Math dreams on my summer vacation
Today is the last day of my summer vacation :(. Now, don't get jealous. Definitely don't think that my summer vacation has stretched from summer through the middle of November. It didn't. (much to my dismay...) My summer vacation has been a 10-day trip to GA in November. But at least I finally had one!
Mostly I've done a lot of reading. It's been great. My queue of books to read has been reaching staggering lengths lately, so I'm really glad to have gotten the chance to peg off a few. Although, I guess it's kind of backfired since I worry that I'll finish the 4th (and last) book I brought with me before I touch down in Sacramento this evening, so now I'm headed back with 2 books of my dad's. But they're PG Wodehouses, so they'll be quick.
It hasn't all been reading. I went to Athens for a few days (and read there :D) to see the few people who are still there, eat at my favorite restaurants, and hang out at my favorite coffee shop. My dad and I went to the new Georgia Aquarium (didn't read there), and I've tagged along with my dad to Georgia Tech twice. That's where I am right now. (Obviously, a lot of reading goes on at Georgia Tech. :P)
Last Tuesday I sat in on my dad's Honors Calc class. He's apparently established quite a following here, and has a fan club on facebook, which he's very proud of. (I'm not supposed to let any of his fans know that he knows about the club. If any of his students are reading this, the jig is up... Don't say you heard it from me! Of course, I hope his students don't read this anyway.) The fan club (which has 19 members including one #1 fan) is mostly just an online repository where they store quotes of all the kooky things he says in lectures. He's quite a character, as any of you who've met him will affirm :D. So, last week I decided to see what all the hype is about and attended his class. Apparently it wasn't one of his funnier days (too bad for me), but he did have a few zingers. My favorite was when he stated, "any fool can see that this is a hyperbola," after diagonalizing it. (I think. I can't actually remember what the basis for that particular fool identifying a hyperbola was...) He also alluded to the good, old Commodore 64, a reference which I'm sure very few of his students got. They're all so young! The students' overwhelming favorite was when he demonstrated how to take U down when it was strutting around feeling superior to L. One kid even said, "Smack!" Poor U turned out to be irrelevant (but only because it was a symmetric matrix). Little did you know there were comedic stylings for the LU Factorization of a symmetric matrix!
I guess, at least on the basis of his fan club, my dad is a sort of Math dream. (How many mathematicians have a fan club anyway?) But that's not the source of this post's title. It derives from today's trip to Georgia Tech. Today I fly back to Cali, so I'm stuck tagging along to Tech since it's on the way to the airport. Naturally, my dad made me get up at 6:30 to come to Tech even though my flight isn't until 4 this afternoon. (He seems to like symmetry... Symmetric matrices... Making me get up at the same absolute time on each end of my summer vacation... (I had to get up at 3:30 for my shuttle to the Sac airport 10 days ago. yuck!)) So I've been curled up on the little couch in his office trying to grab some extra winks. It's a vast improvement on the wooden chair which was the only spare furniture in his last office, but for some reason, it's been making me dream about Math at Georgia Tech. In the dream I remember most clearly, I'm going to his class with him. It's kind of a snowy day (only in a dream...) and trucks spraying pink de-icer pass us as we walk to the classroom. A woman stops my dad and informs him that classes are canceled, but we still have to go to the class to let all the students know. When we get there, the previous class hasn't finished yet, so we wait around in the hallway. It's a ballet class. One of the dancers is in my dad's class too, so I sat behind her and asked her how terrible it was to dance in this room since clearly the floor is not intended for dancing. As I expected, they all suffer from shin splints and mostly just do barre.
I guess it's sort of a math dream...
Mostly I've done a lot of reading. It's been great. My queue of books to read has been reaching staggering lengths lately, so I'm really glad to have gotten the chance to peg off a few. Although, I guess it's kind of backfired since I worry that I'll finish the 4th (and last) book I brought with me before I touch down in Sacramento this evening, so now I'm headed back with 2 books of my dad's. But they're PG Wodehouses, so they'll be quick.
It hasn't all been reading. I went to Athens for a few days (and read there :D) to see the few people who are still there, eat at my favorite restaurants, and hang out at my favorite coffee shop. My dad and I went to the new Georgia Aquarium (didn't read there), and I've tagged along with my dad to Georgia Tech twice. That's where I am right now. (Obviously, a lot of reading goes on at Georgia Tech. :P)
Last Tuesday I sat in on my dad's Honors Calc class. He's apparently established quite a following here, and has a fan club on facebook, which he's very proud of. (I'm not supposed to let any of his fans know that he knows about the club. If any of his students are reading this, the jig is up... Don't say you heard it from me! Of course, I hope his students don't read this anyway.) The fan club (which has 19 members including one #1 fan) is mostly just an online repository where they store quotes of all the kooky things he says in lectures. He's quite a character, as any of you who've met him will affirm :D. So, last week I decided to see what all the hype is about and attended his class. Apparently it wasn't one of his funnier days (too bad for me), but he did have a few zingers. My favorite was when he stated, "any fool can see that this is a hyperbola," after diagonalizing it. (I think. I can't actually remember what the basis for that particular fool identifying a hyperbola was...) He also alluded to the good, old Commodore 64, a reference which I'm sure very few of his students got. They're all so young! The students' overwhelming favorite was when he demonstrated how to take U down when it was strutting around feeling superior to L. One kid even said, "Smack!" Poor U turned out to be irrelevant (but only because it was a symmetric matrix). Little did you know there were comedic stylings for the LU Factorization of a symmetric matrix!
I guess, at least on the basis of his fan club, my dad is a sort of Math dream. (How many mathematicians have a fan club anyway?) But that's not the source of this post's title. It derives from today's trip to Georgia Tech. Today I fly back to Cali, so I'm stuck tagging along to Tech since it's on the way to the airport. Naturally, my dad made me get up at 6:30 to come to Tech even though my flight isn't until 4 this afternoon. (He seems to like symmetry... Symmetric matrices... Making me get up at the same absolute time on each end of my summer vacation... (I had to get up at 3:30 for my shuttle to the Sac airport 10 days ago. yuck!)) So I've been curled up on the little couch in his office trying to grab some extra winks. It's a vast improvement on the wooden chair which was the only spare furniture in his last office, but for some reason, it's been making me dream about Math at Georgia Tech. In the dream I remember most clearly, I'm going to his class with him. It's kind of a snowy day (only in a dream...) and trucks spraying pink de-icer pass us as we walk to the classroom. A woman stops my dad and informs him that classes are canceled, but we still have to go to the class to let all the students know. When we get there, the previous class hasn't finished yet, so we wait around in the hallway. It's a ballet class. One of the dancers is in my dad's class too, so I sat behind her and asked her how terrible it was to dance in this room since clearly the floor is not intended for dancing. As I expected, they all suffer from shin splints and mostly just do barre.
I guess it's sort of a math dream...
posted by Meg at
7:04 AM
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