Mathematics

I...read a bit into the book, read matrix multiplication, tried it out, realized that there's no way anybody with a computer would actually do that, and forgot all about it. But for precalc right now, our school, at least, has just started power functions. So nothing too serious yet.

I can't wait until I get to more exciting kinds of math. Currently I'm only a freshman in college so I'm not really doing anything in math that I wasn't doing in high school. THAT WILL CHANGE THOUGH. And then it will be glorious. Hopefully. I don't want to regret choosing to be a mathematics major over an illustration major.

^ Matrix multiplication is especially bad because after they teach it to you, you don't use it for anything at all for the rest of high school.

edited 2nd Oct '10 10:15:44 PM by DYRE

What kind of math?

I'm currently adding and subtracting integers in my Math class. It's actually really hard. I can't remember all of these strange symbols.

...we did matrix multiplication in Algebra II...

Although we only ever did up to 3 rows, so I guess it's probably easier than what everyone is doing.

My trig class is progressing pitifully slow, though, for an advanced class—we're 6 weeks into the year and we haven't even learned about radians yet. D:<

Look, if anyone here has trouble with imaginary numbers, then I propose a solution:

Instead of imagining them as weird unimaginable numbers, imagine a Cartesian axis, with the real number axis as the x-axis and the imaginary axis as the y-axis. Any complex number can obviously be expressed as a vector with magnitude r and an angle with respect to the horizontal β.

That is an already existing system, right?

Polar coordinates? Yeah.

I'm weird about this. In calculus, every student dreaded the infamous "Chapter 7" when we'd start on proofs—even at the beginning of the year there were students asking when we would begin it. The teacher herself called it "Harold," saying that Harold was a safe name, a name that would never hurt anyone (and later saying that the problems in the chapter were a bit like an interactive version of Harold and the Purple Crayon.) So eventually we got to it, almost everyone else sucked at it, and I found it the easiest chapter of the year.

On the other hand, simple matrix multiplication hurts my head. So you turn it sideways before you multiply, and then you add this stuff together, but don't add this stuff. And apparently I need to know this in order to program 3D graphics. Ugh.

I think that most graphics packages do most of it for you (like OpenGL), but here's an MIT lecture on the effects of matrices on vectors in space.

^^ You started proofs in Calculus? I didn't do calculus until my senior year of high school, and I'd been doing proofs since freshman year.

Proofs, for me, really began in geometry. Some in alg. 1, though.

^ Same for me. Geometry is what I did freshman year.

Maybe we're thinking of different sorts of proofs. I'm talking about the ones where you're given two phrases like "sin x" and "1/tan x" on either side of an equals sign and have to prove that they're really equal. (Not that sin x equals 1/tan x, but it's been a while, and I don't remember now what actually equals what.)

The proofs we did in geometry were mostly things like "Prove that the opposite corners of a trapezoid are also supplementary angles."

In Algebra II we also did a couple proofs about series and sequences.

No, that's just proving identities, it's not the same.

^ Gah! Stop changing the capitalization of your name! ;___;

In that case, I have no idea then.

Oh no, that was in response to takahari. The geometric stuff usually is a proper proof, at least, that's how my school did 'em too.

Trigonometric identities, for us, come halfway through precalc. The more complicated ones, at least, we get introduced to the basic ones in alg. ii.

edited 3rd Oct '10 7:43:54 PM by Chubert

I never did proofs until college, when they were taught along with logic. From what I hear, when they get introduced in high school, it is usually in geometry class. I guess Euclid's influence is still felt.

Proofs in geometry suck. Do they get less awful later?

If you don't like them now, you never will. They don't change.

Proofs in geometry aren't that bad. You just have to remember all the theorums.

Math is fun. Unless you have a half assed teacher

Proofs are the best part about math.

That, and paradoxes.