Ask HN: Finding Relevant Math References
What are people’s tricks for recalling math references to relearn “just enough” to solve their current problems?
For example, some background. I took a decent amount of math courses in school (not nearly as much as others in this community) but it was more than 10 years ago and I don’t regularly exercise these muscles. I sometimes know when there are proven mathematical solutions to problems I face, but most of the time hit a wall when trying to recall enough to figure it out again.
A recent example of mine: When the width of a threejs canvas element changes (window is resized) recalculate the camera parameters such that the object in view occupies the full width of the container (more difficult than it sounds!). I hacked it together with some dumb math that barely worked just to move on, but I know intuitively that there is a (relatively) trivial mathematical solution to this problem. Outside of “relearn all fundamentals”, the real solution feels dauntingly far away from what I know right now, but perhaps people have some tricks I can learn from!