Prof. Lazebnik's talk:
I thought it was really interesting how he was able to remember certain problems after so many years. I was also amazed on how these problems influenced him so much.
I did have a teacher that first influenced me towards math when I was younger. I was always good at math in elementary school and I was always in the advanced classes except after 5th grade because the teacher felt I was too quiet which was fine. I really didn't notice until the 7th grade when I had the teacher that no one ever wanted for math. My teacher, Mr. Scheffler, was known to be very strict. One day he had called on me for a problem. It was something really easy like conversions or something but I asked to do it on the board which I guess was the first time that happened because after that he was just always very nice, and he liked to show me as an example for other kids of what they should have been doing on their hw and such. I did practically perfect on all the hws and exams. He liked to talk about how I should seriously consider math and how I should start early so that summer he gave me a lot of work to do. It might have been the work just covered by the advanced class but I did it all and the following year skipped to the advanced classes and so I continued with those until college. From there it was just always math. I went to math camps and did some math competitions and just always enjoyed it.
Another really cool teacher I had was my calculus teacher in high school. He was a really akward guy but he had the craziest stories. Also if you dropped some coins, any coins, on the ground, he would be able to guess which coins fell and how many of each coin. He also had a quotient rule song which might have influenced me to memorize it for the rest of my life.
Other than that, these professors named Pelesko and Cook introduced me to research and I really liked that! It kindof might have influenced me to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life but who knows. :)
And I do love math too. I'm not always the best at it but I appreciate it and I honestly think its the best thing in the world to finally figure out a problem and completely understand it.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Week Six
Overview of the Speakers:
The graduate students were very interesting. I thought their talks were very useful because I don't talk to graduate students very often about how they got where they are or why. I thought Regon's talk was the most entertaining but he's always very animated so that was fun. Derek, Pam, and Todd were interesting too. I just liked listening to their stories. It was fun.
I liked L. Charles Biehl's talk about his involvement on the show Numb3rs. I thought the math was very interesting. It wasn't anything I had seen before and I think its a great way to make students more interested in math by relating it to a TV show.
Prof. Schleiniger's talk was a little bit beyond of what I understood. I don't know much about business and I kindof don't have much of an interest in business but I did understand part of it! He was also very nice and interesting.
The graduate students were very interesting. I thought their talks were very useful because I don't talk to graduate students very often about how they got where they are or why. I thought Regon's talk was the most entertaining but he's always very animated so that was fun. Derek, Pam, and Todd were interesting too. I just liked listening to their stories. It was fun.
I liked L. Charles Biehl's talk about his involvement on the show Numb3rs. I thought the math was very interesting. It wasn't anything I had seen before and I think its a great way to make students more interested in math by relating it to a TV show.
Prof. Schleiniger's talk was a little bit beyond of what I understood. I don't know much about business and I kindof don't have much of an interest in business but I did understand part of it! He was also very nice and interesting.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Week Five
Course on Any Mathematical Topic:
If I could request a course on any mathematical topic that is not currently in our caralog, I would request to have a course that would explore a connection between art and math. I think there used to be one called Geometry in Art. They have some drawings in the 4th floor of Ewing and it seems really interesting. I hear a lot about math being used to construct amazing architecture and compose masterpieces with the Fibannoci numbrs in my art history classes. Also, the philosophy of math in ancient times can be seen sometimes through a civilization's art. Even a lot of modern artists explore many concepts of math to create their pieces of work.
Another possible class would be further exploring the concept of solving forensic cases with mathematics.
If I could request a course on any mathematical topic that is not currently in our caralog, I would request to have a course that would explore a connection between art and math. I think there used to be one called Geometry in Art. They have some drawings in the 4th floor of Ewing and it seems really interesting. I hear a lot about math being used to construct amazing architecture and compose masterpieces with the Fibannoci numbrs in my art history classes. Also, the philosophy of math in ancient times can be seen sometimes through a civilization's art. Even a lot of modern artists explore many concepts of math to create their pieces of work.
Another possible class would be further exploring the concept of solving forensic cases with mathematics.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Week Four
Color:
If math could be a color, I think it would be red just because I think red is a warm color and math is lively to me. Its a subject that brings about many emotions to many people and I think red is the basic feeling it brings to people. When people get frustrated and angry with a problem, I would think that the color is more red for that and when people finally figure it out and realize that the method they used was correct well I would probably think more red for me just because if I managed to figure it out then I feel passionate about it and thats just red to me.
Food:
If math could be a food, it would be spaghetti. Spaghetti can be used to represent practically any problem in basic arithmatic to applied mathematics situations. Obviously spaghetti can be used for adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions. Spaghetti is also a line which can be used for graphs! And if spaghetti is a line then we can prove that we can find the slope of spaghetti and the area under its curve, derivatives, intregals, curvature and so much more!
When cooked, spaghetti can be used for its flexibility to test knots, strength, and a large possibility of other applications for analysis.
When uncooked, it can be used to test the strength of a beam as a tiny model but these applications can be used to relate back to real world problems.
You could probably use the whole process of cooking spaghetti as an interesting project for random packing too! The possibilities are endless.
At the very least, it makes an ok snack when studying. I would prefer chocolate but I've tried to relate math and chocolate before and that didn't turn out too exciting.
Animal:
If math could be an animal, it would be a leopard for me. I could say it would be a fuzzy white bunny that would represent the fibonacci sequence or an octopus that would represent the eight branches of math but I kindof see math as more of a fierce wild feline that can't really be tamed and kindof has its own rules that shouldn't be broken unless you are prepared for the deep consequences of doing the cat wrong. Also, there is always the possibility of counting the spots and doing some math problems based on them.
If math could be a color, I think it would be red just because I think red is a warm color and math is lively to me. Its a subject that brings about many emotions to many people and I think red is the basic feeling it brings to people. When people get frustrated and angry with a problem, I would think that the color is more red for that and when people finally figure it out and realize that the method they used was correct well I would probably think more red for me just because if I managed to figure it out then I feel passionate about it and thats just red to me.
Food:
If math could be a food, it would be spaghetti. Spaghetti can be used to represent practically any problem in basic arithmatic to applied mathematics situations. Obviously spaghetti can be used for adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions. Spaghetti is also a line which can be used for graphs! And if spaghetti is a line then we can prove that we can find the slope of spaghetti and the area under its curve, derivatives, intregals, curvature and so much more!
When cooked, spaghetti can be used for its flexibility to test knots, strength, and a large possibility of other applications for analysis.
When uncooked, it can be used to test the strength of a beam as a tiny model but these applications can be used to relate back to real world problems.
You could probably use the whole process of cooking spaghetti as an interesting project for random packing too! The possibilities are endless.
At the very least, it makes an ok snack when studying. I would prefer chocolate but I've tried to relate math and chocolate before and that didn't turn out too exciting.
Animal:
If math could be an animal, it would be a leopard for me. I could say it would be a fuzzy white bunny that would represent the fibonacci sequence or an octopus that would represent the eight branches of math but I kindof see math as more of a fierce wild feline that can't really be tamed and kindof has its own rules that shouldn't be broken unless you are prepared for the deep consequences of doing the cat wrong. Also, there is always the possibility of counting the spots and doing some math problems based on them.
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