Category: Updates

Having had a good day on Monday, I didn’t manage to do any study at all on Tuesday. My mind was on another project and time got away from me.

Today I tried to continue working on the proposition about trapezoids, but found I didn’t have enough mental energy. I relistened to more of A Brief History of Mathematics instead, hearing about Fourier and Galois. (Galois is one of math’s romantic heroes. Political radical, briefly imprisoned for his republican activities. Killed in a duel at 21, but leaving highly original work behind.) Made curious about Galois’s work, I left off listening and went to look him up in a lovely reference book I have called The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. I read the article on Galois himself and part of the article covering the branch of math called Galois theory. I did lose the thread of that article after a while.

In other news, I’m currently working through the involved application process for a volunteer position I hope to get. There are many applicants, so there is a good chance I won’t be selected. If I am, though, I’m not sure what it will mean for my math review project and this blog. I’m not sure what the future of those things should be, in any case. Despite my good day on Monday, I still feel as if I’ve lost something I need to sustain them.

Today I listened again to part of the radio program A Brief History of Mathematics. I also looked at more AMC problems, but didn’t finish any.

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.

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.

Today was bad. I read for a few minutes, but I didn’t do any other math.

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.

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.

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.

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.