Do I need to be good at solving these sort of problems to be

>Do I need to be good at solving these sort of problems to be good at higher level mathematics?
no

> Is being good at solving these "translate this English sentence to predicate calculus" type problems essential to being good at higher level mathematics?
no

>Or can I skip this and move to actual proofs?
yes

>>8964426
Thanks. To clarify I'm actually self studying over the summer following a guideline from previous classes. The emphasis on these problems piss me off. I've been doing the same problem types for 5-6 sections now. I want to do fucking actual math not this bullshit.

>>8964426
Why does discrete math books focus 100+ pages on translating sentences to logic then? It's extremely annoying. They don't explain how to do the translations well and it doesn't feel like math to me

>>8964917
most don't afaik

discrete math is usually about graphs/combinatorics in my experience

>>8964414
>problems essential to being good at higher level mathematics?

Not really, but they are essential for undergrad mathematics.

When you take analysis you will be given a statement of the form "Prove that given [something] there exists [something] such that [something]". It could be about functions, sets, sequences, numbers. Doesn't matter. And you will read that statement and you will think "How in the fucking fuck, that shouldn't even be possible".

But then you take that statement and write it down in terms of epsilons and deltas and then the proof becomes a trivial problem of find the right delta for an epsilon.

So it is important to solve problems other people will give you. But in the real world, where you find problems organically, this is probably useless.

>>8964951
That's the entire reason I decided to self study it over the summer. To get to the combinatorics, graph theory and number theory. This book spends like 8 sections on logic and like 6 of those section is "translate this English sentence to logic". It's exercise after exercise of it.

It almost feels like a philosophy class. Not a math class. I could do most of these translation problems but they gotten so convoluted and along with the poor explanations I don't know how to do all of them. I'm about to skip all the rest of the logic chapters and move to the math. I spent like a months doinh shit at this point.

I just wasn't sure if I skipped it if these "translate this fucking English sentence to logic" wild hurt me when I got to say number it theory. Since it won't I'm moving on