In This Blog: L’Hopital Frets over Getting Apples for Newton
Last night I dreamt I was in France. It was the late 17th century and I was in this huge cathedral just kind of chilling. I was confused because I knew I was supposed to be attending mass at St. Mary’s Church in Moscow, but I had somehow royally screwed up and ended up in France.
I’m sitting in a pew when this dude comes running up the main aisle. I didn’t know who he was at first, but as he got closer I noticed he was wearing a “Hello! My name is L’Hopital” nametag. He’s in the middle of totally freaking out and he’s got this empty basket slung on his arm that keeps changing colors as he’s running around.
Somehow in the dream I know that this is before l’Hopital’s Rule comes into existence, so I think in the dream that it’s my duty to keep him calm so that he’ll live long enough to publish his calculus textbook.
So I say, “Hey l’Hopital, what’s up?” And he goes on this long rant about how it’s his job to gather all these rare apples and transport them to Newton in England. He’s like on the verge of tears so I offer to help him. There’s an apple tree in the front of the church so I point him in that direction (I think it’s weird that he didn’t see that on his own) and together we start harvesting these weird-looking apples. The whole time we’re doing so he just keeps ranting about how he’s a famous mathematician and it shouldn’t fall to him to gather these apples.
This goes on for what seems like five hours (even though it was probably like microseconds in real time), and the basket is finally full. l’Hopital’s finally calmer now that he’s got the apples he needed, and he actually turns to me and thanks me. Then he looks around all deviously and whispers, “let’s make a pie out of five or six of these apples. Newton will never know! I can fill the shipping box with oranges so it weighs the same, and by the time he gets it I’ll be dead anyway, so who cares?”
And of course what am I thinking during all of this? “Holy freaking crap, I get to make pie with a famous mathematician!”
(Also, the pie was tasty.)
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to my brain.
Euclidean Porn
It’s one of those “12 hours on campus every day” weeks.
Which means it’s also one of those “have repeated panic attacks in my office” weeks.
Come on, brain. Now’s not the time for your BS. Wait until after finals, alrighty? I’ll let you concentrate on nothing but naughty Leibniz thoughts* if you wait until after finals to spaz yourself into a quagmire of busted synapses.
In other news: I need this shirt.
*You do that anyway, but whatevs.
Math-inclined friends, I need your help!
So we’re doing trigonometric integrals in calculus and one of our homework problems is this little dude:
We rushed through this section of the chapter this morning ’cause we’re behind schedule and I’m a little shaky on them (also I’m dumb), so I went to the calc room in Polya to get some help. I showed one of the tutors in there this integral.
I told him how I thought we should start: since (1-cos2x) is the numerator of the half-angle formula for sin2x, we could multiply both sides of the half-angle formula to change (1-cos2x) to 2sin2x and then go from there.
He said he’d never even thought about solving it like that, but when I asked him what the “normal” method would be for this integral, he didn’t know.
So is there another way of solving this?
Claudia’s Random Blog of Random Bloginess
The best part about being sleep-deprived and then spending the wee hours of the morning on Tumblr is waking up after finally getting some sleep and seeing some of the weird-ass crap you’ve reblogged/saved on your compy that you don’t remember.
Examples:
Flu shots are BOGUS, I have the immune system of Zeus!
(A “Claudia is hyper” blog follows. You’ve been warned.)
Can you blister your eardrums with hot, hot tunes?
‘CAUSE I THINK I JUST DID!
(That chord at 2:32 makes me super happy. Also, we’re playing this in Concert Band)
I will not be able to hear by the time I’m 30.
[Insert me not giving a crap and cranking the volume higher]
Also, I got all my Amazon stuff at once.
GRE material, Leibniz-related shenanigans, and Metalocalypse.
Yup, sounds about right.
Edit: oh my god, these season 4 extras are great. “It’s a nice night for flying around in a cuuuuuube!”
TWSB: The Beauty of Stats
Here’s some beautiful stuff, people.
This Galton board (or “bean machine” or “quincunx”) demonstration of the Central Limit Theorem is one of the most beautiful things in the world to me.
While the data and trends are fascinating themselves in this demonstration, it’s really Rosling’s enthusiasm about how freaking cool this stuff is that makes me love this video. Yes, I know I’ve posted this one before. Watch it again, it’s badass.
I apologize for how sparse my TWSB posts have been lately; school exploded last week and that’s basically all I’ve had time for. Expect a lot more calculus-related blogs, though, so if you’re into that…
L’Hopitaaaaaaaaaal
One of our homework problems was to solve one of the examples that l’Hopital used in his original calculus textbook.
It took me a bit to figure it out ’cause I’m dumb, but after I finished it I actually wanted to find the original example in the original work. Surprisingly, it didn’t take too long to find. INTERNET POWERZ!
L’Hopital was French. His textbook is, therefore, obviously in French. Curse my unilingualism! I understand the numbers, though, haha.
How cool is it that we got to do this example? Seriously. I really, really hope they offer History of Mathematics class next fall.
Haha. Again, apologies for all the math-related blogs lately. But in all honesty, my life is about 60% math, 15% computer science, and 25% teaching statistics right now. A portion of one of those percentages will yield to some writing in a bit, but for now this is how it is.
If I’m annoying you, just ignore me for the rest of the semester.
Why explaining the Binomial Theorem to a fellow student is a big deal (to me)
Today I explained the Binomial Theorem to another dude in my discrete math class.
“Who cares?” You’re probably saying.
Well, let me tell you a little story.
I used to be good at math. Like, when I was a kid. In elementary school I was one of three kids who were in “advanced math” (we sat in a broom closet and did math out of junior high textbooks. We also gave each other really dorky math nicknames, but I can’t remember mine).
I wasn’t bad through Junior High, either. The only difference was that I’d hit the “who gives a crap about school” phase of my life, so I didn’t really try very hard.
But then I took Algebra II. And I had the worst teacher ever. He was the track coach, so he was really only teaching so he could stay the track coach. He’d stand in front of the class for about 10 minutes, write out a bunch of equations and graphs without explaining them (seriously), then go back to his desk and review track film for the rest of the period. We were to spend the rest of the time doing a bunch of questions from the book, and he would get visibly irritated if we came up to him to ask questions.
I’m not even kidding.
What’s worse is how stupid he made us all feel when we did ask questions. And algebra’s never been my strength anyway (geometry and calc FTW), so you can imagine the number of berating comments I got because I always had questions. And me being me, I associated the “you’re so stupid” feeling with math, and that quickly turned into “you can’t do math you idiot.”
I’ll spare you all the crappy details, but by about January that year I would literally break out in hives whenever I walked down the math wing of the high school. I managed to stick it out, though, and ended up with like a 69.97%, which turned out as a C minus on my report card. And if you know me, you know that’s HORRIBLE. Even in my “I don’t give a crap about school” phase I didn’t get C minuses in any of my other classes.
The “Claudia’s too dumb to do math” attitude lasted into college as I took Math 143 in fall 2006 (though I submit that class was just a horrible class in general) and had like 40 panic attacks over Math 160 (“Survey of Calculus,” kind of an abridged version of calc I with a lot less integration) in fall 2007. I didn’t hate math—I appreciated everything it gave us and the amazing applications—I just hated doing it. (Which is actually kind of funny, because I NEVER felt like that when I started taking statistics. But I see stats and math as very different topics. But that’s another topic for another blog, so moving on…)
Once I got far enough along in the field of stats, I obviously started doing things that involved a lot more advanced math than anything I’d ever dealt with before (e.g., calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors in factor analysis). And I think at some point I realized that if I was ever going to get anywhere in stats, I might as well stop being an idiot, face my fear of not being good at math (yes, it’s a fear of not being good at math, not a fear of math), and take some freaking math classes
And so that’s my life right now.
Every once and awhile, especially if I see a problem that I have no idea how to solve, I still get this incredibly visceral feeling of fear and dread and despair and self-hatred over being too stupid to do anything of worth, but I try to fight it and stay calm (well, calm for me).
But yeah. I’m absolutely loving my math classes and I’m really excited to get to Math 451 and 452, the two “Mathematical Statistics” classes, because I’m anticipating some big “click” where the two subjects merge into some beautiful orgy of integrals and probability distributions (and when that happens, good luck seeing a blog about anything else).
Anyway.
I just thought I’d explain that a little bit and give you a reason why you’re seeing a lot of “Claudia spazzes about math” posts.
Random iPod things
I guess it’s one of those days where it’s snowing upside down.
LOL LONGEST WALK EVER I’MMA GO EAT A CAKE!
(This is what happens when I just barely start my walk to the bus and my iPod battery bites it ‘cause I hadn’t charged it in forever.)
Yes, I took that picture on the 26th, not on the day I’m talking about it in my blog. Deal with it.
Anyway.
Matt, these shoes reminded me of you, so I thought I should bring them to your attention.
That’s all for today.
OBAFGKM
This one suuuuuuuuucks. The symmetry is off just enough to irritate me.
Tiled “OBAFGKM” after the Harvard spectral classification.
Haha. Silly artz.
[frustration]
You know what I love? When people get on Messenger just to dredge up shit from the past and make you feel horrible about things you did when you were an entirely different person, and even though said things happened FIVE YEARS AGO, the way they bring it up just grates against your nerves because it’s the same damn thing every time, which is why you stopped talking in the first place.
Good mood = gone!
[just ignore this]
Dear Calculus II:
What right do you have to be so damn awesome?
L’Hopital’s rule* just made my day. It is the COOLEST FREAKING THING, man!
All of my readers who have had more advanced math are probably thinking “holy freaking crap, Claudia, shut UP with this fascination with all these things everybody else already knows,” to which I say, “NEVER! This stuff is beautiful and powerful and wondrous and gives me tinglies and should give you tinglies as well because IT ALL WORKS TOGETHER AND IT’S MIND-BLOWING HOW THE UNIVERSE FUNCTIONS SO SMOOTHLY WHEN THERE’S SO DAMN MUCH OF IT!”
Also, how in the hell can anyone fall asleep in Discrete Math? Multinomial Theorem = one sexy mofo. But I still suck at permutations/combinations. You’d think with all the stats stuff that such things would be somewhat intuitive to me now, but no.
Okay, enough blogging. Gotta get back to CALC!
*Actually, the rule was most likely developed by Johann Bernoulli; he had tutored L’Hopital and L’Hopital published the rule in his own textbook in 1696 under his own name (though he noted his debt to Bernoulli in the preface). This ticked Bernoulli off and there are letters he sent to Leibniz in which he complained about L’Hopital publishing the rule without proper acknowledgement. Sigh. Calculus, man.
Edit: woah, L’Hopital died on my birthday in 1704 and Bernoulli died on my grandpa’s birthday in 1748. Freaky.
TITLE ENTERED! IS THE NEXT STEP NACHOS?
HI FOOLS!
So I’ve got good news and bad news.
Bad news: due to scheduling conflicts, I had to drop my “for fun” class, Engineering Physics, this semester. Perhaps I’ll be able to fit it in next fall.
Good news: room has opened up in Intermediate Non-Fiction, the next class for me in the Non-Fiction track. So I added that today as my “fun class” at the last minute (literally 11:59 PM).
And in the long-term (’cause I’m all about the long-term), this is probably a better class to take right now anyway. It actually pertains to either a Writing minor or an English major depending on which I decide to pull. And I’ve been itching for another writing class. I love being “forced” to write for homework and I love to read other peoples’ writing.
So…yay?
The Pitfalls of Being a Spaz
This semester’s going to be rough.
I don’t say that because I don’t think I can handle the classes (I’m like 88% sure I will be able to handle them; it’s only 15 credits anyway). I say it because every class I’m taking is in a subject where I could spend hours and hours and hours obsessing over the homework. Which is cool, and is really the point of college—after all, why bother with higher education if you’re not studying something about which you’re passionate?—but can lend itself to problems if I were to get so insanely focused on one class’s homework that I accidentally neglect my other classes. Which is a real possibility, ’cause you know how obsessive I get.
And I already dig C++. A lot more similar to R programming than I was expecting.
And now, what time is it? ADVENTURE TIME! SURVEY TIME!
1) What is your occupation?
Statistics teacher!
2)What colour are your socks now?
My feet are naked, yo!
3)What are you listening to now?
My Rage Quit playlist on YouTube.
4)What was the last thing you ate?
A Wasa flatbread with hummus.
5)Can you drive a stick shift?
Nope.
6)Last person you spoke to on phone?
My dad.
7)Do you like the person who sent you this?
I lifted this from some random blog, so I have no idea.
8)How old are you today?
832 ½.
9)What is your favourite sport to watch on TV?
I’m not much of a sport person. OOOH WAIT FIGURE SKATING!
10)What are your favourite drinks?
Water. Red Bull.
11)Have you ever dyed your hair?
Once. I put streaks of red in. They stayed in there forever until I dyed them out with black.
12)Favourite food?
Broccoli!
13)Last movie watched?
Sunshine.
14)Favourite day of the year?
Any day but April Fool’s. I freaking hate April 1st.
15)How do you vent out your anger?
Destructively.
16)Favourite toy as a child?
I had these 26 little chirping chicks that I accumulated over several Easters. I had one name for each letter of the alphabet.
17)Favourite season?
Summer!
18)Do you want your friends to email you?
Nobody ever does, so meh.
19)When was the last time you cried?
Yesterday.
20)What is on the floor of your closet?
Most of my possessions.
21)Who is the friend you have had the longest?
Aneel, technically.
22)What did you do last night?
Homework!
23)What are you most afraid of?
Failure.
24)Plain,cheese or spicy hamburger?
Cheeese.
25)Favourite dog breed?
I’m not a dog person.
26)Favorite day of the week?
Tuesday.
27)How many states have you lived in?
Two (plus two Canadian provinces).
28)Diamond or pearl?
Diamond.
29)What is your wish for this new year?
To not be as big of a failure as I currently am.
30)New year resolutions?
See above.
Why taking freshman classes is fun/scary/hilarious/depressing/exciting/disturbing/wow
I am 24 years old. Even though nationally the average number of years it takes to graduate with a bachelors degree is trending towards 6 years and thus more and more people are my current age when they graduate, most freshman are still 18, 19, maybe 20.
And currently, I am taking mainly freshman classes.
Why it’s fun: I love the broad scope of 100-level classes. I like how (most) 100-level classes are graded quite easily and thus kind of allow you to mentally gloss over the parts that don’t hold your interest but delve into the parts that do. That’s kind of the purpose of 100-level classes anyway, isn’t it? To help you figure out if what you’re studying actually interests you?
Why it’s scary: There’s always the chance for failure. If I can’t handle things at the 100-level, I’m pretty much in trouble. So there’s that.
Why it’s hilarious: Oh my god. Freshmen.
Why it’s depressing: I’m 24 and still in the “beginning” classes as if I have yet to do anything (academic-wise) with my life. It makes me wish that I’d known what I wanted to do way back when I first started in 2006 (or even before that).
Why it’s exciting: There’s something about starting at the “beginning” of a new field of study, man. The possibilities! The chance for finding future obsessions!
Why it’s disturbing: The number of people who are in college but show absolutely no interest in what they’re studying is the most depressing thing ever. Why waste your time, money, energy, and the prime years of your life doing something you hate? [says the girl who spent two miserable years in the hellhole of Vancouver just for a Masters, but ignore that for now]
Why it’s “wow”: Dude. I just love school, okay? I bitch about it a lot, but I love it.
I’m also really jazzed up today for some reason.
END!
TWSB: Boston Dynamics Takes Alpha Dog to Obedience School
GUYS IT LISTENS TO US NOW!
Alpha Dog, Boston Dynamics’ creepiest freaking dog creature to date, has been updated and now is able to follow vocal commands. He’s quieter than his predecessors and is still able to carry 400-pound loads, navigate uneven terrain, right himself when he bites it, and creep people out.
Video!
Haha, 2:16: “LS3, do a barrel roll!”
2:22: “Nailed it! Let’s go.”
Post!
So after the kilogram news a couple days ago I’ve been reading a lot about the SI units. I totally should make a superhero team (The SI Squad?) with members named after the SI units. Like Captain Kelvin, Senor Second, Lady Candela, The Mole, etc. They battle the group of villains known as the Imperial Units. The evil Dr. Foot, the Ferocious Fathom, the Malicious Mile, etc.
So totally drawing these guys. Or at least making them in HeroMachine.
Oh, and here’s a random survey.
What are you currently reading?
Philosophers at War, which is about the calculus controversy (no, this will never end now), and The Remains of the Day, which is actually rather hilarious at points.
Describe your life in exactly 10 words.
School and teaching and hopefully overwriting some of my ignorance.
When is your birthday?
Soon!
Are you in a relationship?
Ha. No.
What’s your favorite movie?
I love Sunshine, man. It stole my soul.
Are you a risk-taker?
In my own way, yes.
Are you happy with your body?
I’m happy with my immune system. That’s about it.
What’s something that you’ve never had?
A non-dysfunctional romantic relationship.
If someone knew absolutely nothing about the internet, what one thing would you show them to explain what the internet is?
You know it’s true.
If you had a time machine that could only travel backwards, what time would you travel to?
1650. I’ll give you one guess as to why.
Have you ever spent the night in a hospital?
Twice. Only one of those two times was I coherent enough to realize I was in the hospital.
Have you cried this week?
I cry all the time, man.
Do you like beets?
Beets are badass.
What is some place you’ll always remember?
ZzZzZzZ
Wow. Cue random depression at like 4 PM this afternoon. Calc was awesome this morning (u-substitution review!) and I spent the afternoon working out and writing stuff (not at the same time), but when I got home I wanted death.
Haha, I guess this is what I get for complaining about being happy the other day, eh?
Touche, brain. Touche.
It’s tiiiiiiiiiiime…
YES. SCHOOL.
Review:
MATH 176 (Discrete Math): I still dig that we’re going to talk about the pigeonhole principle. Totally excited about the material in this class.
PHYS 211 (Engineering Physics): There are like five of us in there who aren’t physics or engineering majors. This’ll be a lot of work, I think, but it sounds like it’ll be really fun as well. And my prof is awesome.
CS 120 (Computer Science I): Programming in stuff other than R and SAS! I see myself getting really obsessive about this class.
AND my class, which is super late in the day, especially for a stats class (3:30). I’ve got about half the students I did last semester due to the time, but hey…at least I’m not teaching the 8 AM section. I hope my students will like the class (and me).
WOO!
TWSB: Weighty Matters
Happy Birthday, Stephen Hawking!
Woah, I had no idea he was in his 70’s. He’s like 40 years old in my mind for some reason.
I’m not going to BS my way through this and attempt to describe in any significant detail some of Hawking’s major discoveries and theories, so instead I’ll just post something that’s sciency but pretty much totally unrelated to Hawking. ‘Cause I’m dumb.
Anyway. The KILOGRAM!
The kilogram intrigues me. It’s my favorite SI unit. Of the seven basic SI units, it’s the only one still based on a physical object. The blog post actually started my This Week’s Science Blog series was, in fact, about the kilogram. At that time I’d read an article detailing how several of the actual “copies” of the kilogram—that is, the various chunks of metal that all once weighed exactly the same—have been damaged/broken over the decades, resulting in different countries’ kilograms all being defined as slightly different weights.
But now, scientists have discovered that several copies of the kilo have gotten heavier due to surface contamination in the form of carbon and mercury. The actual gain is no more than tens of micrograms, but that’s a big deal considering that things like radioactive materials are often restricted by weight. A few more micrograms of radioactive substance could mean a lot in some situations.
Scientists hope to “clean” the kilo using ozone and ultraviolet light, which would, according to research, not harm the actual metal. But a better solution according to many would be to actually redefine the kilogram based on some law of nature rather than a physical object—something that has been accomplished for the other six major SI units.
Hang in there, kilogram…your day of reckoning is coming!
Noise from the ‘Net
I’m getting all my YouTubin’ out now because once classes start I won’t have time to do much else but study/work/revel in joy.*
Oh man. I’ve seen this before like AGES ago, but holy freaking crap.
Pizzzzza.
Large Macs.
BONBONBONBONS. The way he says it. I’m on the floor, oh my god.
Dude. This song and video.
It’s Rage Quit, so excessive cursing warning and all that. And it’s Nyan Cat, so excessive seizure-inducing flashing warning and all that as well.
I’m just gonna put this here. It’s actually a really catchy song; I listened to it on repeat for like two hours the other day.
END!
*Who am I kidding, nothing can keep me off of the Tubes. Damn you, Al Gore. Damn you.
Eigenblogger 