So you know I totally dig physics and astronomy. I'm not sure if you know this - but I suck at math. All I had to do is search on my blog for that phrase and I got three posts.
It likely has something to do with the fact that the choir teacher ended up teaching my beginning algebra class in high school. She tried her best, but she wasn't exactly into letting us know why we did things, just the tricks and secrets to remember.
So a couple weeks ago Brad dug out his old calculus text book.* We are both really interested so we decided to sit down and try the first chapter. We got through about 1/4 of the chapter in each session and our brains were tired.
Mine was overstimulated because I have lots of catching up to do, including trying to grasp basic algebra**. Brad's was overworked because a) he was remembering everything from his university classes and b) he had to teach me the basics.
One night during all this I went to bed and could not sleep all night. Every time I fell asleep I started trying to use calculus to figure out what was going to happen in the novel I was reading.
We've taken a break, but we'll get back to it soon. This is yet another example of stuff to do without cable!
* Yes, he still has it.
** I actually took a calculus class in tech school.
4 comments:
I loved calculus but completely forget all of it.
Prime opportunity to tell you my calculus story. :) In high school, I was in the IB program, which-- for math-- basically meant that Math 10, 20, 31 AND 31 (Calculus) were stuffed into Grade 10 and 11 instead of being spread out across 3 whole years like normal/sane people do.
My Calculus teacher was more interested in looking like a bigshot superstar math teacher to the IB committees in Geneva than she was in actually teaching us, her students, the math. So she gave us "bonus points" in our overall average by requiring each of us to bring snacks for the class and then padding our averages when we did. We never even got to see our scores on the "tests" we did in class-- she would just show us "what our overall average in class was" and leave it at that.
Most people didn't complain because "their averages" were in the high 90s (like me). But things got tricky when some people only had averages in the 80s but couldn't justify complaining about them because in reality, their actual averages were probably in the 50s or 60s. (And yes-- complaining about averages in the 80s was a thing in IB classes. Welcome to Nerd Land.)
ANYWAY. I graduated with a 98 percent in calculus, and I have NO CLUE what it involves or how skilled I actually am in solving calculus problems. (Maybe I really *am* awesome at it, but judging by the number of times I randomly guessed '4' as the answer to test questions, I'm assuming that I'm not.) Needless to say, when I hit university, I decided to major in something that didn't require even one math class to graduate. Bless you, Communication Studies. :)
PS: You guys are total geeks for reading calculus textbooks for fun.
PPS: Even geekier for using calculus to figure out the plots in your books before falling asleep!
PPPS: But I love you even more because of this post.
Dana - I can't believe it. Snacks?! I thought the choir teacher was bad......!
So bad, right? And we were also required to join the Math Club, and when we inevitably complied (because we HAD TO), she gave us "bonus points". Wrong on so many levels...
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