I Gotta Buy the Book - Retail

I got on the phone to get the story about the $135 textbook.

The best way, I figured, was to actually communicate with Professor Lapeyre. I called the college and they couldn't find his name in their directory. Then I called the Math Department. The nice woman who took my call couldn't find his name either. She checked with several people there and eventually figured out that the course was being offered through "The Community Campus." I should call them.

I did, and they did verify that the section I was signed up for was theirs. But they couldn't find Professor Lapeyre either. That person gave me Paul Welch's name. It didn't say in his listing, but apparently he is head of the math department.

I gave Dr. Welsh a call and he cheerfully picked up his own phone. I introduced myself and said I wanted to contact Professor Lapeyre. Dr. Welsh confirmed that Lapeyre was indeed hired -- Welsh interviewed and hired him --- but he couldn't give me his phone number. He also said he might not yet have a Pima College email account. He did confirm that Lapeyre was a physicist, but he thought he was still working and was younger than a retired prof ought to be. I'll get the answer to that later. He also said the correct pronunciation of his name is "La - PAIR."

He said I should call the bookstore back and ask for the Community Campus section.

I did, asked for the Community Campus Section, gave the course number, and was handed over to a supervisor. He confirmed the book and the price: $135. It was a whole package with a workbook, CD, video, and who knows what else. And no used copies were available. OK, I guess I gotta bike down and make the purchase.

Meantime, I checked online and there are a bunch of free tutorials about intermediate algebra. I should have all the help I need, but still wonder if I should have started at ground zero -- beginning algebra.

A Book about Back to School

This morning's New York Times business section ran a story about a guy who left his journalism career to pursue a Harvard MBA.

Philip Delves Broughton wrote "Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School." I haven't read the book, but the Times story said, "In 2004, dismayed over the gloomy state of newspaper journalism and his own career prospects. Mr. Broughton, then 32, quit his job as Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London and enrolled in Harvard Business School."

Being a good journalist, he wrote a book about it. It's now (Aug. 17, 2008) at 129 on the Amazon rankings. That is a spectacular accomplishment in itself. My book, "Race and Class on Campus: Conversations with Ricardo's Daughter,"made it up to the low 400,000s. Now it's at 1,699,074. Those kinds of rankings (mine, not Philip's) are great for humility. Not too great for launching a writing career.

O.K., so I'm not gloomy about the state of newspaper journalism or my own career prospects, I'm not quitting my job, and I'm going to Pima Community College rather than Harvard Business School. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. And perhaps writing about it.

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Tomorrow I plan to call Pima College's math department to try to get contact info for Professor Gerald J. Lapeyre. There has to be a story there, and I need to figure out how to get the textbook for less than $150.

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I'm still working on paperless, calculator-free addition. The exercise I'm on consists of 15 sets of 12 two-digit numbers in columns. My lack of accuracy still surprises me. I'm working on the first five sets only and I haven't yet got all of them right.

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I think I want to find other people who have learned math late and learn about their stories. If you've done that or know anyone who has and who might be willing to tell me about it, please pass along my email address (rochlin@arizona.edu) and ask them to drop me a line. Do people under 50 say, "drop me a line?"

It All Adds Up!

So I can finally add well enough to move on beyond exercise 13 in "How to Calculate Quickly." I keep asking myself, "Why can't I add the numbers right every time. They're just two digit numbers and it's just addition."

So, this morning, for the 25 columns, I made myself slow down and I allowed myself to re-do a problem if I wasn't confident that it was right. A couple of times I got four different answers. I can't be that dumb or careless. But I was. So if I got the same answer twice, or in a couple of instances, three times, I went with it. Even with all that, I still got two wrong, but that gave me 92 percent and personal permission to move on.

The next exercise was to add 19 to randomly arranged numbers 1 through 99. I sailed through that. Next up, exercise 15, more two-digit addition with longer columns. Way longer. I'll report later.

I put my book purchase decision off for a little bit. I decided to email the professor to verify the name of the book and ask whether an earlier edition might work.

The instructor is listed as Gerald J. Lapeyre. I couldn't find a bio on the Pima College Web site. On Google, I found a retired physics professor from Montana State. Looking deeper I found some minutes from a Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education meeting from September 21-22, 2000/ One entry said:

"Authorization to Confer the Title of Professor Emeritus of Physics upon Gerald J. Lapeyre; Montana State University- Bozeman." Cool. An old guy. Like me.

Turns out that Professor Lapeyre also has authored several physics research papers.

I was curious about his academic interests and found this on the Montana State Web site:

"Professor Lapeyre's research in the solid state and surface science laboratory focuses on the electronic states and electron interactions in solids and at surfaces. A strong emphasis is placed on quantum properties of MBE grown III-V semiconductor surfaces. The principal spectroscopies used are polarization dependent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (PARUPS) in the far and extreme ultraviolet spectral range and high resolution low energy electron loss spectroscopy (HREELS). LEED, ESCA, and Auger are used for multiple sample analysis. Two sources of photon flux are available. In the Montana State University laboratory, gas discharge lamps and x-rays are used. The MSU lab group is also a user group at the Synchrotron Radiation Center at the University of Wisconsin, where the group has its own beam line which covers the spectral range from about 5 to 1000 eV."

I didn't understand a word of that either.

I wonder if my teacher will be his son? Or by amazing coincidence, another human named Gerald J. Lapeyre. Or, did professor Lapeyre retire to Tucson and decide to teach a community college algebra class just to keep busy.

I sorta hope it is him. I've been wanting to engage in a discussion with a physicist about the big bang, that they all believe it. My question is basically: Is there a word for the circumstance where all assumptions are apparently correct and all the math is done correctly but the entire process proves a phenomenon that is absurd on its face? Like the big bang theory.

Thinking about Infinity

Sitting at a computer, listening to Willie Nelson on Pandora.com, and thinking about infinity. Not bad.

Even though I got through college basically skipping math and science, I still have always spent time thinking about the kinds of things that math supposedly holds the answers to. Like infinity.

I like the idea of infinity because the idea is one of those things that that make really smart people crazy and less smart people invent wonderful stories like god, the big bang, and black holes.

So, a couple of weeks ago I was in Oceanside, Calif. with Gail, my wife, and Muriel, my mother in law. We stayed at a fancy condo and it came with books and sure enough, there was a book about infinity. It got my attention.

The book was A Brief History of Infinity by Brian Clegg.

The book was readable (amazing) by a math illiterate like me. Clegg goes through a whole history of how people through time have dealt with the idea of infinity. Infinity's earliest references, definitions. problems, how it relates to calculus, and the key people who have tried to wrestle with the concept of infinity through the ages. He even talks about how the infinity symbol came to be.

Clegg begins each chapter with a pithy quote. Here are two of my favorites:

"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations.


"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Attributed to Albert Einstein (reputedly said at a press conference in the 1930s).

The book was a great diversion, but I need to start thinking about doing math rather than reading about it. It's time to actually register for a class. Later.

Are You a High School Graduate?

The Pima Community College downtown campus offers assessment tests on a walk in basis every day until 7 p.m. I decided to give it a try and see where I stand.

When I decided to begin this number journey, part of my reason was to experience new things and new worlds. Little ones, and perhaps big ones. I got my first little one quickly.

I marched up to the testing center and said I wanted to take the math assessment test. The first question the (very nice) person behind the desk asked me was, "Are you a high school graduate?" That was new. I don't recall ever having been asked that ever, even as an 18 or 19 year old. I might have blinked at the question. In an instant I wondered whether I wanted to mention my MBA or Ph.D. or that I was a professor. I caught myself and said, "yes."

That person was kind enough to look up my Pima College ID number. I had one because I had taken first year Spanish and two classes about Dreamweaver, the web design program. She then asked what test I was interested in. I said algebra.

In moments I was directed to a computer in the testing lab. There were three sheets of scrap paper, a pencil, and a calculator on the desk. The screen give directions about getting started.

After the first three questions I walked back to the nice lady at the desk and explained that I needed an easier test. I was already over my head. She told me not to worry -- that the test was programmed to work me into easier questions if necessary and because the program was created by the folks who designed the ACT, it will accurately place me in the appropriate level of class. But, she said, I needed to answer each question, to get to the next one.

I slunk back to the computer and soldiered on. I guessed the answers to the next several questions -- pretty much in fear that I might guess right, and would make the computer place me in a class that I had no business being in. Finally, I got some answers right and then some more. I guess I worked my way down to my level. Soon, in fact in only 16 minutes and 49 seconds (it said on the print out of my results) I was done.

My score was 49. That, of course meant nothing to me.

The woman who I was becoming more familiar with, told me that score placed me in "intermediate algebra."

Yikes! I was sure I should have landed in beginning algebra. But no, she assured me, I was right in the middle of the intermediate algebra range on my score and I should do fine. I did take some reassurance in the fact that you don't get college credit for what I now learned was officially math 122.

O.K. Next task: Find a class.