Do Math for Fun

A few days ago, I watched a video with the engaging title The Mosaic Problem – How and Why to Do Math for Fun by a YouTuber called Jack Hanke. His suggestion was to have a motivating problem (which he called a back burner problem) in mind when studying a branch of math. Then, whenever a new concept comes up, you can think about how it might apply to your problem. I haven’t really been struggling to do math for fun (at least when I’m able to do math at all), and my own approach is more to look for questions to ask about whatever I’m learning than to try to apply it to questions I already have. I’m intrigued by his idea, though, and may want to test it out at some point.

Today I worked on a variety of things. I did some exercises in my calc book, worked on my question about logarithms, read about irrational numbers, and thought a bit about the Triangle of Doom. It was all more or less fun, though the calc exercises were a little repetitive. I may have to rethink my practice of doing all the exercises in every section.