Today was a bumpy day, and I didn’t manage to do much math. I did read for a while at the Math Help Forum and in some of the Reddit math communities. I was looking to see if answering questions in one of those venues might be a good way to share my math knowledge with others. I’m not feeling sharp enough to pursue online tutoring at the moment.
Blog
Coming Back
Hello, faithful readers. The circumstances that caused me to put the blog on hold last week have eased, so here I am again. I’m still having a crisis of confidence in my ability to continue this project, but hopefully that can be resolved, as well.
Today I worked for a short time on some past American Mathematics Competition problems. I also thought for a while about how to prove Notion 3 from my post Fun With Logarithms, since I’d used it while solving one of the AMC problems.
Blog on Hold
The blog is currently on hold.
Almost No Math Today
Today was bad. I read for a few minutes, but I didn’t do any other math.
Questions on Questions
Today I worked on questions from the video that I watched part of on Thursday. Having answered those to my satisfaction, I watched the rest of the video, which raised further questions. I hope to share some of that next week.
I think a recent change in my medication may be make it harder for me to work on math, which is very frustrating. I hope to have it changed again soon with better results.
Way Back to Newton
Today I read more of Infinite Powers. Strogatz has returned to a historical vein, and is discussing Newton’s life and discoveries. Today the principal topic was power series.
Watchful Day
Today I watched more YouTube videos. One of them I stopped after a few minutes, because I want to investigate its topic for myself before seeing what the video reveals. That seems like a hopeful sign.
Back to School
Well, I’m back. I ended up taking a somewhat longer break than planned. I was just too discouraged to study last Thursday, and yesterday I was still getting settled again after being at camp. Today I watched YouTube videos in an attempt to ease into my project again. One was about the recent discovery of a new formula for approximating $\pi$. (It is not superior to existing formulae, just new.) The other was a fun video about some properties of prime numbers. It should be accessible to most people, and I have embedded it below.
Lost
Today was another unproductive day. I watched several math videos on YouTube, but had difficulty fully absorbing them. I feel as if I’ve lost something necessary to my project. Mental acuity? Concentration? Confidence? I hoped that taking a break last week would help. I did come back more rested and less emotional, but my ability to make progress seems no better. I am very discouraged.
Extracurriculars
Today I read more of Infinite Powers. I am feeling more hopeful than yesterday, though, because I managed to accomplish a number of non-math things that had piled up during recent bad times.