Home » Discussion Forums » Blog Post Discussion » rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45876 is a reply to message #45873 ] |
Fri, 28 October 2011 21:58   |
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 L.R.K.
Messages: 1080
Registered: October 2008
Location: Sweden |
Senior Member |
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I picked up a book I’d given Peter last Christmas: PROFESSOR STEWART’S HOARD OF MATHEMATHICAL TREASURES.
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Oh! I thik this is the one I got for my husband's birthday - I'm glad to hear it's good! (He hasn't had his birthday yet - also, it's at my mother's where he's unlikely to stumble across it, so I cannot check to make sure if this is the book I got beginning with "Professor Stewart's --- " - there are two, aren't there? I hope he likes it. He's fond of maths. I'm... not.)
Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45882 is a reply to message #45873 ] |
Fri, 28 October 2011 23:32 |
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cgbookcat1
Messages: 138
Registered: October 2008
Location: Massachusetts |
Senior Member |
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And thanks to you generous maths-and-hard-sciences folk out there who have offered assistance. I am compiling a list. Meanwhile, or in the very very short term, like between now and the end of January, I suppose my generic question is, if you had an elderly hellgoddess, not awfully bright but given to enthusiasms and capable of considerable stubbornness, who wanted to know something about how mathematicians and physicists grapple with numbers and theorems and things (and possibly each other) to Define the Universe, what would you tell her?
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The thing I like best about being a scientist is getting to think "well, THAT'S interesting!" on a regular basis. A lot of what we study follows a logical progression -- we start on something and keep plugging away in many steps (sometimes in large collaborations and for many years) until we piece the picture together. On occasion, though, it's like finding a new walking path through the woods and being unable to avoid following it. Knowing that no one's been there before is a thrill, and being able to build off of other peoples' work is tremendously satisfying.
Some mathematical relationships are interesting to me because they can describe so many situations. The equations for oscillators (things that move back and forth) describe both swinging saloon doors and the inner structure of atomic nuclei. We have to tweak the equations for each situation, but I love seeing such different things connected by the same underlying mathematics.
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45886 is a reply to message #45873 ] |
Sat, 29 October 2011 02:31 |
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Diane in MN
Messages: 2730
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA |
Senior Member |
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At the moment the bell fund is not only on track, it’s ahead of the game. Yaaaaaaaay. Of course we’re also busy finding out that just as the original £10,000 quote was low, the £12,000 it was raised to probably isn’t going to cover it either, so we may not be as ahead as all that.
Yay indeed, and congratulations! But you are probably right on about the quote. The basic rule for all these things is that everything takes longer and costs more.
to my fabulous raspberry pink Goretex coat
I have a fabulous fuchsia Gore-Tex rain jacket that I bought from LL Bean many years ago and love dearly. I don't wear it around the dogs because I want to continue loving it for many more years.  It brightens up a grey day enormously.
The Stewart books look very interesting. Now I'll have to see if I can track them down . . .
"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45893 is a reply to message #45873 ] |
Sat, 29 October 2011 15:34 |
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Meanwhile, or in the very very short term, like between now and the end of January, I suppose my generic question is, if you had an elderly hellgoddess, not awfully bright but given to enthusiasms and capable of considerable stubbornness, who wanted to know something about how mathematicians and physicists grapple with numbers and theorems and things (and possibly each other) to Define the Universe, what would you tell her?
I admit, I'm interested in seeing the responses that you get to this question. For me, it's the puzzle of untangling how ideas fit together. I almost said, 'challenge', but it's not so much of a 'aha, we're going to make a mad attach and rout this', so much as it reminds me of when I was younger* and I was untangling a mess of yarn that my cat or myself had made. It's finding an end, and seeing whether it leads and untying the knots you find along the way. It's the "how does this fit with that to get this other thing..." that I find intriguing.
Working with the theorems and the equations, it helps to remember that those are just a way of trying to describe some situation, a lot like learning a different language. The whole just looks like Greek (pardon!) to those who aren't fluent but each piece represents a part of the idea that is being described. (Before the algebraic conventions were developed, the early scientists were trying to describe their ideas just using words and I can't decide whether that makes it easier or harder.) The more you work with it, the easier it is to recognize the meaning without having to rat through each of the conjugations, so to speak.
As to how people get along when their brain works along logical lines... (tip toeing carefully...) well, life is not really cut and dried, and there's lots of room for interpretation of data. I've found that people who carefully reason out their position can be very intoleran... oops, I mean they find it very hard to understand how anyone else could look at that same data and come to a different conclusion.
Very brilliant people can also be very impatient with the rest of us, because the answer is so very painfully obvious to them.
Hope that helps a little.
*we won't talk about how the yarn gets tangled now that I'm older....
FairyTales - http://xkcd.com/872/
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45896 is a reply to message #45893 ] |
Sat, 29 October 2011 17:31 |
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Blogmom
Messages: 1270
Registered: September 2008 |
Senior Member
[Administrator] |
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Meanwhile, or in the very very short term, like between now and the end of January, I suppose my generic question is, if you had an elderly hellgoddess, not awfully bright but given to enthusiasms and capable of considerable stubbornness, who wanted to know something about how mathematicians and physicists grapple with numbers and theorems and things (and possibly each other) to Define the Universe, what would you tell her?
Right about now I'd be emailing Stephen Hawking's PA 
http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/information/contactinfor mation
If you have a garden and a library [and cats], you have everything you need. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45902 is a reply to message #45882 ] |
Sat, 29 October 2011 22:49 |
CateK
Messages: 9
Registered: August 2011
Location: upstate New York |
Junior Member |
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A wonderful book that is about (among many other things) the love of mathematics is "The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yoko Ogawa. You don't have to know anything about mathematics to follow it (although be prepared to do some serious thinking.) And it expresses how much *fun* numbers can be.
Cate
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45940 is a reply to message #45873 ] |
Tue, 01 November 2011 01:35 |
Joseph-ine
Messages: 53
Registered: April 2011 |
Member |
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Meanwhile, or in the very very short term, like between now and the end of January, I suppose my generic question is, if you had an elderly hellgoddess, not awfully bright but given to enthusiasms and capable of considerable stubbornness, who wanted to know something about how mathematicians and physicists grapple with numbers and theorems and things (and possibly each other) to Define the Universe, what would you tell her?
For me this is less about the HOW than it is about the WHY, which some others have already alluded to.
Unfortunately for me, I probably don't remember as well as I should how I know what to do with the numbers when maths is required. I just do. I am more worried about what number goes where and why it should be there. This is more the physicist in me than anything. In fact, a lot of the time when I was learning maths, it wasn't the how that frustrated me, it was knowing why something needs to go where it should be (and this was generally the reason I got something wrong becuase I didn't understand why something had to be somewhere in particular), but this happened more in my physics classes rather than my maths classes.
I have always thought of maths as learning how to deal with patterns in a way that doesn't just requiring counting. Maths was a way to do the counting without having actually needing to count anything - rather having the maths do the "counting" for me. I suppose thats how maths teachers might teach it - although not being a maths teacher I can't really comment on the pedagogy behind it.
I have a good book called "The bedside book of algebra", which gives history and short lessons on different types of algegraic computations. You might find this a handy support if you need a little extra help. I actually do sometimes read it before I go to bed too.
This is an interesting thought problem. I might have to revisit this again!
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45949 is a reply to message #45940 ] |
Tue, 01 November 2011 10:19 |
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| Joseph-ine wrote on Mon, 31 October 2011 22:35 |
I have always thought of maths as learning how to deal with patterns in a way that doesn't just requiring counting. Maths was a way to do the counting without having actually needing to count anything - rather having the maths do the "counting" for me.
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This is a key point, and very well put.
FairyTales - http://xkcd.com/872/
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45952 is a reply to message #45946 ] |
Tue, 01 November 2011 14:16 |
CathyR
Messages: 575
Registered: July 2009
Location: NW England |
Senior Member |
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| glanalaw wrote on Tue, 01 November 2011 14:05 |
As soon as it starts getting cold as well as wet I will shift over to my fabulous raspberry pink Goretex coat bought in that dazzling crescendo of serendipity at the end of the season last year.
^ I blogged about it, but I think I’d be sorry to hear you remembered.
I do in fact remember this. Sorry 
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So do I! It was hiding at the back of the shop, if I recall rightly, amongst all the sludge coloured coats!
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.
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| Re: rain, books, maths, bell fund, etc [message #45954 is a reply to message #45949 ] |
Tue, 01 November 2011 17:57 |
CateK
Messages: 9
Registered: August 2011
Location: upstate New York |
Junior Member |
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I always thought of math as a whole separate language/mindset for describing/interpreting reality. When studying both physics and math I got a real charge out of those instances when math and 'reality' intersected in unexpected (to me) ways - like using imaginary numbers to describe circuits. The question that always fascinated me was, is math just a way of modeling reality, or does it truly *describe* reality? (I know, clear as mud....)
Cate
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