Science and Engineering
at MIT. He is deeply involved in developing new methods for
teaching and learning, as the associate director of MIT's
Office of Digital Learning, and as a core developer of the edX
platform.
