The Adventure Winding Down (I think)

Dear Steve,

(who, according to Justin, is a skinny kid from Cambridge who is "acquiring a bunch of science credits from Columbia via their post-back program.")

Thanks for reading my blog and sorry I haven't posted for awhile. Whats going on is that I hate blogs that are mainly whining. I like blogs, like WPM, that tell real stories about real people and real things and stuff that happen in real places. I thought my math adventure might be like that, but so far, for me at least, it hasn't.

I'm still enjoying learning new things, but haven't figured out how to write about them. Like, how would you tell Justin how cool it is to create an exponential function that will let you create a graph of a catenary. Or how slick "e", the Euler number is?

My teacher is still very good. No complaints at all. What I think I was looking for was something like "the aesthetics of math" or just, as trite and unrealistic as it sounds, some kind of truth and beauty. Well, not yet. Most likely, maybe never.

There are about four more weeks left in the semester. There is a test this Friday and the final around May 9. I'm likely going to get a passing grade for the class, but that never mattered, but it is nice. I'm probably not going to take the next class, trig, because my own teaching load is cranking back up next school year and I want to do a better job for my students. Also, there are too many other things to learn.

I imagine these couple of algebra classes I have taken have been good mental calisthenics. Plus I really "get it" about how compound interest and half-lives work, but I can't honestly say the the end result was worth the investment in time I have made so far. On the other hand, the process probably was worth it. Like going on a great bike ride. The finish is fine, but the ride through beautiful mountains and along rivers with changing leaves is what it is really all about.

One way I can tell I am winding down is that I am sitting here typing rather than diving into inverse functions. Another part of the reason I haven't posted was because if I had some "math time" I would want to study rather than write this blog.

One thing that I have learned is that learning math takes time. Lots of time. Just like music or writing or sports or anything. I tell my own students that they can't possible write a good story on their first try and easily. Pros can't, so why should they be able to. I can tell I haven't put in nearly enough time, even though Seth can't believe how much time I do put in. I still would like to try calculus and have a feel for it. But that's not going to happen yet. I certainly have a lot of respect and admiration for people who can do this stuff. But I still wonder whether they see "larger" things that I can't, or if they put in the time to learn the mechanics. You probably have a better feel for that than I do.

I can tell that I'm rambling but I did want to post again. Right now I need to switch focus and learn how to "find the inverse of a function with a restricted domain."