I decided to go watch Free Solo this afternoon. I had seen a snippet of Alex Honnold’s 60 Minutes special while in high school, and remember being impressed. Then I discovered this documentary about him won an Oscar. Even better, it was being shown in some local theaters. The short version is this: No film has made me feel less competent and driven, yet I don’t envy necessarily envy Alex’s single-mindedness. ...
Up front, here is a link to my math blog that has the meat of this post. Also, there will be a PDF version attached. I’ve finally gotten around to writing another math post. There’s a mix of reasons why I’ve been writing about a lot of other things. First, there have just been other topics in the front of my mind that I felt like writing about in the moment. Second, there were not any particular pieces of math I felt inspired to write about. And third, preparation of a math post is significantly more work for me, as I care a lot about being accurate, precise, and clear in my presentation. ...
The other day, I finally finished making my room fairly clean and I tidy. I put together a bookshelf to house some odds and ends, removed the final cardboard boxes still hanging around since I moved in, and sorted my papers. I felt good. But something was still missing. This week’s Comical Start episode featured me discussing my desire for a Roomba “just to have something that seems like it’s alive in my apartment.” However, a Roomba is not in my future. After a healthy discussion of why an actual pet is not a possibility right now, Grant and I decided I would get a plant. As a result, I went out Saturday morning and got myself a little succulent. My new pal, Calvin (naturally named after the spiky-haired first-grader Calvin) ...
And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby A few weeks ago I read The Great Gatsby for the first time. It was a pretty good book. I don’t have much experience reading Fitzgerald, and the style of his era – as well as the upper class focus – is a bit different from what I normally read. I enjoyed the story, but the only thing that really stuck with me was the quote above. It is not central to the book, but I find it particularly profound and relevant today. ...
During a recent recording of OHAC, we talked about yearly themes. In short, yearly themes are meant to be broader versions of resolutions. They are not necessarily defined by explicit goals, but rather a frame of mind, or a general approach to the upcoming year. We talk about it in that episode, and there are links to episodes of the podcast Cortex with more information about the idea of yearly themes. My theme is the *Year of Focus*. Now that I have more freetime on my hands, I want to use it to help improve my attention span and make significant progress on projects I put off while in college. The first step in this, before it was even official, was the reading binge I’ve written about a few times now. ...
The Super Bowl ended not too long ago. It was an incredibly boring game (especially when compared to last year’s shootout extravaganza.). In a way, that is fitting. I spend a good chunk of time about 7 months out of the year watching baseball. Once baseball is over in early November, I transition to college and professional football. It is less frequent than baseball, but fills the sports-shaped void in my heart well enough. ...
This weekend I went whale watching for the first time. It was a fantastic experience. I went with Offshore Blue Adventures, which I’d probably consider the premier experience for anybody who wants to see whales and dolphins up close. They use an inflatable boat, similar to what the Coast Guard or Navy SEALs would use. The benefits of small boats on the ocean is that they ride large swells very easily; the benefits of small boats when whale and dolphin watching is that you can get closer without scaring off the animals. ...
A couple years ago, I watched Split. It was a very engaging movie. I walked away quite thrilled by the psychology of the entire situation. One of the people I saw the movie with mentioned it was a spiritual successor to a movie made about fifteen years prior, Unbreakable. It wasn’t clear there was any connection, other than the main character of Unbreakable having a short cameo at the very end of Split. Beyond this brief mention, the movies largely left my mind and I don’t recall talking with anyone else who saw Split. ...
Last year, I finally began compiling a list of books I have read over the years. While I am sure it is incomplete; the approximate dates I’ve given are inaccurate as I go further back; I have not included many of the young adult (or younger) books I read; and I didn’t individually list books that are in a series, it has still been informative for me to have this list and remember how much I’ve liked getting through a book over the years. Around this past Thanksgiving, I started on a reading rampage like I haven’t seen in myself for years. I finished three books throughout the month of December, and have finished two thus far in January. I should easily have a third finished before February rolls around. ...
I was on one of my favorite subreddits today, /r/learnmath (of course I sort by New), and a question came up that ultimately came down to understanding order of operations. These always frustrate me because they stem from a poor understanding of how the order of operations work; furthermore, any problem involving order of operations can be fixed and cleared up with an additional set of parentheses. Consider this math problem below – the type I see making its way around Facebook. ...