Random Ruminations

"Her restlessness was not easily appeased. . . . Everywhere she turned there was a blinding sameness. She could no longer distinguish one moment of her life from another, and the events of each day were forgotten as soon as they had passed" (Graham, 2001, p. 99).

In transition? Clearly. But transition to what? While waiting, I've polished off a number of books, but so far, the nuggets I've encountered in them haven't coalesced into a particularly coherent set of understandings. However, it occurs to me that many may prefer the raw data without the commentary anyhow. Sometimes it is safer that way too. ;-) So, think of what follows as random graffiti that various authors have spray-painted on the walls of my mind. As is the case with graffiti from time to time, at least some of these quotes have artistic qualities that extend beyond the functional purposes they were intended to serve within the context of the books in which they appeared.

"All educational growth is loss ... teachers in higher education are pressured to construe their work in oppositional rather than relational terms, pitting teacher against student, separating knowledge and identity, and describing the world in black and white terms" (Stengel, 1998).

"Living matter and clarity are opposites--they run away from one another" (Gilder, 2008, p. 100).

"John had always been drawn to the invisible: more specifically, the invisible connections between things. As a child he had puzzled over the phenomena ordinary men take for granted in modern life: the connection between a flick of a switch and the sudden appearance of light, or sound, or image. He tore things apart--looking for the connections. But his interest went beyond the engineer's obsession with mechanical cause and effect, with deconstructing and reconstructing physical reality: he searched for things that would leave him awestruck, things residing in mystery and obscurity. Invisible connections" (Graham, 2001, p. 106).

"Co-existence is not the same as communication or connection" (Montgomery, 2009).

"When two particles interact with each other, they exchange energy and/or momentum" (K.C. Cole in Graham, 2001, p. 98).

"It is a gift, you know, to see and to be moved" (Graham, 2001, p. 14).

"Schrodinger nodded . . . 'And matter is like light,' he said, 'and it diffracts'" (Gilder, 2008, p. 89).

"Everything . . . starts with a fall" (Guedj, 2000, p. 17).

"I'm in a constant state of beta...perpetually reinventing myself..." (Adam Schokora)

References

Fleischman, Paul. (2001). Seek. Chicago: Cricket Books.

Gilder, Louisa. (2008). The age of entanglement: When quantum physics was reborn. NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Graham, Janice. (2001). Sarah's window. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Guedj, Denis. (2000). The parrot's theorem. NY: Thomas Dunne Books.

Montgomery, Cherice. (2009, January 11). A random thought.

Schokora, Adam. (2008). 56minus1::

Stengel, Barbara S. (1998, Sept. 10). Review of Burbules, Nicholas C. and Hansen, David T. (Eds.). (1997). Teaching and its Predicaments. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. EdRev. Retrieved February 1, 2009, from http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev37.htm<

Vital Statistics

Can I just say my stats class is going to kill me?! It is nearly 3:30 a.m. and I am sitting here waiting for my take-home quiz to print so that I can go to bed. How many hours does a person have to invest to understand the stuff?! I sit in class for 6 hours a week (and actually pay attention and take good notes for the entire 6 hours), do about 3 hours of homework for each class, plus 2 hours of work with a homework group, plus the additional hours on the quizzes. AGGGH! This one, 3-credit class has become the equivalent of about a part-time job! Literally!

What is SO incredibly frustrating is that I am starting to "feel" how the numbers work together. I can see that the equations are all related and that they build on one another (which tells me that they are just describing different facets of what the numbers are doing/representing--like saying the same thing in different words so that you end up emphasizing different aspects of the thing). Unfortunately, the class moves at close to the speed of light (gotta cover everything, after all) and the relationships among the concepts are NOT clear.

The instructor does a great job given the institutional constraints on the course/her teaching. It is just so frustrating to realize that I am actually at a point in my relationship with mathematics where I could actually understand and BENEFIT from it, and can't because something gets lost in the translation between the words and the symbols. I soooo need a good translator. I may just sit down and make myself (and all the other poor students who have to endure this torture that SHOULDN'T be torturous) a chart . . . if I can ever get enough sleep to think through it clearly.

As I hear parents say, "Use your words" to their 2-year-olds, I think of mathematicians who haven't yet learned to use THEIR words to explain their symbols to me.

I did have to chuckle when I realized that the symbols really are all Greek (at least, so far)! The phrase, "It's all Greek to me" has a totally new meaning to me now! I'll have to ask my colleague from Greece tomorrow if the symbols mean something else in Greek, or if math is just naturally easy for him!