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Comment by Twisol | Hacker News Reader

I've been reading through this over the last few weeks. It's not your typical math textbook; the author takes great pains to stretch out the learning curve. Categories aren't even defined until chapter 8, and the presentation still takes multiple pages before we finally get the usual, concise definition.

I think the gradual approach is good, even if you have some familiarity with abstract algebra. Experienced readers might feel a little bored at first, but I still think that's a good sign overall.

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I think it's good that the author made it as accessible as possible, but had to pause after a few chapters because they took so long to explain the basics (I was always bad at uni-level math but still studied half a math bachelor before CS).

Do you think it's a good approach to skip to chapter 8+, and come back to the first ones if we're missing something? Or do these first chapters still bring something to people with math education?

For sure, skip ahead :) Math textbooks are not generally meant to be read front-to-back (and math papers even less so). This one lends itself well to a straight-line readthrough, but what's important is what you get out of it.

As the sibling comment notes, if you skip too far ahead, the technical material will make you very well aware of that fact. But I think chapter 8 is a good place to jump in -- the material up to that point is mostly setting up intuitions and analogies. I think those are important to pick up, but they're also the kind of thing you pick up from sufficient exposure to mathematics of any flavor, so there's no harm.

Chapters 9 through 13 show how lots of other things can be seen as categories, so if you're already aware of some of them from undergrad math, you're probably good to go.

I think that's perfectly fine -- skip ahead if you like and return to the earlier chapters as needed. Worst case scenario, the amount of stuff you don't understand will be too much to constantly look up, so you'll have to make a smaller jump. Anyway when learning even more advanced math I think it's totally reasonable to forge your own path through a text (or multiple texts concurrently, if you like)

I've been reading through it and my impression is the same. My background is more in analysis/approximation theory, but I picked this up for bedtime reading and although it's a bit slow going/verbose for me, I think the writing is fantastic given the broad audience this book targets. It seems like a nice introduction for someone curious about abstract math despite some level of math trauma from earlier brushes with it

Are the parts dealing with privelege, gender etc. bearable?

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