Today I read the rest of the article on Penrose tilings that I mentioned, as well as more of A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. I’m feeling a little better, but I’ve decided to take tomorrow off blogging. I am very tired from all I’ve been dealing with this week, and I have a lot to do.
Month: May 2024
Soothing Math
Today I finished listening to A Brief History of Mathematics. I also found and listened to an audio excerpt from the 1888 book A Short Account of the History of Mathematics by W. W. Rouse Ball. The recording was made to be used as a sleep aid and is designed to be soothing, which seemed appropriate. Finally, inspired by the Banach-Tarski video from yesterday, I spent some time thinking about the sizes of infinite sets. They weren’t very deep thoughts, but perhaps I will share them in the next few days.
99 Problems
Things are still not going well. I’m experiencing a lot more anxiety than I have for a long time and struggling to cope. I did watch some math YouTube videos today, however. Among them was one about the Banach-Tarski Paradox, which reminded me of a joke I read once: “I’ve got 99 problems, but Banach-Tarski is 198 of them.” (For the uninitiated, the Banach-Tarski Paradox concerns how a solid, such as a sphere, can be split into two perfect copies of itself. It’s pretty wild, and I didn’t fully understand the argument. I think I’m going to look for another video on the same topic.)
No Math Today
Well, it had to happen eventually. Today I did not do any math, despite not having planned to take the day off. There were a lot of factors: sleepiness, chores, a medical appointment, and continued mental stress, among others. Stay tuned, faithful readers.
Blah
Today I felt unwell both mentally and physically. Most of my study was listening to A Brief History of Mathematics, though I also read part of an article by Martin Gardner on Penrose tilings. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Vacation Day 3
I woke up fairly depressed this morning. I ended up staying in bed listening to A Brief History of Mathematics rather than getting up to work from my calc book, as I had the previous two days. Among other things, the section I listened to described the discoveries of the mathematician Georg Cantor, who may have been bipolar, too. At the least, he was repeatedly hospitalized for depression.
I am traveling home tomorrow, so I will be taking the day off study and blogging. Expect me back on Monday.
Vacation Day 2
I did more calc reading and exercises this morning. I thought I might fit in a little study this afternoon, as well, but it was a full day by my standards, so that didn’t happen.
Vacation Day 1
Hello from Elsewhere, readers. This morning I both read the section in my calculus text about calculators and computers and finished the exercises. My more powerful graphing program did not produce the interesting artifacts the book talked about, but I enjoyed using it to graph families of functions and see how changing one element of the equation affected the graph. Desmos has a special feature to facilitate this. Here’s an example.
If It’s Not One Thing
I didn’t do much today because I was (I hope) recovering from a cold that hit me late on Saturday. As far as math goes, I only listened to some of A Brief History of Mathematics.
Also, I am going to take tomorrow off blogging because, if I have recovered enough, I will be driving to visit my mother. I am planning to study and blog while on that visit, though.
Better Day
Things were better today. I finished the section of calculus exercises I have been working on. The next section is about graphing calculators and computers. I will be interested to see how applicable it is to the tools I have available now, nearly 20 years after this edition was published.