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JonathanMerklin | 1 year ago

I want to note for the HN crowd that the book is in the "just technical enough to inform yet not scare off the layman, but not technical enough for the practitioner" nonfiction subgenre. Critically, there are a number of finer details that DFW gets wrong; if you're mathematically inclined and intend to read this, I suggest pairing it with a printed copy of Prabhakar Ragde's errata document hosted by the DFW fansite The Howling Fantods ([1]).

[1] https://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/images/enmerrata.pdf

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citizen_friend|1 year ago

This. He tries to do a few epsilon delta proofs and completely gets the concept wrong. I’m surprised an editor did not stop this.

If he can’t understand a limit it really puts a question mark on whether it’s worth reading his insight into the subject.

whatshisface|1 year ago

Why would his editor know any more about it than he did?