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BBP
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Still elated with my 2nd hand store find. Played Uroboros 5 times today already!
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BBP
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And playing it for the third time today. Might as well hook it to my veins.
Oh no wait. That'd require needles.
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punknaynowned
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^^^^^^^^^^^^6
Knitter humor.
Thx for the links of the parades.
Really extensive!
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BBP
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 I was knitting when I read that... a book cover with cable knit patterns. I
was busy counting and getting the stitches to wrap around.
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polydigm
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Mid semester break just started. Don't know what to do with myself.
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BBP
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Enjoy your peace, I suppose...
Oddly I've dug up my old math books about a month ago, while searching for my favourite demi-carré (couldn't find the English term, one of those ruler
+ protractor things) I thought I'd search my old math books and lo and behold, I got caught in a factorisation loop. Great thing is now I can do all
the extra assignments without needing permission.
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BBP
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Went to the supermarket and the regular market for groceries. Friend came to visit today and that was a lot of fun. Because it's my sister's birthday
tomorrow, I made a cake: in view of time saving I baked that while he was looking on.
Found that the 200 g pure chocolate bars they sell at the shop have a cunning health info data specification. They put the information about calories,
fatties, salt, sugar content et al on the front: but they only measure it by cube, which is 7 grams. Did some math and found that by consuming that
entire bar you get 114% of your recommended daily allowance of sugar and 200% of your rda of saturated fat.
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polydigm
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Might be in Amsterdam for a day with my wife sometime in December.
Surely you're not surprised about the chocolate bar?
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BBP
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That's great Poly, have fun!
I'm not surprised by chocolate being unhealthy - I'm surprised by them getting away with such advertising!
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polydigm
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Break's nearly over - back into it next Tuesday.
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BBP
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Daw...
It's weird how I've dug up my old math books. And I went through a year's material in like a month. Wish I still had my 4th grade books since that's
the year I had trouble, a bad depression in the middle of the year and at the one occasion where I could pull up I forgot my calculator. I now have
the B-type from the final two years of HAVO, which is the second-highest school type.
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BBP
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Off to go to friend's party. Baked some strawberry muffins for the occasion. Yum!
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polydigm
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When you say school type, is that secondary or tertiary?
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BBP
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We divide kids in secondary school by intelligence level already. I got sent to the second-highest after primary school in spite of doing better at
school than several of the kids who got sent to the highest. After two years of battle and full marks I managed to get into the highest level, and
proceeded to be among the best in most subjects there. Until a year later I'd taken the physics/science curricular path, and ended in a class with
lots of testosterone-poisoned boys. The science teacher I loved very much (father-figure type) suffered hypertension over it and our math teacher
refused to teach us. My grades dropped over this and personal problems. By the third term I was doing much better and top of the class in physics
again, and got to pull up my grades. Except for math: because at one of the last tests that I know I would've scored well at, I forgot my calculator
and only got to borrow one until test time was over. Eventually I didn't make the 6/10 grade for math, by a small margin, 5.4/10 became 5/10 while 5.5
would've become 6. In spite of having gotten a full marks over winning a math contest. I had to drop the difficult math type because of that. Without
math B, physics would be nigh impossible as it does include a lot of goniometry; biology I detested because I couldn't draw and scored bad marks just
because of that while scoring full marks on genetics and reproduction. So I was forced to drop math B and physics, didn't want to do biology, and
without all that, chemistry isn't of much use either. It was a big disappointment to me since math was my favourite subject and in the first two
years, when I went to the lower school type, I was way ahead of the rest of the class, so much that the teacher repeatedly told me to slow
down. I know I could've done it, and I know I would've loved it, but circumstances were different.
Once I bought math B books to do all by myself, and I've done the first chapter a few times but never carried it further. Will carry on and I do have
the idea of doing an adult math class - problem is I don't know what other purpose it would serve besides my revenge.
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polydigm
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I've never heard the term goniometry before, so I looked it up. It's the mathematics of joint movement. That's interesting that you had it as a
specific topic.
Basically, I was miserable towards the end of my high school years. I started in the top grade and was very good at both maths and languages. My teens
were quite troubled though for a variety of reasons. In retrospect I think I really did enjoy languages but peer pressure put paid to that. Bullying
wasn't an issue, but struggling to figure out what was really cool in life led me down a couple of really stupid dead ends.
My parents made the mistake of pushing me into Year 12 when I'd basically had enough of school. It went badly and at the end of that year I applied
for an apprenticeship in WRE (Weapons Research Establishment). I was told during my interview that from the previous year's applications, one of my
class mates was now their top student. I used to sit next to that guy and help him with his physics and maths, but between my not so good reputation
at school and my communist father, they weren't letting me anywhere near the WRE. I ended up getting an apprenticeship in telecommunications, which
lasted two and half years.
Fast forward through eventually dropping out completely and a whole bunch of continuing angst for one reason or another and I started buying books and
educating myself. I returned to do some formal education a couple of times and by the end of 1981 I had three Year 12 subjects under my belt and
needed two more to be able to apply for University in my own right without any of the mature aged bother. I was rejected when I applied to do Year 12
Maths in 1982, which comprised two subjects. The course had already started, they believed I wouldn't cope and wanted me to take Year 11 Maths first.
I told them where to stick it, taught myself, took the exams independently and got 92 for Maths 1 and 86 for Maths 2. I rang that school up and let
them know how wrong they were, but I didn't study it just for the revenge, they just got in my way.
Whatever you study you have to want to study it for the sake of it. I did it and I'm still doing it because I really enjoy it.
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BBP
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Not sure what you mean, but I meant the calculating of angles and lengths of lines in triangles and in shapes that contain triangles. The math problem
I posted about on the Zappa-forum, the one that took me three days to figure out how to solve it (even Dad was stumped), was just that. Bright side is
it'll be a long time before I forget about that now.
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polydigm
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About which part are you not sure what I mean? You mentioned Goniometry in your post. Goniometry is the study of joint movement, like elbows and knees
and so on. Did you mean to say Geometry, which is more general of course?
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BBP
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Brain mess, sorry.
Dutch scientifical terms were for the large part translated in the 17th century by Simon Stevin: terms like mathematics, physics, science, addition,
subtraction, division, multiplication etc derive from Latin or Greek: we have our own words for that: Stevin invented them. Math for instance is
wiskunde, which means "knowledge of that which is certain". As a result, learning school subjects when you're a kid is a bit of a pain,
because they're all difficult terms that don't sound a bit like their Dutch counterparts.
Stevin was an adept of the Dutch theologist Goropius Becanus, who believed that Paradise was located in The Netherlands: according to this linguistic
theory, Adam and Eve spoke Dutch in Eden and all the world's languages have derived from Dutch. Charming, isn't it?
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BBP
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Friend's party was great btw. Although the location she picked was a bit iffy (glass greenhouse was tunnel-shaped and too low to stand in for a large
section) but I met some wonderful people and my friend played some lovely music.
When I arrived, the party was just starting and Hedda was trying to install her keyboard. I managed to get it to work, which earned me the Zappa-esque
nickname Magic Fingers.
Got to talk to some of her vision-impaired friends and am once again shocked by the discrimination they face, even in this day and age. Hedda is a
brilliant pianist and singer, but at the music school they wouldn't accept her because her blindness "would make it hard for her to find a job in the
field later". Her visually impaired friend, a viola player, lied through her teeth to keep on studying - she was asked if her handicap was temporary,
and she just replied that it was and that she will see again. For three years she had a punctured bicycle wheel: walking with a stick would've gotten
her the boot, so she used a bicycle for that purpose.
She's now a successful viola teacher who has about 60 concerts each year, and married with three kids to boot.
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polydigm
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That's quite a story. She's got guts.
So, did you mean Geometry? High school Geometry is usually similar to the stuff done by the Ancient Greeks. Euclid in particular of course. The angle
subtended at the centre is twice the angle at the circumference and so on.
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