Comment on So much
affiliate@lemmy.world 2 months ago
i still feel like this whole ε-δ thing could have been avoided if we had just put more effort into the “infinitesimals” approach, which is a bit more intuitive anyways.
but on the other hand, you need a lot of heavy tools to make infinitesimals work in a rigorous setting, and shortcuts can be nice sometimes
someacnt_@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Infinitesimal approach is often more convoluted when you perform various operations, like exponentials.
Instead, epsilon-delta can be encapsulated as a ball business, then later to inverse image check for topology.
affiliate@lemmy.world 2 months ago
i think the ε-δ approach leads to way more cumbersome and long proofs, and it leads to a good amount of separation between the “idea being proved” and the proof itself.
it’s especially rough when you’re chasing around multiple “limit variables” that depend on different things. i still have flashbacks to my second measure theory course where we would spend an entire two hour lecture on one theorem, chasing around ε and η throughout different parts of the proof.
best to nip it in the bud id say