locilre

"I think one of the reasons I slept so poorly last night, was I came to terms with the overwhelming amount of school work that I have to do in the next few. I will just watch a lot of Hackers, and put the "it's a worm!" scene on loop. Somehow this will make me better at math. I'm not sure, but it seems to make sense..."

"Just as everybody must strive to learn language and writing before he can use them feely for the expression of his thoughts, here too there is only one way to escape the weight of formulae. It is to acquire such power over the tool ... that, unhampered by formal technique, one can turn to the true problems." - Translated from Hermann Weyl's Raun, Zeit, Materie, 5th Edition. Berlin, 1923, S.18

Oh god. I think Project Euler was specifically designed to keep me from sleeping. I found out about it last night, while I was having a nice chat with Megan, and immediately set to work. I haven't joined yet, but I have been tackling some of the questions, and I'm certain of my responses. Saddly, not all the questions are purely mathematical, and can't be solved (reasonably) with pencil and paper. However, it is good incentive to learn to hack some Haskell or Lisp.

The few problems I've solved so far have involved a little bit of calculus, and counting arguments. I'm writing up my results in LaTeX. I think this could be good portfolio work, to show Stefan before I start working on his problem course solution manual this summer.

Anyway - This stuff is gold.

I have made a map that is ugly, and that is should never be done.

Ron Eglash: African fractals, in buildings and braids

Maybe that is how it goes...

More on this to come.

For let the parallelogram ABCD have the same base BC with the triangle EBC, and let it be in the same parallels BC, AE;

I say that the parallelogram ABCD is double of the triangle BEC.
For let AC be joined.
The the triangle ABC is equal to the triangle EBC; for it is on the same base BC with it and in the same parallels BC, AE. [I. 37]

But the parallelogram ABCD is double of the triangle ABC; for the diameter AC bisects it [I. 34]; so that the parallelogram ABCD is also double of the triangle of EBC. Therefore etc. Q.E.D.

Sir. Thomas L. Heath, Euclid.

During an "explorator" lecture on algebraic topology my prof threw up these diagrams. I asked if I could take a photo of the figure on the far left for obvious reasons.

The rainbow was more prominent in real life, or at ten megapixels.

x-posted to mathsex

There is something wondefully Hexic about Chat Noir.

A couple questions is makes me ask:
How is the cat choosing it's move?
Are there any board positions, where there is no win for the player?

This cat buisnes is related to Conway's Angel game, and it's also a great way to relax.

Mathematical Aphrodisiac by Alex Galt, found here.

It's a really lovely short story. Everyone should read it.
I wonder if there are any amicable happy numbers, they'd be wonderful to hang out with (though on second thought, I'm pretty sure they'd be huge.)

( Mathematical Aphrodisiac by Alex Galt )

Hey Trent Math, I'm going to send you a deadly bomb.

I just got 100% on the two math papers I handed in, let's keep this going.

Poor formatting in my humble opinion, but what sound advice for us all.

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I'm starting to lose traction across the board right now, but I gotta remember, to just stay in the mother fucking vase right now. I got a 50% on the last Pure Math quiz, which is unfortunate, because it belied my fundamental lack of understanding about power sets, and injections/surjections. Still, I'm running at 20.58 / 24, at the top of the class.

Just stay in the vase. It will all come together soon.

Iran?

Whoo-Wee. Thanks Giving has been nice. I spent the night with Riahl, and Katlyn, and Megan's dog Roni(e). At Riahl's I played me some go, winning 27 / 6, which was an improvement. Riahl heated up a burrito for me, and we went over to K's. She made nachos for us, and gave me a slice of her wicked awesome coffee-cake.

Ah studenty bumming around. It's nice this time of year.

On the downside, I didn't get much work done... I should do that later on today. I've got some mad: Ancient Philosophy, Pure Math, and ASL to catch up with. Okay. We're not staying in bed until 13:30 today... That's for sure.

Woo! I got invited to do a custom tailored reading course this summer by a professor. The prof. is a huge logic junky, and a weirdo. I think he wants to introduce me to model theory, and probably boggle my mind. Maybe we'll do some work around arithmetics.

As you can see, his website says he is a fan of doing reading courses. So maybe I'll have to put some thought into this.

Gah! I'm pissed with myself.

Laziness, and a sense of pomp, just lost me five percent on my homework set. The problem specifically asked for typifications of the truth tables into tautologies, contradictions, or contingencies. I did that for the first two tables, then left that last three bare. It made my work look sloppy, even though I went all the way as to code it in LaTeX. The prof. also said my tables "leave too much to the imagination." But, I mean really what imagination is there in a truth table....

Oh well, I guess it (hopefully) won't happen again. Maybe I'll do better on the set I just handed in.

This is so frustrating.

ASL yesterday was incredible. We had our first silent class, which was fascinating. The dynamic was very different. My finger-spelling seems quite strong compared to the other students. We learned some facial grammar, and simple concepts like COPY, UNDERSTAND, FORGET, useful stuff. I like signing with my prof, she is intensely playful.

Then I went out and saw 3:10 to Yuma. Riahl and Drew went out with me, and it was incredible.

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Wow. That was a crazy week. The sort of thing that makes pull a load of laundry out of the washer, stand awkwardly in front of the fridge, with the laundry soggy in your arms, and wonder "Wait, what am I doing?"

I've realized the amount of work I took on in school is Herculean, and I'm going to really have to bust some serious moves to make it all come off well. Right now there is a lot of overlap, and hence, I'm starting to think in prepositional calculus. Very rapidly, I've symbolized most of my proofs, so I can see where Chad gets it from. This year him and I share a number of courses, and travel in a little herd. There a couple other students who sally along with us, and most of them I recognize from first year.

My prof.s seem to admire me, and think I'm reasonably in the game. I think that this might give me some leveraging power down the road. I worry about coming off as an ass-hat to my class mates.

I just got this one facebook, and it made me smile.

Hello Sir !

Welcome back to Trent, and another wonderful journey into the awesome world of mathematics ! I have a very important question for you: Are you able to take the position as president of Mascot for this year? This privilege and responsibility is offered to you since you fulfill the description of being an excited and very capable mathematician, more so than anyone else I know. Please let me know what you think, and I would be excited to hail you the new president of Mascot !

Regards,
Andrew

Last night, I got to bed around 23:45. This is a big improvement over 04:00, which is when I tucked in the night before. However, just before getting into bed, I read some of Carnival XV, and got right properly obsessed with twin primes. This is no fucking good when you're in bed, know you have to work in eight hours, and didn't sleep at all the night before.

So I lay there, until about 01:45, mostly with my eyes closed, coming up with numbers like 1762, 3599, and other twin prime composites. I counted up the primes to 100, and was pleasantly surprised when I knew there were 25.

I don't know what these things happen, but I ought to go thank Mr. Freeman for having made me come to realize that they do. Being kept up by mathematics, is more palatable than being kept up by stomach pain, and more tolerable than by jack hammers.

Read this brief history of mathematics, it's really quite funny.

Ah, I just watched Cube (1997) with Victoria, and some house guests. Goodness, that was a brilliant film. The film is essentially about a group of people struggling to get out of a cube shaped labyrinth booby trapped to the nines, with dubious authorship. The two characters that interested me the most were: Leaven, and Quintin.

Spoilers and mathematics below the cut.
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