Today was better than yesterday, though I was still not at full capacity. I spent about an hour on algebra review, then thought for a while about the decimal representations of rational numbers. I also read the Wikipedia article on long division, which says that the debate about its place in the curriculum actually dates back to the 1980s. There are some interesting examples there of the ways long division problems are written in different countries, as well.
For anyone interested, here is the review of algebra I am using. It’s made available as a supplement by the publishers of Stewart’s calculus textbooks. There are also reviews of analytic geometry and conic sections, which I plan to work through as well, along with the review of trigonometry provided as an appendix to my textbook. (My textbook has reviews of algebra, analytic geometry, and conics, too, but they are not as complete as those offered on the website.)
I have a lot of affection for Stewart’s calculus texts. They were used in both my high school and my college courses, and represent good times to me. A person I met online once asked me to name a book that had changed my life, and Stewart’s Single Variable Calculus was my choice. Had I not enjoyed calculus so much in high school, I would not have been attracted to economics as a college major, would not have been encouraged to minor in math, would not have taken Discrete Math my first semester, and might never have had my love of math kindled such that I am still carrying a torch for it. His discovery of Ramanujan might have been “the one romantic incident” in Hardy’s life, but my encounter with math was mine, and Stewart’s calculus was one of the sign posts on the way.