Creating The Simple Math of Everything

making a general primer on "the story of what humans understand thus far" with bias towards those concepts that have the broadest applicability is one of my goals.

Areas to cover: thermodynamics, focusing on entropy. natural selection. supply and demand. bayesian statistics, focusing on how the scientific method is a subset of bayesian reasoning. a primer on primate signaling and group dynamics. a "just so" stories version of the list of common fallacies and the list of cognitive biases available on sites like wikipedia.

in fact, include just so stories for every concept listed. of course eventually the intended target should realize "just so" stories don't count as evidence, but the presentation will help introduce everything to a broader audience and also make it more accessible to children.

oh and the basics of game theory.

Make sure to include something about Big-O notation; I'm always surprised at how little it's generalized beyond algorithms.

Choice Under Uncertainty (Is this suitable?)

(Non-cooperative) Game Theory

This may be somewhat tangential, but a bit of graph theory would do wonders, especially theory related to recognizing deceptive or misleading graphs.

As I suggested in the last post on this topic: examples.

They don't even have to be serious examples, but examples of how one might use the basic math, and hopefully examples that are easy to follow but not an obvious usage. For example, the time-to-genetic-fixation example might be: you have 20 friends, half of whom have a pet rock. How many years until pet rocks have drifted into extinction etc.

Various types of optimization)?

Evolving thoughts link is down. Archive.org link

Why re-invent the wheel this has already been done if I understand correctly for example in a bit of a more specific case "Fundamental Formulas of Physics".

A page named "basic maths", explaining "essential" concepts would be great. I don't know if it is possible, but i would want the explanations to be theoretical-- the way eliezer explains bayes, basically something for the generalists who can't learn maths by looking at equations!!

Ok, I have to be honest this entire idea makes me cringe, it seems a bit to much like a cheap get out of learning the math idea. Maybe I am biased because I actually am a mathematician but these kind of ideas I think are dangerous since you take away an important bar of admission to fields like physics. If you don't understand why the math is an important bar of admission look at the google groups physics group.

To be honest I think someone would be better off spending their time learning calculus at minimum then trying to read this kind of general overview. I think what is likely to happen is that either the math will be to simple and muddles the field to the point of being useless or its so complex that nobody can follow it. A good case and point you can understand quantum physics if you understand algebra but your going to be hopeless in a discussion about it without understanding things like the differential equations. Of course there are other fields which you have to know the math, from some of my own experience, fluid mechanics.

For my own part I think required math should include at minimum: Advanced Calculus (not that "calculus class" you took in high school it doesn't count) Differential Equations Linear Algebra Abstract Algebra Set Theory (basic at least) Number Theory

I think with these you probably can figure a lot of the more complex math out.

I am sure I am leaving a couple out but you get the idea.