no, we didn't race today. But mathematician tops the list of Best Jobs according to a new Survey.

hopefully tomorrow the Good News will be that it's warm enough to race.

note: ski racer was not one of the 200 careers surveyed.

Labels: math

I learned how to play Go Thursday night. I was studying in a bookstore and a couple of people started playing a board game next to me. I didn't recognize the game and was curious because I love games but I really was trying to focus on my studies, so I focused. Then a few more people came over and it was clear that this was a routine gathering and also that I was sitting in their space so I got up to relocate. This opened the door to conversation and I asked what they were playing. They gathered to play the three great games of strategy: chess, backgammon, and go. "Go?" I asked, "how have I not heard about this game." And it didn't take them any time at all to convince me to learn.

Bob sat me down and explained Go, as well as telling me about the history of Go.. So we played, on a smaller board, and I had a six stone handicap. With Best Play a player can win with a five stone handicap. Bob played his first move. I panicked and froze, staring at the board. Where to put my stone? I knew the goal, I knew the rules, I knew about smothering and ko, but I couldn't see what the consequences of possible moves would be. What would be his next move? Would I play into a trap? Do something foolish? Bob, clearly an experienced Go teacher, noticed my tension and said, "be at peace with yourself. You can't possibly know what the best move is right now. You'll learn. Accept that you'll make mistakes. The best Go player in the world still studies Go every day." So I relaxed, and mimicked his move. In the end, thanks to my handicap, I won the game. I won our second game too. And then I ended my excursion into game theory and returned to my equally puzzling and less entertaining textbook.

During our speeds Friday around the sprint course I was getting so frustrated. I got dropped by the rest of the girls, I switched to skate skis (double-poling) and I got dropped even worse. It was the day before the first race of US Nationals and I thought, "what am I even doing here, I don't belong, I should just go home." Then I thought about Bob. Be at peace with myself. Where I am with my training and where I am with my technique is where I am. I can do my best today with what I have. I'll make mistakes. That's okay. I'll learn. I recognized the room that I still had to grow and develop as a skier. There's so much room for improvement, there's the ability to improve too. The danger lies in getting frustrated with myself and not being patient.

Labels: math

Thanks again to Ms. Price's class... for asking about the fourth dimension and reminding me about one of my favorite books Flatland by Edwin Abbott. (Which was introduced to me many years ago by my favorite entomologist/linguist/zoologist/voyager/writer/artist/musician/explorer/definition-defying friend.)

Flatland is the tale of a Square who lives, surprisingly enough, in Flatland, a two dimensional world. He has a dream about visiting Lineland, a one dimensional world, and trying to explain to the King of Lineland that there existed space outside of the single (although infinitely long) line on which he lived. The King of Lineland perceives the Square as a point. Later the Square is visited by a sphere from Spaceland, the land of three dimensions. Of course, when the Sphere visits the Square in Flatland, the Square can only see the Sphere as a Circle of varying diameter depending on which slice of himself the Sphere has in the plane of Flatland. Technically, the Square can only see the Sphere as a line but uses depth perception and touch to know he's a circle. The Sphere manages to show and explain three dimensions to the Square.

The Square then offends the Sphere by taking it one step further and asking to see the fourth dimension. The Sphere insists that there is only three dimensional space and that a fourth dimension is inconceivable. A reminder not to get so complacent with what we know that we think there's nothing left to learn.

Even written in 1884, this is still probably the best introduction to the concept of multiple dimensions. Although Flatland does have an extremely strict caste system based on someone's number of sides and angular regularity (everyone in this book is a geometric figure). And he uses ridiculous phrases to describe the inhabitants of Flatland such as,

"Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class-- creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence..."

That's the book I just read and now, in addition to skiing, I've been trying to visualize the fourth dimension.

Labels: math

I was teaching Pre-Algebra Wednesday morning and the section was over scientific notation. One of the problems in the book was to write out Avogadro's constant in long hand (N_A = 602,214,100,000,000,000,000,000 in case you wanted the answer) which reminded me it was about time to celebrate Mole Day! See, there's a lot of benefits from volunteering, I totally would have missed Mole Day this year if I hadn't been hanging out with Ms. Price's class. (Katie gets to celebrate Mole Day every year since it's also her birthday, Happy Golden Birthday Katie!)

6.022 × 10²³ is the number of atoms in 12 grams of Carbon-12. It's really just a useful number for writing chemical equations and figuring out how many grams of each molecule you need when you're doing chemistry experiments.

So here are two videos I found for Ms. Price's class (yep, all 15 of you) to give you a little introduction to moles. When you get into chemistry you'll get to spend a lot more time working with Avogadro's number (and calculating and expressing numbers in scientific notation!).





Happy Mole Day!

(and if anyone knows of better mole songs, let me know.)

Labels: math

They announced a new Mersenne Prime number! Mersenne primes are of the form (2^p)-1. This new prime has p=43,112,609 and the number itself has 12,978,189 digits. That is one big number.

There's more info at Mersenne.org.

Labels: math

In Elizabeth Gilbert's book "eat, pray, love" one of her friends insists that every city has a word:

Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be-- that is the word of the city. (pg 103)

Of course, being a book about self-discovery, this discussion quickly leads to what Liz's word is.

Of couse, being rather self-reflective myself, this quickly led myself to ponder what my word is. Although, being a greedy reader I kept reading and merely stored the question for future consideration. Then on my run this afternoon I had the answer. JOY. It probably wasn't my word a couple of weeks ago and it might not be my word next week either, but for right now it's the best word for my life.

When I ask myself, "why am I doing this?" it's for the joy of it. Smooth blacktop so new it oozes water like a newly felled tree oozes sap. Wind bringing winter to the Chugach. Snow on the peaks above red tundra fields above green forests above yellow deciduous trees. Being able to run and move with ease. Joy.

This morning I spent 2hrs with Dallas Price's 6th grade class (well, technically an hour with her Pre-Algebra class and an hour with her homeroom class). After math class one of the boys came up radiating excitement as he told me, "that was so cool!" I assured him that stuff got even cooler in higher mathematics. He asked if he could also expand (x+y)^7 (I'd encouraged them to try (x+y)^6 on their own and he had already done it) and I told him to "do it" but if you'd listened to the tone of the exchange rather than the words you would have thought we were talking about something way more trendy than math such as "I'd like to hit this sick jump, I'm pretty sure I could do it but it might be too big for me, should I try it?" "do it." I had shared some of my joy in mathematics with this boy and that made today even more joyful.

Obviously, I expect you to try to pick your own word at this point :)

Labels: math

Realizing that my primary audience is ski nerds, I still can't help sharing this video with my fellow math nerds. Sergei, I know you will love it & I'm guessing there's a few others who will too.

Labels: math, video

Andrea Marie on the Columbia River (don't tell her I stopped paddling).

The snow was mostly good at home... except for this one section I had to stop and walk across!

I should have posted these pictures when I was talking about Wenatchee but, um, I forgot they were on my camera. So now they get to share a post with the lovely Pi! Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter as most people know but what most people don't think about when they think about 3.14159... is that Pi provides a great vantage point to the history of mankind.

The concept of pi existed long before people knew it with even a few digits of accuracy and before modern notation could be used to express it. The problem of "squaring the circle" was one of the first mathematical problems mankind tackled and came up after agriculture kicked in and people started constructing permanent dwellings. An understanding of Pi is a fair way to judge the development of a civilization. A long, long time ago the Babylonians (3 1/8 or 3.125) and the Egyptians ((16/9)^2 or 3.16) had the best approximations for Pi but the Chinese and the Hebrews were also aware of pi and estimating it with 3. Speaking of the Hebrews way back when, I'd like to point out to anyone who things the bible is Truth that our good friend Solomon would have needed almost 31 and a half cubits around his bathhouse, whatever a cubit is, 30 just would not have cut it: And he made the molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and the height thereof was five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about, I Kings vii 23.

Once the Romans swept in (around 200BC), developments in Pi came to a grinding halt in that part of the world and the leaders in mathematical thought were the Mayan, the Chinese and the Hindu civilizations. It wasn't until the 1500's that Europe caught back up with the rest of the world.

Labels: math, photos