Re: Am I ready?
Wow. Thanks for the generous offer. Sadly, I'm not making it to DefCon this year.
By "you," I mean Renderman, Thorn, DaKunah, and LosT.
By "book," I mean, Feynman's Rainbow.
With regards to Feynman, I first became aware of him in 1988 as I was finishing Seminary. The paperback version of his book, Surely you’re Joking Mr. Feynman, came out and I picked up a copy.
I remember reading how his memorization of log tables gave him the ability to make quick approximations of mathematical questions. I looked up log tables in an old math book, but didn’t remember how they worked, and couldn’t figure out how Feynman made them work. I will have to ask my community college math Prof. for the answer.
I could never be a Physicist, but I could read about them. My interest in these matters was due to William MacMillan, Uncle Bill. Apparently, when he was a grad student at UCLA, he scored a 17 on a theoretical math exam or some such, and as a result, impressed Einstein no end who subsequently invited him to work on the Manhattan Project. As kids, Uncle Bill would entertain us with a very humorous impression of Einstein, German accent and all.
Come to think of it, I got plenty of 17’s on math tests and even an occasional 18. The only thing I was invited to do was move along. There was nothing to see.
He accepted and went to Chicago to work on the reactor project underneath the track stands at the University of Chicago. He would later marry Dr. Teller’s secretary, Aunt Nancy.
Uncle Bill was the measure of all the males in the family—not his doing I am sure, and needless to say I didn’t measure up. 8th grade Algebra was my undoing. Apparently, in 8th grade Algebra “x” is always either 1, 0, ∞, or some fraction thereof. I never understood which, when, or under what circumstances.
In spite of my aeronautical engineering father’s attempts to tutor me, usually until three in the morning by backing me up to the wall, and lifting me a foot or two off the ground, I could never resolve the equations. X, and its value, has eluded me even to this day, and as a result, I was crossed, or rather, x’d, off the list.
I remember an episode of a ‘70s TV show in which the character, Arthur Fonzarelli, was faced with a dilemma. If he didn’t pass his English class, he would flunk out, and be forced out of high school. If he passed, he would have the choice of either staying or leaving.
As for myself, I thought that I would return to math once I have finished my MA thesis. I would take baby steps in math until I could pass Differential Calculus. Then I could take a transcript with my passing grade and place it on my father’s grave showing him that I had passed, and finally measured up.
That is my goal anyway. I hope it goes as well for me as it did the The Fonz.
By "book," I mean, Feynman's Rainbow.
With regards to Feynman, I first became aware of him in 1988 as I was finishing Seminary. The paperback version of his book, Surely you’re Joking Mr. Feynman, came out and I picked up a copy.
I remember reading how his memorization of log tables gave him the ability to make quick approximations of mathematical questions. I looked up log tables in an old math book, but didn’t remember how they worked, and couldn’t figure out how Feynman made them work. I will have to ask my community college math Prof. for the answer.
I could never be a Physicist, but I could read about them. My interest in these matters was due to William MacMillan, Uncle Bill. Apparently, when he was a grad student at UCLA, he scored a 17 on a theoretical math exam or some such, and as a result, impressed Einstein no end who subsequently invited him to work on the Manhattan Project. As kids, Uncle Bill would entertain us with a very humorous impression of Einstein, German accent and all.
Come to think of it, I got plenty of 17’s on math tests and even an occasional 18. The only thing I was invited to do was move along. There was nothing to see.
He accepted and went to Chicago to work on the reactor project underneath the track stands at the University of Chicago. He would later marry Dr. Teller’s secretary, Aunt Nancy.
Uncle Bill was the measure of all the males in the family—not his doing I am sure, and needless to say I didn’t measure up. 8th grade Algebra was my undoing. Apparently, in 8th grade Algebra “x” is always either 1, 0, ∞, or some fraction thereof. I never understood which, when, or under what circumstances.
In spite of my aeronautical engineering father’s attempts to tutor me, usually until three in the morning by backing me up to the wall, and lifting me a foot or two off the ground, I could never resolve the equations. X, and its value, has eluded me even to this day, and as a result, I was crossed, or rather, x’d, off the list.
I remember an episode of a ‘70s TV show in which the character, Arthur Fonzarelli, was faced with a dilemma. If he didn’t pass his English class, he would flunk out, and be forced out of high school. If he passed, he would have the choice of either staying or leaving.
As for myself, I thought that I would return to math once I have finished my MA thesis. I would take baby steps in math until I could pass Differential Calculus. Then I could take a transcript with my passing grade and place it on my father’s grave showing him that I had passed, and finally measured up.
That is my goal anyway. I hope it goes as well for me as it did the The Fonz.
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