Let's learn with the English version of Wikipedia! ! The problem with Japanese textbooks is that they are difficult to understand! ?

Hello. This is Watanabe Tenmei from Seito Medical School Clear File.

What does science mean to us? Is it an iron-clad castle that towers far into the sky, or is it a means to make society more prosperous and comfortable?

I think that if someone has been self-taught for a long time, there is a high possibility that they have experienced a blank period and a slump. If you come across a high wall that you cannot understand, you may take a temporary break or give up.

I want to say Trial and error is good when you're in a slump, but once you study a different field, that is, tackle a new subject, you'll be more likely to produce results than if you continue with the subject you're in a slump on.

Of course, after you've dabbled in other fields to some extent, it might be a good idea to tackle the original problem that caused you to fall into a slump. When you hit a wall during your long life of self-study, it may be better to simply look for another route instead of trying to break down the wall and get over it.

In my case, I have been working on university-level and graduate-level subjects these days, using university-level groups, rings, and fields as an introduction to mathematics content. When I started studying the introductory section, I had a vague feeling that it would take a lot of patience and time to understand these technical terms using only Japanese textbooks.

So, I bought other reference books and tried to do the calculations on my own without asking anyone. The result is a technical term called Lie algebra, but I was completely exhausted just looking up specific examples.

Then, I realized something. The question is, do you learn about difficult content on foreign language sites as well as on Japanese sites? In particular, since America is the home of learning, I felt that it would be more efficient to read materials in a foreign language. Of course, I don't want to lower the quality of Japanese textbooks.

However, I had a suspicion that Japanese researchers were rewriting textbooks written by overseas researchers in a way that was difficult to understand. Therefore, I compared the Japanese version of the wiki and the English version of the site. Below, quoting:

`` A group in mathematics is a group that has associativity and an identity element and an inverse element when a binary operation and its target set are viewed together. Groups are considered to be one of the fundamental algebraic structures , providing a basic framework for various constructions in mathematics and physics in general. Groups are themselves objects of study, and the field is called group theory . ” (wiki quote: Group (mathematics))

“In mathematics , a group is a set with an operation that satisfies the following constraints: the operation is associative and has an identity element , and every element of the set has an inverse element .” (wiki:group)

how is it. The Japanese quotation above and the English quotation below are not the same sentences, but they have very similar meanings, and those who understand basic English words can read the English sentences below from simple junior high school level English. You can see that it's done.

If you are reasonably confident in your English, try searching for "group mathematics wiki." When you read it, there are links to the technical terms in blue, so if you don't understand them, I recommend you to jump to the links.

Even if you don't understand something in a textbook that is famously known as a classic in Japan, if you look it up on the Japanese version of the wiki, it will be difficult to understand and the average person will run away after reading it for 10 seconds, but if you look it up on the English version of the wiki, you will find it difficult to understand. I think the quality is good because there are a lot of users, and there is a lot of information.

To be honest, I've heard that self-study can only get you to a certain level, and that you need a master to go beyond that.

If I had tried to continue studying and researching only in Japanese, I would have probably hit a wall at some point.

One way to avoid this situation is to make full use of English version wikis and calculation tools that are written in a universal language like English, and the day will come when you will be able to read difficult mathematical papers that I cannot easily complete. Probably.

I wish you good luck. See you soon.