I have a terrible cold. I very seldom get sick, so this is about as sick as I get. I’m half tempted to stay home today, but I have a math quiz, an astronomy lab, student congress districts, and a ham radio club meeting. I’ll probably wind up at Jitter’s tonight too.
I don’t usually stay at home when sick, because I’ll be just as sick at home, just not as productive.
Last night I dreamed of Newton’s Method.
I can’t explain why, or even what it means to dream of Newton’s Method, but dream of it I did.
On Tuesday in class, Newton’s Method was brought up and I just blanked. I didn’t get what purpose it served nor why we were learning it. There was no context. Jotting down what is written on the board doesn’t mean you really know something, so I left the class not really groking what Newton’s Method was. It wasn’t the fault of the TA, for whatever reason, I didn’t get it after that lecture.
Well, in college 1.0 if you didn’t know something, you could ask the prof, and if you didn’t understand it then, you were SOL. This time, I turned first to Google. It turns out if you search for Newton’s Method, you will find dozens of sites explaining what it is, java apps that crunch numbers for you, java apps of graphs to visually represent what is going on, and even a nifty little flash animation.
It took no time at all to understand it. Its not hard at all. It can in fact, be a very handy thing. The web is a wonderful thing, and that little demonstration in understanding a subject wouldn’t have been possible back in 1990. I’m a firm believer that anyone can understand anything if its presented in small enough chunks and in the right way. The trick of course it figure out that right way. With the web, the odds of finding someone who explains it in the right way goes up significantly.
So I finished my google adventure, went to bed, and dreamed of moving tangent lines.
I’m very sloppy when it comes to certain things. Not like doing laundary (which I’m also sloppy at) but taking tests.
I read very fast, but not often that percise. It really hurts me when taking tests.
I came out of my math test last week thinking I had done a good job, but when I got the test back, I didn’t do as well as I thought I had. I’m still getting an A for the course, but I’m closer to A- range than I’d like to be. Most of the mistakes were dumb errors. (I had one legitimate questions I botched, but I can deal with that)
I detest these it when I commit these type of errors.
While my math class is going OK, I looked over the Math subject test for the GRE (not the general math test that everyone takes). I’ve forgotten a lot.
I’m slowly trying to re-teach myself a lot of what I’ll need to know: vector calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, and there is some stuff I don’t think I ever had before that I’ll probably need to take classes on.
The GRE subject test seems to test more for bredth than depth of knowledge.
I’m going to write a long post soon about going to school when your over 30. Suffice it to say, college is wasted on the young. I think everyone would get more out if it if they waited till they were about 21 to start college.
I was notified by Textamerica that my moblog is one of their fatured sites (at least for a few days). I’m guessing its how I captured the essense of the MIA or the cool layering pics of the snowbank.
Bietz, Kurtz, and one of my extempers also have blogs up at Textamerica.
I’m really suprised that Sprint or the other cell providers don’t buy textamercia or create a similar site. Being able to post images is half the fun of having a cell phone. I send stuff to the web all the time, but almost never send photos to other people.