Induced Homomorphism

The End of an Era

2008-07-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

As I'm no longer a graduate student, and I'm not really doing much math at all right now, I've decided that it is in fact time to give up this blog. I'm working on another one as we speak, and so if you're interested in it, give me a shout out and I'll send you a link!

Best wishes to you all,

- Induced Homomorphism

Closed for Summer Renovations

2008-05-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow I'm leaving for a brief trip to Europe to visit a friend on my way to my summer digs in Africa. Unfortunately, I hear the internet over there is a wee bit slow, so I'm not planning on updating at all over the summer. So if you check this page every week (or day...or hour, you poor soul), stop! At least until August. I may or may not resume blogging here. I'm considering starting over with another blog since I'm not really a grad student anymore (thank God!). We'll see. Anywho, a wonderful summer to you all!

- Induced Homomorphism

Evil Cookies

2008-05-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

You're walking down the street minding your own business, and all of a sudden there she is: a cute, little girl with a wagon and a half full of cookies. You tell yourself that you could eat just one. But one turns to four. And four turns into the whole box. And then you're just disgusted with yourself.

Luckily, I avoided that situation today. I was clubbing with some friends last week and ended up dancing with a cute boy with a really toned body, and it's these moments that remind me both that I am pretty attractive but that I could do so much more if I avoided things like girl scout cookies, large quantities of ice cream, and other things I really don't need to be putting in my body. I think it'll be easier to be healthier once I move, so that'll be excellent.

- Induced Homomorphism

Everything's Bigger in Texas

2008-05-04T20:13:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I took part in a bit of a family reunion in Texas. And by "family reunion," I mean "carnival of dysfunction." I wouldn't even know where to start blogging about that mess, but I did find some excellent blogworthy material at First Monday Trade Days, where "one weekend every month, a peaceful, friendly East Texas town (population 5,100) turns into THE biggest open-air trade days in the world." Well, that's what they claim happens. In all actuality, one weekend every month, a small town turns into an incubator of fat people on motor scooters buying crap that helps them forget that there are 49 other states. Here are some highlights:

It was seventy five degrees and sunny - the perfect time to wear a plastic rain poncho!

Those Yankees never did get it right, did they?

Isn't a refurbished antique water pump the very first image that comes to mind when you think about Mom?

Because there's no way to get through a large crowd than plowing them over in the tank of scooters.

I may be fake, but my orgasms aren't!

I'm sending this one off to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

I almost took a picture of the booth that sold Sam's Club sized bulk cat food, but that's more odd than absurd. Anyway, I've got a few more things I'm thinking about blogging about. I just have to do the eleventy billion other things on my list and then maybe I'll free up some time.

- Induced Homomorphism

In the Ghetto

2008-04-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

I have made several friends over the years who are spoiled. One friend owns several pairs of shoes worth over $500 each. One friend's family used to own a jet. Many of my friends have high definition television sets. Now, I can admit that I've also been spoiled in several arenas, but there's one thing that always makes me laugh.

When you grew up, if you didn't have cable, did you ever have trouble getting a certain television station to show up properly? You'd mess with the antenna, and when that was insufficient you had to bust out with the aluminum foil. Some of my friends can relate to this - others can't remember a time without cable. Well, I lived in a trailer for a few years, and so I fall into the former category.

Right now, I don't have cable. Nobody in my house watches TV enough to warrant it. We don't even have a good TV - there's two old TVs in our living room, probably thirty years old each, and one of them has broken speakers. The other one works okay, but when I rushed home to watch Grey's Anatomy earlier tonight, I found out that our antenna is broken. It's one of those old antennas with the two little metal hooks that you would attach to screws on an old TV, only this TV isn't quite that old, so there's an adapter. Well, one of the two little hooks wouldn't fit into the adapter.

After several desperate minutes of tinkering with things, the best I got was taping the broken end to the wall and holding the antenna on top of the TV. This gave shoddy reception at best, and the audio was understandable. That is, the audio was understandable for the first ten minutes. Until I started to get interference. From a radio station. Yes, the fine doctors at Seattle Grace were competing for my attention against a smooth jazz station in New England. WTF??? Maybe the broken part of the antenna was messed up enough to pick up weird frequencies? Who knows?

Regardless, I sat in front of my TV for an entire hour, holding the antenna in one hand and trying to contort my body as best as I could to drain out the radio interference. I found that the best position was my hand holding the antenna on top of the TV and me kneeling on the ground, trying to keep my torso as low to the ground as possible. It was basically worth it, although I gave up on the scenes from next week because I was just so damn sore. ::sigh:: Maybe someday when I have a real job, I'll get cable.

- Induced Homomorphism

Teaching

2008-04-22T16:25:00.001-07:00

Every week I have two recitations sections for my calculus students. The second one always goes better than the first one because by then I have a better idea of what the students are struggling with most and how to best explain the concepts to them. It could certainly be worse. For example, I can't imagine how things go for the poor students who end up with a non-native speaker as a TA. Math graduate students can be awkward enough, but putting in a language barrier can only make situations more uncomfortable. I'm generally doing a good job. There's certainly room for improvement, but seeing that it's only my first semester in front of an entire class, I feel a bit ahead of the curve.

So this week, I was trying to explain a concept in calculus. Basically, if you have the graph of a function and you want to find the area underneath it, you perform an operation called integration. There's an in-depth geometric explanation of what's going on that I can overly simplify here so that either you'll follow and understand what's going on, or you won't and you'll at least get an idea of how difficult the concept is for the students.

We can approximate the area under a curve by drawing in rectangles as seen in the figure. This is not going to give us the exact area because the curvature of the graph makes some rectangles contain more area than is under the graph in that position and some rectangles contain less. But if we were to look at another approximation, this time with twice as many rectangles having half the width, we would have less of an error from our estimation and we would have a better approximation. And the more and more rectangles we use with smaller and smaller widths, the better our approximation is. And what happens is we can take the limit as the number of rectangles goes to infinity and the width of a rectangle goes to zero, and the limit of the approximate areas we get will reach the actual area. In the course, things are much more complicated because there's a nasty equation to deal with and things are much more formal. But at the same time, I can draw pictures to explain things, so that certainly helps.

Anyway, you're probably thinking that this is really complicated. You may have even skipped the second half of that last paragraph. That's because this is very difficult material. And I was struggling so much to try and get the students to understand what's going on here (even though it's the professor's job, he can't explain things sufficiently for the students to understand things). So after explaining some parts of the process three or four times, I muttered to the silent students, "Please ask questions if you don't understand any parts of this. I know it's difficult material, and I'm trying my best to explain things." One of the students with whom I'm a bit friendly said, "No, I think I get it. Anyway, you're doing a much better job than the professor." Figuring she was just being nice, I asked her "Really?" I turned around and saw a sea of heads, all bobbing up and down in agreement.

It's really disheartening that the professor who's supposed to teach them this material is so bad at explaining things that they feel I'm doing a much better job, even when I feel I'm not up to my own standards. It feels like they're being cheated out of a good education, which is a terrible shame. All of these feelings help me know that I definitely want to teach, and hopefully with a few more years of experience, I'll be able to be the great teacher that I wish these students could have.

-Induced Homomorphism

86 Posts Later

2008-04-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

I've finally come to terms with the fact that a PhD in mathematics is not what I want. It was really the realization that I care much less about studying abstract mathematics than I do about teaching. And although I was originally planning on staying in the program for another year or so to gain more teaching experience, my spring break trip really made me realize that spending another year of my life being in a place where I'm not happy to get a little bit of teaching experience isn't worth the happiness I'd be missing out on if I left.

So I'm leaving with my master's degree at the end of the semester, heading to Africa for a bit of an abbreviated trip, and then looking for teaching jobs back in the states. Closer to my friends. Where the weather is better. Damn, that sounds nice.

More details on the job search later.

- Induced Homomorphism

Spring Break

2008-03-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

I'm visiting the friends I met last semester for spring break, and I'm happier than I've been...since I left last semester. Grad school has just been sucking, I'm really getting tired of my classes, and the people just aren't making me that happy. But when I got in last night, there was a dance party and we had borrowed a big wrestling mat that people were wrestling on. Soooo much fun. Leaps and bounds above anything I've experienced this semester in grad school. And it's only the first night of my trip :-D

- Induced Homomorphism

Just Keep Waiting

2008-03-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

I absolutely cannot stand being late. Because of this, I always try to make sure I arrive at my destination at least a few minutes early. But then I end up budgeting too much time to get to my destination, so I plan to leave early enough so that I'm a few minutes early, even if something happens. But then I want to make sure I'm ready to leave on time, so I'm always paying attention to the time, and I always make sure I'm done with whatever I'm doing at least a little bit before I'm supposed to leave. But then I'm just waiting to leave, so I just leave a few minutes early. Then I end up at my destination a half an hour early. This is just how I operate.

A few nights ago, some friends and I were going to go see a play. You could pick up two tickets per person and they were free, so two of us went to get tickets and the other two said they'd meet us at the play. They were handing out tickets at 11:00 PM for the midnight show, and since it was the last performance, I wanted to try to get there by 11:45. Of course, I got there at 11:30. After taking the time to make a pit stop and use a restroom. So I sat there and waited for a half an hour to get the tickets.

Then when we had the tickets, the two of us hung out and killed time for a while before our friends were going to meet us there. But at 11:52, I got a phone call from the other two saying that they were just getting in the car, quite a bit away. Now, I had already gone through the trouble of leaving where we were early to make sure everyone had tickets, and I damn well wasn't going to risk not getting a good seat for myself (or a seat at all). So I walked across the street from the theater, put the extra two tickets under the tire of an SUV parked on the street, and told my friends that they should look there for their tickets. My other friend and I went inside right before they let people in, and we got good seats.

A bit later (after the doors had opened and most seats were taken but before the show started), my other two friends came into the theater. They found the tickets (there was the slight possibility someone would see me putting the tickets there and take them, or the owners of the SUV would come back and drive it away, leaving the tickets to fly away in the breeze), but they had terrible seats. And there I was, sitting there in my good seats, thinking about how amusing the whole situation was.

The moral of the story is that I will go out of my way and spend a significant portion of my free time to make sure everything works out so that you don't have to, but if you're even one minute late, I will gladly toss the tickets in the air and leave you in the dust.

- Induced Homomorphism

A Fun Field Trip

2008-03-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

After spending a couple of weeks without doing any traveling, I decided it was time to do some archaeological exploration. Into my belly, that is. So I called the local EMTs and had them take me to the Emergency Room, where I requested an ultrasound of my abdomen to see what's really going on inside of me. And it turns out, there's stones in there! Gallstones.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that this desire to learn more about me was prompted by intense abdominal pain that woke me up in the middle of the night?

The internet compares the pain of a gallstone attack to pains one experiences during labor. I don't have any real basis for comparison, but I can't imagine that it would have been any more painful to grow a vagina and give birth to a baby. Maybe twins would have been too much. I know I'd have trouble with three or more children, but I digress...

I have an appointment tomorrow to talk to a surgeon about having my gallbladder removed. Since I'm going to Africa over the summer and want to avoid the possibility of needing emergency surgery while I'm there, I figure I'll try and schedule the operation so that it's as soon after spring break as possible. Because I can't imagine many things that would be more miserable than skipping the trip I have planned over spring break to see several very close friends, so that I can have have surgery and sit on my couch for a week. Not fun. Hopefully the surgeon isn't so busy that we he can't schedule it then (with enough recovery time before Africa).

Anywho, I'll keep you all updated on the situation. Think happy thoughts!

- Induced Homomorphism

Sesame Chicken

2008-02-29T16:03:00.000-08:00

Although the sauce wasn't exactly what I had hoped for, the sesame chicken I just made was rather tasty. I baked it, and so I was happy that the chicken was finished cooking before the sauce had time to evaporate. Also, I was thrilled that my rice came out relatively sticky. That was a complete fluke, as I just threw the rice and water into the saucepan, put a skillet on top (to cover it, as I didn't have a lid), and cooked it for the length of time the internet recommended.

Now if only I could get the sauce just right (there's a great Pan-Asian restaurant nearby that makes it perfectly) and cut up the chicken so it looks less like cubes of chicken and more like little pieces of cat. You know how Chinese food chicken looks, right?

- Induced Homomorphism

Difficulties

2008-02-24T16:23:00.001-08:00

The students had their first midterm last week, and I'm fairly certain a good 120 mathematicians found their deaths quickly and painfully. This happened for a multitude of reasons, which I don't feel like listing in a public forum, but one of the main reasons is something that I feel the need to discuss.

The problem sets that the students are assigned each week have too few problems and don't have a large enough variety of difficult level. Each week the students are given a problem set with roughly ten problems. This generally covers about three to five topics. So the students have at most two to three problems to work on for each topic covered in class. No matter what problems they are, this is not enough!

To make matters worse, the professor is only choosing medium-to-difficult problems for both the problem sets and the midterm. For the problem sets, this means that any student who hasn't mastered the basics of the material in lecture is either going to get stuck on the hard problems and not get through them, or they're going to have to go significantly out of their way to find more practice problems to prepare themselves for the more difficult problems. And we know they're not going to go that far out of their way.

So then the students come to my recitation, and I have to go over the moderately difficult homework problems, which there already isn't enough time to cover completely. So if I were to take a lot of time to either go over the material with them again or go over some easier examples, there certainly wouldn't be enough time to do many of the harder problems that the professor assigned. The sorts of problems that appear on the students' midterms.

Then it was time for a midterm. The best students went in with a fighting chance of getting about 80% of the problems right. There were a few questions on really abstract material that almost nobody had a chance at getting. It was the sort of stuff I cut out of the recitation because I had to spend the little time I had on the more central concepts for the course. Then the rest are all moderately difficult problems pertaining to the material we've already covered. So the best students should be okay.

What about the mediocre students? Well, in a normal class with a normal midterm, a mediocre student who has the basic concepts down and can do some of the simpler problems should be able to get a good percentage of the problems correct. Maybe not an A, maybe not a B, but certainly passing. The harder problems will be over their heads, but they can focus on the easier ones and have solid performance on a good percentage of the test. In this class, however, there were almost no easier problems. Each concept tested was tested with a significantly harder example than (in my opinion) was necessary. With this exam, the mediocre student has significantly more chances to make mistakes or get confused, and thus has a far worse shot of doing okay than they should.

As soon as I saw the midterm, I was furious. If anyone reading this is familiar with calculus, one concept tested was the chain rule. It can be a difficult concept for a humanities major (for example) to grasp, especially when it's one of several concepts covered in such a short amount of time. There were two questions on the exam that focused on explicit uses of it, and both of them required the student to use it twice. And anyone who knows the chain rule knows that it's an order of magnitude more difficult to use it twice than it is to use it once. There's more room for confusion and more room for errors. The rest of the midterm was structured similarly, and one question even relied on a definition from an economics application that was only covered briefly in a single homework problem (that I didn't even have time to go over in recitation because I had other things that I need to focus on). He could have at least given the students the definition so that they could be tested on the calculus behind the problem, rather than remembering an obscure definition.

I guess I should stop now - if I don't, I could rant for quite a long time. Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to seeing the students this week. I'm hoping they don't take out their frustrations on me. I can just see it now. "Why didn't you go over this problem in recitation?", "You didn't do this the same way he wanted us to do it!", etc. I know that the likelihood of this will be small, as the fault lies almost exclusively with the professor in this case, but that still doesn't stop me from dreading having to deal with this.

- Induced Homomorphism

Getting Better

2008-02-14T16:57:00.000-08:00

It's only the third week of TAing for me, and things are already getting significantly better. We had the students fill out preliminary course evaluation forms, so we can see how good or bad of a job we're doing. The questions the forms asked were insufficient in showing that one was doing a good job - they asked the students if the instructor was encouraging the asking of questions, if they responded well to student requests for clarification, and if the instructor was organized and clear. You can present your materials clearly, encourage questions and answer questions as much as you want, but if you're not doing a good job of explaining the material in a way the students can easily understand, that doesn't make you a good teacher. And if you can't understand what parts of the material the students are struggling with, you're not doing a great job.

There was a spot for additional comments, though, and I asked the students be honest and give me comments that will help me improve my teaching. I gave a little mini speech: He goes too fast. He's doing a good job. He writes too small. Don't write, "He sucks." Write, "He sucks because..."

I got the evaluations back, and all of the comments were great. I was given the impression that I'm going over the problems clearly, that I'm very much improving their understanding of the material, that I make the class as fun as one can make a math course, and that they like me. So now I can relax a bit.

The combination of having a couple weeks of experience and knowing that I'm doing a good job has definitely made things easier. I still have a bit of a hard time in the beginning of the recitations, not knowing exactly how the professor covered the material and having to figure out exactly how to best help the students, but if I've already improved this much in two weeks, I'm sure I'll be excellent in a few more.

Before I started, I was really curious to see how it would turn out. Lately I've been thinking that I want to focus much more on teaching than research, as far as a career goes, and I was a bit apprehensive to see how teaching would actually go. The more and more time I spend with students, though, the more it's becoming obvious that this is what I want to do with my life. I can honestly say that I've gotten more out of the little bit of help I've given these students in the past three weeks than I've gotten out of the three semesters I've already done in grad school. And that makes me happy.

- Induced Homomorphism

Africa. And Paris.

2008-02-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

No, not that Paris! The one in France. You see, I have a good friend who I met as an undergraduate who went to pursue a math PhD and dropped out a year after getting her master's degree. Sounds familiar? Well, she moved to Paris for a short term teaching position, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go for a visit. Especially when the total cost to me is $73.37.

I had booked my flight to Africa using frequent flyer miles, and the cost to change a reward ticket (for my elite level, anyway) is $35 + any change in taxes and surcharges ($38.37 in my case). So I really couldn't pass this up.

I was also able to change my return flight so that I come back a day earlier (for no additional fee, since I was already changing the ticket). This is nice because I was returning the day before the first day of classes for the fall semester, but now I'll have a day to get over any jet lag. I definitely wanted to go for as long as possible, but it might not be the best idea to teach my first class 12 hours after getting back from Africa.

Anyway, I'm super excited about this trip! The only time I've been to France was on an overnight layover, so all I saw was about five miles of road between the airport and the hotel and the inside of the hotel. It'll be nice to actually get to see Paris! And to see my good friend - I've visited her a few other times before in various places, and we always have the best times.

Now I have to start on my homework. Fun stuff! Wish me luck.

- Induced Homomorphism

Exhausted

2008-01-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've been this exhausted - both physically and mentally - in quite a long time. Today was the first day of TAing for me. My Wednesdays will include an hour-long seminar, an 80 minute recitation, an hour break, another hour-long seminar, and then another 80 minute recitation. And I was stupid enough to try and get a bit of grading done in that break. Silly me.

The first recitation was terrible. I went in with only the problem set the instructor had assigned - this was a mistake. I didn't know the notation he used (sometimes he used some notation that isn't ridiculously popular), I wasn't aware of precisely which formulas he had used in class (there are a few options for certain things, and he picked some I wouldn't have guessed), the students weren't too vocal with their problems, and I apparently went too fast. I was done going over the problems after 50 minutes, then I gave them the quiz. Some students were done in 5 minutes, others took 25. But still, it just wasn't good. I felt like when I left, they thought I sucked. And I probably did.

The next recitation went much better. I started off with a bit of review, covering the different formulas that were used in class and clarifying situations where two different formulas could be used and were just different representations of the same thing. Then I went over the problems more slowly, and the students were a bit more vocal with their concerns. I was also more aware of the things people got caught up on, so I could focus on them more. And then I gave the quiz. When one girl handed hers in and left, she said, "Thank you very much. It was very helpful." That made the day worth it for me.

I'm sure things will get better in the near future. I asked the professor to e-mail me a very short paragraph after each class, detailing what was covered and how it was covered (notation and formulas used) - hopefully he'll agree. I'm starting office hours later in the week, so from now on I will have seen students' struggles firsthand (although the problems aren't assigned until after my office hours, so I won't have seen their struggles on the current homework - just on general class material). And experience will kick in and nerves will calm down.

It's just like cooking for 30 people - terrifyingly difficult at first, mindlessly easy with a bit of practice.

- Induced Homomorphism

More Food

2008-01-28T18:53:00.001-08:00

Today I made a gallon of broccoli cheddar soup and a ground beef pie. Both were modified recipes, so I don't have links, but the soup was fantastic and the pie was good, although I wish I had put in more cheese and pureed the tomatoes a bit less. Oh well, next time.

- Induced Homomorphism

No Soup for You

2008-01-27T19:52:00.000-08:00

Today I decided I wanted to make some soup. So I made just over a gallon of groundnut beef stew and just over a gallon of butternut squash and apple soup. After munching on a lot of it and saving a bit in the fridge, I have six hearty servings of each in the freezer, waiting for my hunger to return.

I really enjoyed cooking today. It's been about a month since I really spent a good three or four hours in a kitchen cooking, and it's something I really want to do more. Luckily, my four day weekends should allow at least one or two grand cooking afternoons per week.

- Induced Homomorphism

Math!

2008-01-23T17:25:00.000-08:00

The new semester is starting, and I'm getting really excited because I'm about to be a TA for the first time. I spoke with the course instructor today, and I'm reassured that things will go well. In addition to being a nice guy who seems to care about his students, he gave me a bit of a speech about how it's okay for me to be nervous about TAing for the first time, and even he gets nervous after 40 years of teaching, and that if I ever have a problem with a student to tell him so he or the department head can take care of it. Although I am a bit nervous (who wouldn't be), I'm sure things will be absolutely fine and don't really need such a speech - but it's nice to know that I'm working with someone who really cares about the students...and me :-)

- Induced Homomorphism

Because I Was Bored

2008-01-08T13:45:00.001-08:00

This seems about right...

94% Barack Obama
93% John Edwards
93% Hillary Clinton
87% Chris Dodd
83% Joe Biden
83% Bill Richardson
74% Mike Gravel
74% Dennis Kucinich
58% Rudy Giuliani
46% John McCain
35% Mitt Romney
33% Tom Tancredo
31% Mike Huckabee
19% Ron Paul
19% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

- Induced Homomorphism

Home

2007-12-28T14:16:00.000-08:00

I've been here for four days and am already sick of it. I guess that's why they call it a flyover state.

- Induced Homomorphism

Fun Times

2007-12-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

After getting back from a skiing trip last night, I found out that I had been upgraded to first class on my flight back for the holidays. To celebrate, I promptly went dancing with friends and made out with a cute boy. It was cool because when we were in the club, he was the one guy I thought was really cute, and I successfully caught his attention and got to dance with him. He invited me back to his place, but that's just not how I roll. It was fun, though.

I fly back to see my family tonight. I don't say back "home" because I really feel like other places I've lived have felt more like home than where I grew up. Especially where I am now - it'll be very hard to leave here. Hopefully I can move back someday.

Happy Holidays!

- Induced Homomorphism

Polarized Dinner

2007-12-20T09:39:00.000-08:00

Last night, my contribution to dinner consisted of vegan cupcakes and not-so-vegan cheese...wrapped in chicken...wrapped in bacon. You should have seen the looks of joy on the carnivores' faces when they saw two meats rolled into one dish. I wish there were leftovers - sadly, there were none.

Check

2007-12-14T19:29:00.000-08:00

Participating in a naked college run: check.

- Induced Homomorphism

A Hanukkah Feast

2007-12-06T17:01:00.000-08:00

Last night my friend Elizabeth and I made a Hanukkah feast for a bunch of our friends out here. We made a 7 lb. beef brisket, 30 balls of matzah ball soup, two loaves of challah, 30 potatoes worth of latkes, some broccoli and carrots, and some rugelach for dessert. We also light a hanukiah and played dreidel for Hanukkah gelt (chocolate coins). We ended up having a total of 28 people at dinner (not including late plates for 7 people who had class), and there was not a single bite of food leftover for lunch the next day. As much as it's sad that there were no leftovers, the meal was a huge success.

Now if only I could get eight, cute, Jewish boys for Hanukkah ;-)

- Induced Homomorphism

Dumpstering

2007-12-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

A housemate of mine invited me to go dumpstering (dumpster diving) with her last night, and so we trekked out to some of the finer establishments in town to see what they had to eat. There was a bakery that had about a hundred loaves of fresh bread thrown away (we grabbed about 10 or so, as we were pickier with our definition of "fresh" than some). Then we went to Trader Joe's and got some flowers and plants, along with some more bread. Then we ended up at a grocery store where we got a bundle of bananas. A lot of it is stuff that even I won't touch, but I found a well-packaged loaf of bread that I kept for myself, and I now have a small, potted tree on my desk. Fun!

Meatloaf

2007-11-28T23:23:00.000-08:00

Today my friend Caitlin and I had to make dinner for a large group of people. One of the dishes I made was some meatloaf (along with mashed potatoes). I decided to make it His and Her Meatloaf. You can see why if you click here. As scrumptious as it was, and as much as it didn't look so disgusting in person, the pictures I took just make it look absolutely nasty. View at your own risk!

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T23:11:00.001-08:00

This year I flew to Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with my grandparents and cousin. Since the line for the buffet in the hotel looked like it would take about two hours and everywhere else was either busy or closed, we ended up at Burger King. Here's a picture of my grandpa enjoying his double cheeseburger. Mmm...

Stupid Boys

2007-11-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

There's a guy I'm pretty good friends with this semester, and he was in a long distance open relationship. We ended up fooling around one time and decided to stay good friends and possibly hook up if and when the mood struck. However, he hasn't really shown too much interest in it happening again since then.

The relationship ended a few weeks ago (they realized that the distance was too much). Ever since then, we've been cuddling every time we hang out. It started out as a very little bit (the day after they broke up), then it was a bit more, and the last time we hung out there was a lot. He kissed me on the forehead, and at the end of the evening we kissed on the lips. Then he said he was tired and implied that it was time for me to leave.

STUPID BOYS!

This is the sort of thing that is a really awesome start of a relationship. Taking it slow, cuddling a lot, kissing a little but making sure to call it a night afterwards. But I'm leaving in a month and a half! And we've already fooled around! Ugh.

The thing is, I don't even have much of a strong desire for sex. I just want to make out and have a bit more affection (and possibly be invited to spend the night). He's a great guy and I truly value his friendship, but it's annoying for him to have been open about the possibility of hooking up again and then cuddle with me so much with no intention of anything more. Grrr!

Maybe Jesus can help me.

- Induced Homomorphism

Hot Tub

2007-10-31T22:02:00.001-07:00

My house for the semester has a hot tub. Previous to this week, we had a broken hot tub. It was fixed on Sunday, though, and I've been in it six times already. I've never had a hot tub before and never really felt an extreme need to have one, but after being able to duck into one whenever I want, I'm hooked. Sign me up!

It's going to be even nicer when it starts getting cold (damn you, Global Warming!)...

- Induced Homomorphism

A Special Christmas Box

2007-10-29T01:09:00.001-07:00

If you don't already know what I'm talking about, you must watch the following video:

Now, my Halloween costume:

Yes, my dick was actually in the box. I didn't just attach a box to the front of my pants. That would be half-assing a Halloween costume, which is a felony in my state (of mind).

My house had a Halloween party this Saturday, and after inviting all of our friends and some of their friends, we had a pretty packed house. There were some great costumes (some good ones were a well-done Britney Spears, an Elvis with a costume that lit up, and Gogo Yubari (from Kill Bill Volume I)), and fun was had by all. A total of eight people opened my box, although I must say that at least half of them had already seen its contents. By the end of the night it got too crowded for my box, so I changed into some underwear and danced with a good friend on a table for the rest of the evening. All in all, it was a successful party.

Now I have to decide whether or not to wear the costume to class on Halloween. I'm sure almost none of the adults would even suspect that my dick was actually in the box, and anyone who would must be cool enough to not care, so there would be no scandal.

- Induced Homomorphism

Last Minute Blind Date

2007-10-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, a friend told me that he knew someone he thought I might be interested in and wondered if I wouldn't mind being set up on a blind date. I didn't object, as such a thing would likely lead to humor.

Last night at around 7:00 PM, I received a phone call from said friend. I didn't answer because I was about to eat dinner, but he quickly texted me and said that I had a date. I thought it sounded cool, but I didn't call him back because it was time for dinner.

At around 8:00 PM, I got another phone call from him. Since I was still finishing up dessert, I decided not to answer. I received a one word text a minute later: tonight. I immediately called my friend and found out that I was apparently scheduled to go on a date two hours from then. I was planning on continuing hanging out with the friends I was having dinner with (yes, I do have a life!), but as there were no specific plans and there were enough of them to enjoy themselves without me, I excused myself and got ready for the date.

The date was...weird. Our mutual friend came along and we all got ice cream. The guy was nice, but he was a bit weird and I wasn't attracted to him. Such is life. After some mediocre conversation and excellent ice cream (boo calories!), I ended up realizing I would have enjoyed myself more had I just stayed back with the other friends. Oh well.

- Induced Homomorphism

Africa

2007-10-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been sitting under a rock for the past few months and completely ignoring my blog, you probably realize that I'm not the sort of person who necessarily wants to be spending the rest of my life doing math research that only a hundred people understand. In an attempt to Discover Myself, I've decided to go to Africa for a few months next summer. I can't really say where (mostly because some African nations have problems with The Gays), but regardless, it looks like I'll be blessed with three months with power outages and a lack of running water. Fun!

In all seriousness, though, I'm really doing this to see what it's like to live in Africa. There's a part of me that really wants to be doing something to help others in some capacity or another, and Africa just screams out as a place where people could use some help. So although I'll be there for an entire three months, it's really just a short first trip for me to see what ways, if any, I can mold my future career to be more beneficial to others and rewarding to me (really, I'm being completely selfish here). Whether it be something as little as bringing textbooks to students who need them or as much as reforming mathematics education, I'd really be happier if I were doing something to make a difference in somebody's life.

So when I'm not taking bucket showers and battling malaria, I'll be spending my spare time visiting some universities and secondary schools to see what the education system is like (although it will only be a representation of one small part of the continent). I'm also looking into doing some random volunteering (visiting children in orphanages, seeing what an AIDS clinic is like over there, etc.). And sightseeing, of course. Excitement!

Whatever happens, the one thing I'm nearly certain of is that I'll learn more in these three months than I ever have before.

-Induced Homomorphism

Yes, I Am Alive

2007-10-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

I know it's been forever since I've updated (at least, it feels like forever), but I've just been extremely busy having fun. Two weekends ago was jam-packed with fun goodness (including a house party and a lot of dancing) and this weekend was filled with hiking. Some of the people in my department out here planned a hiking trip, and so we spent a good 10-12 hours hiking through the woods this weekend. We saw some beautiful waterfalls and some crazy squirrels, and now I'm exhausted. And in need of some math. But luckily, the little bit of math discussion we had this weekend was more meta-discussion, and it's helping me realize that I already know exactly what I want to be learning for the rest of the semester. So now if I could only get off my lazy ass and start learning it...

-Induced Homomorphism

Clubbin'

2007-09-23T20:09:00.001-07:00

Last night some of my friends and I went out to a gay club. It was really crappy at first, being far too crowded and having less than spectacular music, and I had a fat, old guy caress me at one point. Definitely not my idea of a fun night.

But then I saw a cute boy looking at me. I saw him talking to his friends and saying, "I'm just going to play it cool." How sweet! I hate guys who think they're hot shit. Anyway, he was really close to where one of my friends was, so I went over there and started dancing next to them. Then there were hands on my waist. Happiness ensued.

We danced for about forty minutes or so, talking about the area (since I'm new here) and making out. Towards the end of the night, he told me that he wanted to hang out more, but he has to leave in a week for his last quarter of undergrad. He said he'd be back in December, and when I told him that I would be leaving around then, his face sunk into a frown and he said "awww" quite disappointedly. It was ADORABLE! I gave him my number, and he said he might call me later in the week to hang out, or possibly if he comes back down for a weekend.

Regardless of whether or not he calls me back, it was a huge confidence booster to have a cute, nice boy pick me out of a crowd and hit on me. Actually, I've had quite a few cute, nice boys show interest in me over the past month. If only this happened where I usually live. ::sigh:: Either way, I've been feeling very sexy lately ;-)

- Induced Homomorphism

I Still Do Math, I Promise

2007-09-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Math is going surprisingly well, despite my complete lack of motivation to read any papers. There are a few courses that have started up that I'm taking, and they're mostly understandable so far. We've also formed discussion groups, and so that has made things more manageable. I still need to start reading a few papers, but I think my backedupness will beat out procrastination fairly soon.

In other news, I'm trying to work out a way to go to Africa next summer. I'm looking into ways to volunteer to do something mathy (possibly giving lectures at a university there) or other randomness. I want to see what it's like over there and what the education system is like so that I can evaluate the possibility of devoting part of my time in the future to doing my small part in helping with the development of the continent. I know it might feel like that's coming out of nowhere, but when you think about how little I've been getting out of just studying math, you'll understand that this is coming from the desire I have to do something that will make a difference for somebody.

-Induced Homomorphism

Wedding Day

2007-09-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

The wedding ceremony was pretty uneventful, except for the two children who walked down the aisle first. The little boy got about ten feet down the aisle, saw his parents in the pews, and bolted towards them. The little girl was left scared on the aisle, wondering what was going on. She drew her focus to the groom at the end of the aisle and ran into his open arms, which was precious.

After the ceremony, the bride and groom (Jeanette and Chris) were driven in a rented Rolls Royce, not too dissimilar from the one pictured above, and went to the groom's parents' grave site. Meanwhile, the rest of the wedding party took some pictures as the bagpipe player played on, and then we hopped into two stretch limos to go to the park to take pictures.

Half way to the park, the limo driver asked us if anyone knew exactly where we were going. There's a few very similar parks near each other and unfortunately, nobody seemed to know exactly where we were going. We ended up driving around (in 95 degree weather with air conditioning that left much to be desired), and we eventually saw a white Rolls Royce heading down the street - in the opposite direction. We turned around in a parking lot, almost causing a two-vehicle gridlock with the limos, and we finally made our way to the park, where we took pictures for about an hour and half the groomsmen smoked a bit of pot.

We then headed back to the reception hall, which was very reminiscent of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas (which, if you're unfamiliar, looks like what I would assume Venice looks like, only clean). We were there an hour and a half early so that we could grab a bite to eat and then we could take pictures with the bride and groom's families. Apparently "a bit to eat" meant shrimp and crab leg cocktail, lemon chicken, calamari, stuffed clams, and stuffed mushrooms. And of course there was ample beer and wine to start off the evening.

After pictures came cocktail hour. I was expecting an open bar, which I found, but I was also directed towards the other room which had food. I figured I'd check it out and thought that it might just be more of the food that the wedding party had just eaten in the bridal room, but when I entered I noticed that there were a bunch of different cheeses. I grabbed a plate and decided to try out some of this food. I had some different cheeses, a peace of toasted bread, and some sun-dried tomatoes. There were other vegetables, but I decided to skip them. Then I turned around the corner and noticed that there was a sushi bar, in between two ice sculptures of hearts on top of columns. So I had a bit of sushi. Then I found the non-sushi seafood section, where I grabbed some seafood risotto with squid, shrimp, and clams. This was more than enough food for me, so I passed up the dozen or so meat carving stations (ham, turkey, beef, lamb, veal, pork chops, and I think even deer), the Italian food stations (pastas and other things, like rice balls), and the kids' food stations (pizza and the like). All in all, there were over 50 different food stations. And this was just cocktail hour!

During cocktail hour, I was summoned to the bridal room so that I could line up for the entrance of the wedding party into the reception hall. We took about fifteen minutes to gather the entire wedding party and line up in the order we walked down the aisle. We were then given our instructions: the doors would open, and each pair would walk into the room and line up on the dance floor when the DJ called our names. The pairs in front of us went, and then when I got to the door, I felt like I was a part of My Super Sweet Sixteen. The DJ announced our names and told everybody to "make some noise," and the crowd clapped and cheered as we walked down the grand staircase, the spotlight following us all the way to the dance floor. The other pairs were announced similarly, and when everybody but the bride and groom came down, we were told that it was time to watch a short video.

A giant projection screen was lowered (but it was fine if people couldn't see it, as there were flat-screen monitors around the reception hall broadcasting everything as well), and then a slideshow came up. They had pictures of Jeanette growing up, with music playing in the background. Then they did the same for Chris. Then they did the same with pictures of them together and pictures of their families. Then they had a five minute video clip of the wedding. That happened four hours earlier. Yes, they actually took all of the footage from earlier in the day and cut together a video montage. Absolutely ridiculous.

So after that, the bride and groom came down the stairs, walked through a makeshift tunnel formed by the hands of the people in the wedding party, and performed their first dance. Afterwards, everyone went to their seats and ordered dinner. There was a choice of filet mignon, some sort of chicken, and filet of sole. Of course, these dishes came after the bread and butter, salad, and pasta. Between courses, people danced to the music played by the DJ and the polkaesque music played by the Croatian band (the bride's family is Croatian). Afterwards, they cut the cake, threw the flowers, and did all of the other traditional stuff.

Then there was the flambé. Apparently this is the signature move that this particular hall has. The lights dimmed and ten waiters came onto the dance floor and paraded around with small flambé cakes in their hands and disco lights dancing around the room. Then they lined up in the back of the dance floor, and two waiters brought out a big cart with a two and a half foot tall flambé cake on it, looking very much like a volcano. They pushed the cart to one side and shouted, "Make some noise!" as they played with the fire with tongs. Then they did the same on the other side of the dance floor. Then they did the same in front of the bride and groom's table, only one of them put on some fireproof gloves, reached his hand into the fire, and threw the flames ten feet in the air. It wasn't a wedding - it was a circus.

Afterwards, we were told it was time for dessert. The fifty cocktail hour stations were replaced with desserts - cookies, pastries, seven or eight gelato stations, wedding cake, flambé cake, a chocolate fountain, and many other things I just can't remember. Most people were incredibly stuffed by then, but somehow they managed to put down some dessert. I didn't. I just couldn't. It had been way too much, a few hours and a few courses ago.

Afterwards things started to die down, and everyone left a bit after midnight. I would guess the bride and groom got home around 2:00 AM or so, where they were going to shower and have a glass of wine before being picked up and driven to the airport at 4:30 AM. From there, they would take a flight to St. Lucia where they would board a helicopter to get to the resort (because who wants to ride in a car through the woods for an hour and a half when you're hungover?). They'll be back in about a week or so, hopefully with the beginnings of their family in tow.

The total cost of all wedding day activities (excluding the rehearsal dinner, gifts for the wedding party, and the honeymoon) was $85,000. That means that they easily broke six figures for the whole shebang. That's two people's salaries in the United States for a year. Or the amount of money someone in a third world country needs to live off of for their entire life (or two lives, if they're frugal or have short lifespans). Just a bit disgusting.

I'm so happy I was able to be a part of this experience; however, this really supports my desire to have a small wedding on a beach somewhere. I'm thinking about having it be somewhere in the Mediterranean, at the end of a weeklong stay at a resort there, from which we'd fly to our honeymoon somewhere exotic (I'm thinking African safari). I think we could keep it under $20,000, but that would include a trip to two different continents. Much more worthwhile and much less to stress over.

-Induced Homomorphism

Keg-a-Que

2007-09-11T11:09:00.001-07:00

I am now the proud owner of a Keg-a-Que ® Grill. It was a gift for me from my cousin Chris and his new bride Jeanette, as a thank-you for being in their wedding party. And as far as absurdities go for the wedding, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It started out this past Friday afternoon. After traveling for over 12 hours, I finally arrived at the hotel where most of my family was staying. After a quick jump in the pool, I was dropped off at the church where the rehearsal was to take place.

There were 28 people in the wedding party, so the rehearsal wasn't just a quickie. There were children to be handled, people to be corralled, individual instructions to be given to those doing readings, and other technicalities to be discussed. It was at least an hour before we were ready to leave and grab some dinner.

The bride and groom rented out a room in a nice Italian restaurant that our family goes to often. When we arrived I counted 40 seats, and every one of them was full. Apparently significant others and a few family members not in the wedding party were invited to the rehearsal dinner. We all sat down, people grabbed some booze, and then we had dinner. Each person's dinner consisted of bread and butter, a share of the appetizer plates (calamari, stuffed clams and mussels, stuffed mushrooms, some sort of eggplant thing, and shrimp), a salad, a pasta dish, a meat dish (your choice of veal, chicken or fish), a glass of champagne, dessert, and coffee. Alcohol included, I'm sure it was at least $100 per person, making the total for the rehearsal dinner over $4,000.

But of course, that's not all. Everyone in the wedding party received gifts from the bride and groom. The women got jewelry for the wedding and bathrobes with their first initials on them, and the men received Keg-a-Que Grills. It may sound odd, but if you knew this part of my family, you'd realize it's the perfect gift. Oddly enough, my friends and I have been talking about how we need a grill so we can have barbecues, so it's also a great gift for me. How I'll get it back to grad school is another issue, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.

After the rehearsal dinner, a few of us piled into my cousin Patrick's car to be driven back for the night. One of my cousins was dropped off at his hotel room, and the rest of us were to be dropped off at Chris' house, where they would drink more and I would attempt to go to sleep. This was until they decided they wanted to go out to a bar instead, on the suggestion their friend Rob, who I lovingly refer to as Douche Bag Rob. In addition to being terribly racist and at least slightly homophobic, Douche Bag Rob also talked about cheating on his wife. There was a girl that they were talking about who all of them had "banged" before (but who was not at the rehearsal dinner), and one of them said, "Yo man, do you know what that was under her arm?" Another replied, "I have no idea," but DBR said, "I don't know what it was, but two months ago I told her to hold her arm down while I was bangin' her!"

So we're driving to DBR's house because he drunkenly and aggressively insisted that we needed to drive 20 minutes out of the way to get to his house, and right before we get there Chris asks him why he needed to go home. DBR said he needed his MAC card to withdraw some money, and Chris said, "You don't need to bring any money. I have plenty of money. I have ten thousand dollars in my pocket." As my jaw dropped, I asked him if he was serious, and he told me that he was. He handed me the was of money and said, "Count it." Sure enough, there was over $10,000 there. It was just a tad bit disgusting having that much money in my hand, but I tried not to think about it too much. So we dropped them off, and I went back to Chris' to try to sleep. They came back and were loud, so that attempt was mostly failed.

More on the actual wedding in another post...

-Induced Homomorphism

Body Shots

2007-09-06T00:13:00.000-07:00

I've learned tonight that body shots are silly. Not in an "oh my god I'm so totally wasted from that tequila" sort of way, but in an "I now have salt in weird places" or a "licking a girl's breast is funny" sort of way. For the record, I only did one shot and was completely sober the whole time. But no fewer than three people ended up licking my nipple, and for some reason they all preferred the left one.

It was my housemate's birthday, and so we had a little bit of a celebration. People started doing body shots, which in our case took too forms. If you were doing them off of a guy, they laid down on the floor and you licked their nipple, put salt on it, licked the salt off, did a shot of alcohol that was placed in their crotch area between their legs (using only your mouth), and took the lime from between their teeth. With a girl, they would be standing, the salt went on their neck, and the shot was secured between their breasts.

This just wasn't good enough for me. I had been telling people I wasn't going to do a shot, mostly because I don't usually drink. It's a combination of me not liking the taste of most alcohols, the price being too much, and the empty calories. But I'll occasionally partake in a small bit, for one reason or another. I used my general unwillingness to raise the stakes. I told my friend Leah that I would do a shot only if I could do it with her, boy-style. That meant her getting on the ground, me licking the salt off of her nipple, and taking the shot from her crotch. She agreed. The next thing everyone knew, she was lying topless on the ground and I was licking her nipple.

Of course this led to others doing the same thing, but I go to bed happy that I am a trendsetter.

- Induced Homomorphism

Halloween

2007-09-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

Last night I went on a date, and we decided to get dinner and then go see Halloween. We went to a theater that's in an upscale part of town but happens to be right next to the ghetto. It was apparent when we got there that it would be quite the experience, as there was a really long line of rowdy people wearing baggy clothing waiting to buy tickets. I try not to discriminate, but I just had a feeling.

We got our tickets and went into the theater, after having to show our ticket stub to an armed police officer. The movie started, and about five minutes into it, a guy walks in, sits next to me, and asks me pretty loudly, "Yo, man. How long ago did it start. What did I miss?" I quietly told him that he was five minutes late and missed nothing. About ten minutes later his girlfriend sat on the other side of him, and she actually had a brief conversation on her cell phone during the movie. It was a bit annoying at first, as many people in the theater were being loud and annoying, but once the movie really started, people changed.

They didn't get any quieter: they just started reacting to the movie. Every once in a while you'd hear something along the lines of, "Don't go into the house! Damn, this white bitch's stupid!" People were constantly screaming. And my absolute favorite was when the psychologist was talking to the young killer about a plain, black mask he had made. The boy said it was his favorite color, and when the psychologist explained that black was the absence of color and white was every color on the spectrum, half the audience called out, "Oh no he di-n't!" or "Man, you racist!" It was a bit ridiculous, but absolutely hilarious.

Finally towards the end, things got great. The girlfriend of the guy sitting next to me was easily startled, and so every time the killer would jump out of somewhere or suddenly appear on screen, she'd scream at the top of her lungs and start smacking her boyfriend in the chest. And at the very end, I'm not sure if it was just the movie or if it was also the dude's girlfriend's reaction, but he jumped out of his seat a few times. Literally, a foot and a half or so into the air. It was brilliant - I just couldn't stop laughing.

Suffice it to say that I'll probably never see another movie at that theater, unless it's a horror film. I can't imagine watching anything else in such a crowd.

- Induced Homomorphism

A Bit of Restored Faith

2007-08-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

I met with my professor earlier today, mostly because I was worried that the semester would have no structure and that I would simply be doing independent studying without any sort of guidance. My plan was to tell him that I needed a bit of structure and need to meet with him for about a half an hour every week to discuss any progress I make. I had apparently underestimated things.

In addition to the review and independently studying the basics of the field I want to get into, he said that he's hoping that the graduate students here interested in the field with organize both a reading group and a graduate student seminar. The reading group would be us picking one paper to read through each week, then discussing (/presenting) it in front of the group so that we all understand it as well as possible. The seminar would be us picking professors and post-docs here and in the area to give lectures on some of the research they've been doing, so we can see what's going on research-wise. Additionally, my professor said that he hopes to have some of the professors give talks on their research in a separate setting - for the whole department. Our seminar would be strictly geared towards graduate students.

So, that makes me feel better. It's definitely calming to know that my professor has a plan, that he has my best interests at heart, and that his interpretation of my best interests makes sense to me. This still means that I have to get off my lazy ass soon (now) and start doing math, but hopefully there will be enough structure to make this go well.

- Induced Homomorphism

New Semester

2007-08-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

I will have a real post soon, I promise. It's just been an extremely difficult week (math-wise) with the beginning of the semester and crazy lectures and whatnot. I haven't been enjoying math at all and have been feeling a bit without purpose, but I'll get into that a bit more soon. Math aside, I've been having a wonderful time with my new friends in my new environment, both of which are incredible!

Absolute Amazingness

2007-08-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've barely been here for 12 hours, and everything already seems to be absolutely wonderful. I moved into my building last night (it's basically a dormitory), and I got caught up in a game of Cranium that lasted until 1:00 AM, during which one of the girls baked cookies. Everyone is incredibly friendly, and it just seems like a wonderful environment.

This morning I came to campus to get things set up, and that went really well. On my way I stopped at Jamba Juice, which has no locations near my normal university (which makes me very sad). Then I found out that as a university student at another school, I get a pretty cheap price for a gym membership, which was definitely a plus. Then I got my computer account and got online, only to find out that a good friend from my Israel trip is moving very close to here. Also, I found out that my most recent paycheck is a bit bigger than I was expecting (score!).

So yeah, things seem awesome. Math starts tomorrow - we'll see how that goes.

- Induced Homomorphism

Packing

2007-08-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

It's always harder than it seems. I actually have relatively few possessions (less than two carloads of things that I actually keep during any given move), and yet I keep finding little pieces of junk in every corner of my room. How did that photograph end up behind the TV stand? What was I thinking when I put that notebook in my dresser drawer? What the hell does this cable go to? I'm worst with computer accessories - I almost never throw anything away, even if I know I'll never have a use for it again.

Luckily one can only check in two pieces of luggage and take one carry-on, and I'm determined to take my skis with me. This makes packing for the semester easy - if I even think that I won't need it, it goes into storage.

Oh, how glorious Wednesday will be. A new home, new friends, new beginnings, and probably most exciting: new restaurants. There's a few good math seminars going on in the upcoming weeks, though, so keep an eye out for math. Crazy, right?

- Induced Homomorphism

Ready to Leave

2007-08-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

That's it. I'm done. Get me the hell out of here!

I really like the town in which I go to school. I swear! But right now, it's just the place I least want to be. Almost all of my friends are gone (most on vacation or visiting their families), and there's nothing to do. On top of that, even the people who I would normally get math help from are gone! So when I'm working on problems and get stuck, it's so much harder for me to get help than it normally is, and this certainly doesn't help me to enjoy doing math.

I can't wait until next semester starts! I'll have some good friends with me, I'll have all of the math help that I want, and I'll assuredly be making new friends in the new department. Moreover, I'll be in a new city with tons of cool things to see and places to explore. This is what I need right now. So until I have to start packing, I'll go back to rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and waiting for this next week and a half to go by.

Pennies, Get Away!

2007-08-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've noticed while traveling is that the system of currency we have in the United States is horrendous. We carry far too many coins in our pockets, nonchalantly throwing away pennies because they take up more space than they're worth. Pennies, which according to The Internet™, cost more to produce than they're worth! There are many groups trying to get the penny removed from circulation, but this would require people to round all of their purchases to the nearest nickel, and people don't seem to trust that psychologically, and for good reason.

Imagine, for example, we have eliminated pennies and are rounding all purchases to the nearest nickel. In an area with 6% sales tax, we note that a candy bar sold for 95¢ would cost 100.7¢ after tax, and a candy bar sold for 97¢ would cost 102.8¢ after tax. The final price first candy bar would be rounded down to $1.00, but the final price of the second candy bar would be rounded up to $1.05. So by adjusting the price of a candy bar by two cents, the store makes an additional profit of five cents. Sure, it's not a lot of money, but that argument is enough to make many people wary of rounding their money.

Most people would say that the problem with this solution is that removing the penny from circulation would require the rounding of money; however, I want to bring your attention to the other side of the coin. The real problem we face is with our sales tax system.

Taxes can be broken up into two categories: tax-inclusive taxes and tax-exclusive taxes. Tax-inclusive taxes are the ones where the tax is taken from the total amount, like the income taxes we pay in the United States - you earn X dollars per year, and of that money, a certain percentage goes to the government. Tax-exclusive taxes are the ones where the tax is in addition to the total amount, like sales taxes in the United States - you spend X dollars on a car, and in addition to that money, a certain percentage goes to the government.

In many other countries, sales tax is tax-inclusive. You go to buy a book at a bookstore, and when it costs 12 Turkish Lira, that's exactly how much you give the cashier. Or when you buy a candy bar that costs 70 eurocents, you fork over a 50c coin and a 20c coin. Notice that the equivalent of the penny is never required unless the shopkeeper is stupid enough to make his candy bar 71 eurocents.

So even though they make 1¢ pieces in countries using the Euro, you rarely end up with them. In fact, when I spent a month in Italy a few years ago, I only came across them once or twice (most likely when I exchanged money and ended up with them because of the exchange rate). And when I was in Turkey, my friends told me that they didn't even know if a 1¢ piece existed. Apparently they do exist, but they are extremely rare.

This brings me back to my point. If we were to change our sales tax from a tax-exclusive system to a tax-inclusive system, we would be able to price most goods so that pennies would no longer be as necessary as they are now. Whether or not we should actually remove the penny from circulation would have to be considered in the future - personally, I wouldn't be surprised if people got used to not using them and became okay with rounding to the nearest nickel when purchasing meat at the deli and in similar situations. But it would certainly take some time, as well as the removal of tax-exclusive sales tax.

Now that you've digested much more math than you normally do, what do you think?

- Induced Homomorphism

Turkey Pictures

2007-07-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

Pictures from Turkey!

The Blue Mosque

The Hagia Sophia.

Taxim, a popular shopping and nightlife destination in Istanbul.

"WELCOME TO ASIA" - The sign on my new favorite bridge.

It has zigzagging lights that change patterns and colors!

My awesome backflipping skills.

My friend Ali jumping on a trampoline.

My new favorite hotel!

Ali's cousin's rich friend's house, at which we attended a party.

The ruins at Efes, an ancient city near the Aegean Sea.

A poorly translated sign, lamenting a recent forest fire.

The Virgin Mary's house, reconstructed.

The car in which we hitchhiked back from Mary's house.

- Induced Homomorphism

Israel Pictures

2007-07-29T15:57:00.000-07:00

Pictures from Israel, finally!

One of the places we stayed.

My friend Alex, being used as a map of Israel.

Harry Potter broomstick candles, made in a holy city.

People dancing on the mini-cruise we took.

An advertisement for The Mega Event, in which all 6,000 Jews currently on Birthright trips came together for a night of dancing.

My friend sleeping during The Mega Event.

6,000 dancing Jews!

The Western Wall, which is pretty much the holiest place for Jews.

Graves at Mt. Herzl military cemetery. They obviously put a little bit more effort into their troops' graves than we do.

Camel ride through the desert!

Covered in mud and ready to jump into the Dead Sea.

Sunrise over the Dead Sea, from the top of Masada.

- Induced Homomorphism

Barely Political

2007-07-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

I fear for our country.

- Induced Homomorphism

Stock Market

2007-07-26T23:24:00.001-07:00

The stock market has a bad day, and I lose $23.62. I won't be able to touch the money for decades (IRA), but for some reason it still makes me sad.

Back to the Grind

2007-07-26T07:45:00.001-07:00

Well, not really. I have returned home from my trips, but it would be an outright lie to say that I've been doing math. Thus far I've unpacked, done laundry, cleaned my apartment (so my landlady can show it for when I leave for the semester), mailed a bunch of packages, seen some friends, and eaten about half of the food that I've missed while I was away. Oh, and I got a new phone, the LG enV:

I used to have a Motorola Razr with mp3 player, but the phone always ran slowly and the mp3 player skipped all of the time, so when it was time to get a new phone, I decided to get one that was actually built for media (whereas they just threw an mp3 player into the Razr). Not only was I thrilled to find out that the enV's mp3 player works perfectly, but I was overjoyed when I saw that its 2.0 mega pixel digital camera takes pictures much better than any cell phone camera I've ever seen. Throw in the qwerty keyboard and the supposed fact that you can have videos as ringtones, and I'm all set!

I'm planning on going to campus and getting a bit of studying done soon, so hopefully I will have done some math before my next post.

Turkey

2007-07-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

Again, I will tease you with a short list of the things I did while I was visiting my friend Ali in Turkey. Pictures will hopefully eventually be posted. All of the following took place in Istanbul, unless stated otherwise:

Saw the Blue Mosque

Toured the Hagia Sophia

Visited the Basilica Cistern, an underground water supply with a capacity of 21 million US gallons and held up by 336 columns

Met three of Ali's cousins who live in Istanbul

Saw Taxim, a popular shopping and nightlife district

Attended a party at Boğaziçi University, Ali's alma mater, and met some of his friends

Went on a cruise on the Bosphorus (the strait separating the European and Asian sides of Istanbul)

Saw the Grand Bazaar, the world's largest (and easy to get lost in) covered market

Went bowling (and tied Ali in a two game series - rematch in the states!)

Visited Ali's aunt and uncle on the island Heybeli Ada and went swimming in the Sea of Marmara

Had a barbeque in the woods outside of Istanbul with a bunch of Ali's friends

Went to a party at a rich guy's summer house in Şile, about an hour outside of Istanbul. He actually hired minibuses to bring people from Istanbul to his summer house!

Visited a high school friend in Izmir

Wandered around Izmir with him and his girlfriend

Watched him teach an English class (using quite possibly the worst method ever, but he has to)

Saw ancient ruins at Efes, about an hour outside of Izmir

Climbed a mountain to get to the Virgin Mary's last house

Snuck into the Virgin Mary's house without paying

Hitchhiked back from the Virgin Mary's house to the local town to catch a bus back to Izmir

Ate just about everything in sight - they have really awesome food in Turkey!

I should be able to have pictures up in about two weeks. I have some film to get developed, I have some digital pictures I have to sort through, and I have to wait for other people to upload their Israel pictures, as my camera broke during the trip. And sometime I have to do math again...

- Induced Homomorphism

Israel

2007-06-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

Eventually, I will have time, energy, and pictures for a full update; however, I can tease you all with a list of the things I did while in Israel:

Hiked on a mountain and saw the Lebanon border

Toured Tsfat, a holy city

Went kayaking on the Jordan river

Had a boat cruise on the See of Galilee

Went on a hike to see a beautiful waterfall

Saw an abandoned Israeli army base with views of the Syrian border

Went to the MEGA EVENT, where 6000 Jews on the Birthright trip mingled and danced to music

They also had the world`s largest Jewish disco there

Saw a panoramic view of Jerusalem

Went to the City of David in Jerusalem

Hiked through Hezekiah`s water tunnel

Toured the Jewish Quarter

Saw the Western Wall

Visited Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum)

Went to Mt. Herzl military cemetery

Saw a comedian who specialized in masks (La comedia dell'arte)

Went to a club in Jerusalem

Went on a short archaeological dig (and touched pieces of pottery that nobody else touched in 2200 years - I found a handle from a piece of pottery, a rim, and some other pieces)

Went spelunking at the same site in old basements from 2200 years ago

Visited a mall

Went to an ethnic market in Jerusalem

Had shabbat services

Climbed Masada

Went on a hike to some natural springs

Covered each other with mud and floated in the dead sea

Had some Israeli soldiers give us a short boot camp exercise

Slept in a Bedouin tent

Rode a camel through the desert

Saw d massive geological crater

Went to the tomb of Ben Gurion, the founder of Israel

Swam in the Mediterranean in Tel Aviv

Went to a bar in Tel Aviv

Saw Independence Hall, where Ben Gurion proclaimed Israel as a state

Went to the airport to say goodbyes

And all of that in less than 10 full days (minus Shabbat). It was incredibly exhausting, but it was one of the best experiences of my life. Hopefully I can share more when I've recovered, which won't be any time soon if I tour Turkey as intensely as I did Israel.

-Induced Homomorphism

Stop Looking at Me Swan

2007-06-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the Mexico trip. There's absolutely nothing historical or cultural here, but I'm sure there will be more of that on my next trips. Enjoy!

Our hotel had a little area with a few swans.

They also had flamingos ;)

We relaxed on the beach a lot.

But we swam in the pool even more often.

This was a little bridge that went over the pool, and when there was a wedding at the resort, it was where the bride would begin her walk down the aisle. Every time there was a wedding, many single onlookers gathered to take pictures and talk about how much they wanted to get married.

They had Bimbo Bread. It made me laugh.

We saw this rock off in the distance and decided to venture towards it, as it looks a bit like a penis.

When we actually got closer, though, we realized it looked more like a woman (if you can see the face looking left).

Then when I got really close, I saw that it really looked like an eagle.

This is the view from the Penis Woman Eagle rock. I like climbing around on rocks.

And lastly, this is a picture taken from the main building of the resort looking down on the rest of the place. It was so big that they had employees riding golf carts to give people rides around the resort.

Pueblo Bonito

2007-06-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

I spent the past week with two of my friends at the Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach Resort and Spa in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. My friend Tammy just graduated from college, and so her grandma gave her a week in the timeshare, and Tammy invited her friend Lyndsay and me to go with her. We didn't find out until we arrived that the resort was enormous and that we were in one of the Presidential Suites (which go for $950/night when you're paying cash).

That's my bedroom. And that's my balcony, with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Tammy and Lyndsay took the other bedroom (with two beds), and we were separated by a living room and full kitchen. The entire suite had marble floors, each bedroom had its own bathroom, and the entire place was just gorgeous. I thought I had a nice room when I was in Greece last summer (with a balcony and a view of the Aegean Sea), but this definitely trumped it.

Almost all of our time was spent in the pool, in the jacuzzi, on the beach, or eating. They had a few cooking classes (= watch them make free food for you) and cocktail mixing classes (= free fruity alcohol), but other than that, we really just relaxed the entire time. We talked about going into town for a day, but they didn't want to go and I didn't want to pay for the taxi all by myself, so we ended up never even leaving the resort. It was just a really nice, relaxing week.

For a moment I had a bit of regret about not experiencing any of the local culture, but it seemed to be as Americanized as the United States (we rode past a Home Depot and a Costco on our way to the resort), and so I'm sure I didn't miss terribly much. And the megatrip I'm taking in a few days is going to just be one big heaping dose of culture; the ten days in Israel will be absolutely full of recreational and cultural activities, and the two weeks I have in Turkey will be spent with my friend who lives there, so I'll get a mixture of touristy things and some local culture as well. Fun times.

So when I'm not updating my blog over the next few weeks, know that I'm taking pictures for you to see when I get back. I may upload a few more pictures from Mexico when I get some more time.

- Induced Homomorphism

Mexico

2007-06-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not too sure if I mentioned this or not, and I'm too lazy to go back and read through entries, but I'm doing quite a bit of traveling this summer. Last night I just got back from a week in Cabo San Lucas, and I have a grand total of four days until I leave for a 26 day trip that will take me to Israel and Turkey. I have a million things to do (going through pictures from Mexico, banking things, cleaning my room, packing for the upcoming trip, studying a bit, seeing friends, etc.), but I am hoping to have a post about Mexico (complete with pictures!) up before I leave.

I'm spoiled. I know.

- Induced Homomorphism

Falling Or Flying

2007-05-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Things are changing around here, and they're changing mighty quickly. The biggest change is going to be a change of location for me. Next semester, the professor I'm setting myself up to work with is going to be on leave and visiting another university to do some research collaboration, and he's taking me and two other students with him. I've known this was happening for about a month, but I've been waiting until the end of the semester and until plans finalized to announce it on here. I'm really excited because this is going to be a great opportunity for me to see another part of the country, to get away from the one professor who has been making me very frustrated this semester, and to really immerse myself in an area of mathematics that I'm really enjoying, which might be the best chance for me to start really liking math again.

As far as the differential topology situation is going, I think I have that figured out. Originally the plan was going to be for me to study the material a bit over this summer (which is a bit tough because I also have other readings I was planning on doing this summer), and then take an exam towards the end of the summer to pass the course. After speaking with the professor I was planning on having supervise this, though, he said that it would be better for me to take more time and to possibly take the exam when I get back at the end of next semester. He's going to have much higher standards for me than the original professor had (partially because he's a much better teacher and would have covered the material better if he had taught it, and also partially because he wants me to learn the material very well, which would be best for me in the long run), and thus cramming a lot into the summer is probably too much. His general advice for me is to slow things down a bit (which is less my fault and more the fact that the department suggested that I move at this pace), and luckily the head of the department agreed with his advice, and so that's our new plan of attack.

This semester has certainly been a roller coaster ride for me; really enjoying two of my classes, really hating one of my classes, having a relative pass away, not being able to get into the swing of things for a while, finding out that I get to go away for a semester, getting a C in the differential topology course, trying to figure out how to remedy that bad grade, and then having things just end abruptly and having vacation start so soon. This past month has been a bit like the season finale of a drama, with crazy plot twists and whatnot, and I'm hoping that after going on math hiatus a bit this summer, I'll be ready and anxious to see how next season goes.

- Induced Homomorphism

Didn't We Almost Have It All

2007-05-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

I got a C in my Differential Topology course, which in grad school terms means that I failed it. Oddly enough, my department is very understanding about this. Not only did the head of the department tell me that I could work with a professor over the summer to make it up, but apparently I'm allowed to choose which professor I want to do this wish (so long as I can find one who will agree to this). Score!

Actually, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to learn some of the things that I really wanted to but never was taught rigorously (specifically, Lie groups (pronounced "Lee")). I really have some holes in my topology/geometry education from things that I saw but never really learned very well, and my original hope was that they'd be filled in during this Differential Topology course. Unfortunately, the professor didn't do as well of a job as I would have hoped, so things will fall on me to make the best of my education. Hopefully I can rise to the challenge.

Speaking of Food Porn

2007-05-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning, I decided that I would bake cupcakes as soon as I finised my last take-home final. I absolutely love baking, and one of my favorite things to bake is cupcakes. And my absolute favorite type of cupcake is Magnolia Bakery's vanilla vanilla. I never end up getting the frosting right (you have to add about three times as much sugar as the recipe calls for so that the frosting reaches "good spreading consistency," and I never buy quite enough sugar), but otherwise I've got it down pretty well.

Anyway, I rode over to Crate and Barrel and picked up this fancy thing
(because a true cupcake maker has a carrying case for their masterpieces...and I left mine back with my parents). Ain't she a beauty? She holds 24 cupcakes perfectly. The Magnolia recipe makes 24 cupcakes. Obviously, this is not a coincidence. And also obviously, the picture above is not of the cupcakes I made.

I'd take a picture of mine, but I'm nearly headed out the door for dinner with friends, cupcakes for dessert, and then a showing of Spiderman 3, all to celebrate the end of the semester! As crappy as Differential Topology went (which I'm quite afraid I might not pass), my other courses ended fine and I have no doubt that I did well in them. So off to forget about math and enjoy life!

- Induced Homomorphism

I've Been Tagged

2007-05-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

It's hard to participated in memes when you're trying to be anonymous and the meme specifically asks you for geographically-identifying information, but I'll do my best to participate without giving anything away...

So far, this meme has gone through the following people...

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [ish], Texas, United States)
Todd (Louisville, Kentucky, United States)
miss kendra (los angeles, california, u.s.a)
Jiggs Casey (Berkeley, CA, USA! USA! USA!)
Tits McGee (New England, USA)
Kat (Ontario, Canada)
Cheezy (London, England)
Paula (Orange County, California, U.S.)
Jeff (Colorado, USA)
Fringes (around Houston, US)
Tera (Somewhere In KY by way of OH, USA)
Nina (Cleveland Area, OH, USA)
Induced Homomorphism (Graduate school, USA)

List your top 5 local eating places (of course, they shall all remain nameless ;)

1. There's this cute bistro right down the street from me that's fairly expensive but has the world's best grilled cheese, which is still expensive but won't cost $30.00, like most meals would. It's made with two huge slices of what I can only guess is a close relative to challah, it's filled with just the right amount of havarti, and it comes with a side of roasted tomato basil soup. It's so big that I like to rip it in half (so that I can fit it in my mouth) and dunk it in the soup. Delicious.

2. There's this pan-Asian place place a bit further away that I've heard is run by Cambodians, but it has the absolute best (and only worthwhile) sesame chicken in town. I don't understand what's wrong with all of the Chinese restaurants here, but all of them serve their chicken dry and overpriced. After I discovered it a few months ago, I've stopped eating Chinese food from anywhere else.

3. There's a section of the city that's filled with Italian restaurants. Some of them are authentic, some are heavily Americanized, some are great, some are terrible, but only one is amazing. Well, only one that I've tried so far. They have this dish that's basically a stuffed pepper, filled with sausage and risotto, served in a bowl with chunky red sauce. It's become one of my favorite meals in town, and I didn't even like stuffed peppers before I tried them there! It's certainly been a life changing experience.

4. There's about seven or eight Indian restaurants within walking distance of my apartment (okay, so I like to walk a lot). I know that doesn't really qualify for an "eating place", but I'm a big, fat cheater. I'm a sucker for chicken tikka masala, and I have it at least weekly.

5. And last but not least (because I didn't say I was ordering them in any particular way), there's the bar on campus that serves the best burger and fries. It's not terribly interesting, but it's essential.

My parents will be coming to visit next week, and it's very unlikely that we'll miss any of these fine establishments.

And because I cheat again, I'll only tag one person. I think my other blogging friends have all been tagged - we're such an inbred community :-P

Jenomena

- Induced Homomorphism

The Legacy

2007-05-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

I'm the sort of student who most teachers remember. Sometimes this is because I was really good at math, and sometimes this is because of my ~~charming~~ delightfully sarcastic personality. This most often shows during visits back to my old high school or alma mater, when I get to see my favorite teachers and reminisce about how things used to be, but I am occasionally caught off guard by a random reference to me. For example, for a year or two after I graduated from high school, my friend David would tell me when my old math and physics teachers would mention my name in passing. These occurances have been happening less frequently as time passes, but I received a very unexpected call this weekend that reminded me of them (and that I haven't blogged in ages).

Normally when my phone rings and the caller ID displays a number from my home area code, it ends up being a misdial. When I answered such a call today, I was met with a young, male voice asking if this was Mike. When I asked who it was, I was told that it was a younger brother of a classmate of mine. He told me that he was taking the AP Biology course, and he was using a paper I had written called "Eight Pages of Hell" to study for the AP exam.

I thought back and remembered that I had printed out an eight page study guide that I had made, and apparently I had given a copy to my teacher. Also apparently, there was a typo in the paper, as younger brother of high school friend was very quick to point out. Thanks.

He was nice about it. He said that he and his friend (the younger sibling of another person I went to high school with) were just talking about me and that he wanted to thank me for the notes. He referred to me as a god; I didn't have the heart to tell him that I only got a 4 on the AP exam. He also had a question about one of the things I had written down, but I assured him that I didn't remember anything from the course (since I had taken five years ago).

Thinking back, I really wish I would have applied myself a bit more in high school. As smart as I was, I was really a lazy sonofabitch, and I could have done a lot better if I would have spent a few more hours each week studying. Oh well. Maybe I'll make up for it eventually...

- Induced Homomorphism

Presentation

2007-04-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

The presentation went surprisingly well. After going back and forth between the two ways to present the material, I ended up realizing that each way would only take about twenty five minutes or so, so I ended up presenting both of them. Although parts of the talk were pretty boring and consisted of me writing a lot of boring inequalities and analysis, I kept the attention of most of the audience throughout the talk, and I'm fairly certain that the people who were paying attention understood everything.

I really can't wait until I'm a TA and have enough experience talking in front of people so that things like this don't phase me. That's my biggest hurdle with teaching - I'm great at tutoring one on one, but I freak out too much when I'm talking in front of a large group of people.

First Advisor-ish Meeting

2007-04-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

I'm giving a talk in one of my classes this Friday, and I met with the professor to discuss the topic I'm going to talk about. This professor happens to be the one that will likely become my advisor, and the meeting we had was very similar to what my older friends have told me to expect from a meeting with your advisor.

There's two ways to cover the topic I'm talking about - one is done explicitly in the book, and the other isn't, but my professor said that it's a bit easier and that he could explain it to me. I went to talk to him about his way of doing it, and it was invariably more difficult and confusing. He went through a very hand-wavey proof of the theorem, which I could barely follow and only partially remember, and then he gave me a reference to read that was even less rigorous than his proof.

I'm told this is how advisor meetings often end up. Your advisor talks to you for twenty minutes about some mathematical idea or proof, and then you spend the next week trying to figure out exactly what he did. On one hand, it's a bit frustrating to have this happen in my first year, when I have more than enough coursework to focus on, but on the other hand, it's nice to get exposed to this now so I can get used to it earlier.

Better Than I Had Expected

2007-04-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

I had my differentiable topology midterm today, and I must say that it went a bit better than I had expected. That still doesn't mean that it went well, but the problems were mostly fair game, and I didn't completely bomb it (as I was mentally preparing myself to feel better about).

It started out with a few problems where we had to list definitions. This is much more difficult than one might expect, though, because the definitions we have are much more complex. One of the problems was to define the boundary of a manifold with boundary. The first problem is that there are a few different definitions for such an object that are all equivalent, but it's not obvious which one the professor wants you to use. Then, once you pick a definition, you have to make sure you word things very precisely. Definitions in math can sometimes be a few sentences with many symbols and even an equation or two, and so there's lots of room for mistakes.

Then there were a couple of problems where you had to say if something was true or false and then justify your answer. I'm fairly certain I got both of those problems wrong, so we won't discuss that any further.

Then there were two or three final problems where you had to do a few calculations, name a theorem or two, etc. I'm fairly certain I did pretty well on those, but we'll have to see how the professor does the grading. That's the one thing that makes me uneasy. My friends seem to think that the professor will be very lenient and give everybody A's because he doesn't seem to care that much about his teaching responsibilities, and that's the easy way out. I'm afraid, on the other hand, that he'll be very strict with his grading to make up for having not graded the homeworks we handed in a month and a half ago. If it's the former, then everything will be fine and dandy. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure how things will turn out. I'm guessing that I got a 70/100 on the midterm, but we'll have to see when it's handed back.

Border Crossing

2007-03-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

I went to visit a friend in Canada for a few days last week for spring break, and I figured I'd post about the border crossing, as it was the most bloggable part of the trip. As far as school goes, not much is new except I'm hating my Differential Topology class more than ever, and I really should be working on a problem set for it. But alas, I procrastinate.

The border crossing was very interesting. I took a bus across the border, and so when we got to the border crossing, we had to deboard the bus, go inside, and meet with the customs agents. Entering Canada was no problem - they had two lanes open (lanes = inside lanes, for people to go through), both of the officers spoke perfect English and French, they were very friendly, and nobody seemed to have any issue crossing. We were off the bus and back on in under ten minutes.

The return trip was a disaster. After deboarding the bus, we went inside and met the one gruff officer on duty. He's the sort of person who really gets off on the small bit of authority given to him by his job - basically, the exact sort of person who shouldn't be welcoming foreigners into our country. The first person in line was a Canadian citizen who spoke only French. The officer attempted to speak to her in French and failed, complaining that her French was terrible. After a bit of one-sided arguing (the officer yelling at the woman and complaining to the rest of us about her), he asked the group if there was anyone who spoke French. A nice young girl volunteered and had absolutely no problem translating the officer's questions into French and communicating with the woman in line. For a moment, the officer had all of us non-French speakers convinced that the woman just spoke French poorly, but her untroubled communication with the other girl showed that it was really the officer who couldn't speak French.

The next person in line was a middle-aged East Asian man who spoke very little English but was apparently a US Citizen. I must admit that my personal views are that if you want to live in the United States, you should damn well make an attempt to learn at least some of the language. I guess I feel this way because I wouldn't move to France without taking at least a semester of French to get by on, and then continuing to learn the language on my arrival. Anyway, after failing to communicate with the guy for about two or three minutes, the officer shouted in frustration, "Damn, nobody speaks Chinese!" This is the point where I almost flipped my shit. There are some people in this world who are able to look at an Asian person and tell whether they're Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, or some other subethnicity of East Asian (I appologize if I've misused the terms 'ethnicity' and 'subethnicity', but I'm trying my best to describe the situation). This guy clearly isn't the sort of person who can do this. He was surely just assuming the guy was Chinese and being blatantly racist (the passport was a US passport, and he hadn't looked inside more than to just glance at the picture, so even if the man had a Chinese visa, the officer wouldn't have seen it). The officer proceeded to try and use crude sign language (which I have no problem with, except for the way he did it angerly) to see if the guy had any other forms of ID before getting angry and sending him into another part of the building to presumably be inspected by other officers.

The rest of the time consisted of the officer passing US Citizens speaking fluent English with a quick and easy five questions or so, and the officer being extremely rude to the rest of the people, searching through their bags, and treating them like terrorists. I was (yet again) embarassed to be a US Citizen. And to add insult to injury, the room we were in was wallpapered with little posters saying that everyone has the right to a fair and unbiased officer and a friendly welcome into the country.

The Award Winning Induced Homomorphism

2007-03-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

This weekend I received a text message from my friend Steve inviting me to a house party featuring a talent show. Since the last party I went to with Steve was absolutely hilarious, I decided that there was no way I could miss out on this opportunity. I wasn't planning on performing in the show, as the only things I can do that qualify as talents are solving the Rubik's Cube and bending my leg so that my ankle is behind my head, and for each of those talents, I've met a dozen or so people who can do them.

When I got to the party, I came to the realization that a bunch of drunk people who aren't mathematicians would probably really enjoy seeing someone solve the Rubik's Cube. While there are at least a handful of people in my department (myself included) who can solve the 3x3x3, 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cubes, the general population has never witnessed someone solve a Rubik's Cube in person. So I called my friend Mike and asked him to bring one when he came to the party. He did, and I started practicing while some of the other people performed.

A few acts in, I realized that just solving the Cube was not going to be enough. One guy made this crazy video breaking all of the rules (which was a mixture of hilarious and craziness, when he broke the "no bodily fluids" rule - I'm not going to get into that), and another girl "slaughtered" a fish (okay, she filleted a seven pound salmon, but she did it very aggressively and sexily). So I thought, "Well, maybe I can solve the cube with one leg tied behind my back. I suggested this to my friends, and they both agreed that I absolutely had to do it.

When my turn was up, everyone thought they knew what was coming. They had seen me working on the cube earlier, and so as soon as I stood up, I heard people saying, "He's gonna do the Cube!" At that point, I made my announcement: "Most people have watched someone solve the Rubik's Cube on TV. It's not really much of a talent because it's a skill that can be learned if given enough time. But I'll bet you never saw anyone solve the Rubik's Cube...with one leg behind their back!"

I pulled up a chair, put my leg behind my head, and started solving. The (mostly drunken) crowd watched intently while cheering me on. One of the judges (this flamboyantly gay guy) was leaning over me, watching me solve the cube while yelling out things like, "You've got a lot of green on that side!" and "Don't mess up those reds!" My friend Mike (another guy who can solve all of the different cubes I mentioned above) was giving commentary to a crowd of people who didn't understand what "He's twisting the corners!" really means. Then after a few minutes and a few mistakes (it was dark, and the reds and oranges looked too similar for my colorblind eyes), I solved the Cube. Everyone cheered, lots of people gave me high fives, and people seemed genuinely impressed.

I sat down to watch the rest of the acts, and the girl sitting next to me said, "You know, I'm already sleeping with someone tonight, but if I wasn't, you and I would be talking right now." Flattering :)

At the end of the evening, they announced the awards. There were three: most creative/interesting, people's choice, and best in show. All three were trophies, handmade by the host, symbolizing the categories (a kitchen sink for most creative/interesting, a heart for people's choice, and a rocket ship for best in show). They started with most creative/interesting, and they called my name. I went up and gave my speech, thanking everyone and telling them that it was most definitely the coolest award I had ever won in my entire life, and then I watched a really awesome singer get the people's choice award and a pretty good dancer get best in show.

As I was leaving, I wanted to make sure to thank the hosts of the party and say my goodbyes. I thanked the hosts and the DJ, and then on my way out my friend Steve introduced me to the gay judge. When I shook his hand, he said to me, "When you did that...it pushed all of my buttons." I awkwardly thanked him and then left. He seemed like a nice guy, and he was definitely attractive, but he just wasn't my type. It was definitely a good feeling to be hit on by an attractive guy, though.

And now it's time for Riemann surfaces.

- Induced Homomorphism

Why the World Needs Better Teachers

2007-03-10T08:22:00.000-08:00

Before this semester, I had never in my life thought that a teacher or professor was so terrible that they were hands down the worst teacher I've ever had. Sure, I've had professors who couldn't make the material interesting, and I've had professors who went so slowly that it bored me to death. I even had one last semester who strayed from the standard curriculum enough to make me want to complain to the department, although in the end it didn't have any lasting damage. However, I now have a professor that's just the epitome of how not to run a class. Here's what he's doing wrong:

He spent the first three weeks on unnecessary review material. He has no handle on what should be reviewed and how rigorously he should review it. He's a tenured professor who has taught this course before. I'd say that he should know how to teach it, but that would require the assumption that he has learned from prior mistakes. This is one of the problems of the current tenure system, but that's another discussion.

Then he jumped into the new material very incautiously. He went over some basic definitions and theorems, but he had to go back and modify things because he had made mistakes/left things out/picked the wrong definition to use/etc. It's apparent that he does not spend any time preparing for class, as he often takes three minute breaks during lecture to consult the book on something he really should know like the back of his hand.

Speaking of not spending any time on the course, after we turned in our written solutions to the first problem set, he informed us that he wants us to come in during his office hours to present our solutions to the homework. This means that not only did we waste hours writing up nice solutions that will never be read, but he's too lazy to actually read our solutions and would rather sit on his ass during his required office hours and have us tell him how we solved the problems.

And finally, to add insult to injury, he thinks that his class is the most important class we'll ever take and that we should be spending a few hours every day rereading the definitions and working on the exercises. One student tried testing out of it, and even though he was able to solve most of the problems the professor gave him, the professor told him that he would probably "get a lot out of the course." That would be true, if only it had a good professor. But alas, that's not the case. It has the worst professor I've ever had.

This is why I want to teach.

- Induced Homomorphism

When Prospective Students Come

2007-03-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

We certainly entertain them. Whether or not that means they're likely to come to our department or not, well, that's another story.

A prospective student came down to our campus earlier in the week, and I was the graduate student in charge of organizing a dinner. I got eight other grad students to come join us - a couple more first-years and a bunch of older students - and so we would have been a great group to ask questions to. Instead of really using the time to get information out of us (which is what I did when I was a prospective student, asking about teaching duties, stipends, summer funding, coursework, quals, etc.), he just used it to hang out with us and see what we're like. That's never a good idea.

At one point, he mentioned that he sat in on the one class that I'm taking and really hate (which I skipped this week). That led to a good ten minute rant on all of the bad professors in our department. Not that there's many of them, but there's a few who really stick out, including a few that some of the other grad students at the dinner are having big problems with. We kept telling him that there's a lot of really great professors here, but somehow listing them off and saying how much they care about their students takes much less time than talking about all of the things we hate about the rest. At one point, one of the graduating students offered $100 to anyone who would ask a particular professor to be their advisor, but nobody's going to do it for fear he'll say yes.

Then he mentioned the other schools at which he was accepted. Out of the four of them, we had students who went to three of them as undergraduates, two of whom spent the evening convincing him that he'd hate the other schools and have no social life there. One even commented on how one of the prominent members of his old department was a pirate. And not a friendly pirate.

I must let you know right at this very moment that math people are weird, and I don't mind if you roll your eyes or throw out a "WTF, mate" while reading.

So at that point, our departmental alcoholic (not really) threw out the idea of going to the bar later in the evening. We all caved like dominoes, and three hours later we were filling the prospective student with alcohol and really showing him what grad school is like. It was a good thing, though. He's a really nice guy, and I definitely think that he'd fit in here, but he also definitely needs to loosen up just a bit. Luckily, two beers will do that for him, since he's as skinny as the average math nerd is. I don't really know how his experience was - not because I was drunk, but because he was at the other end of the table for half of the time and I was trying to win the pool table for us the other half of the time - but I definitely think he had fun.

I really hope this tactic works for recruiting because I think this might be our plan for the rest of the prospective students. That, or we could head to the local strip club. It was certainly considered in the early part of the evening.

- Induced Homomorphism

Who's Your Daddy (Part 2)

2007-02-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

I finally found the other professor I'm interested in working with yesterday. I asked if he was interested in taking more students. He told me that he is, and he said that he had a feeling I had some interest in working with him. I told him that I was currently thinking about working with him and one other professor, and he immediately told me that the other professor is "a loser."

All joking aside, it was a pretty productive meeting. He told me a few of the pros and cons of working with him (mostly cons, as the pros are obvious). One of them was that he generally changes research interests every few years, and sometimes the things he does aren't very popular yet, and thus they aren't the most employable areas. Another is that sometimes he does things that require a bit of programming, and since I don't have much of any programming experience, that could potentially make things difficult. He did say, though, that he has a few PhD-level problems ready, and that's surely a plus. He told me that he can give me the e-mail addresses of his past students (because he has not current students), and I can talk to them about how he was as an advisor.

So yeah, things have gone so much better than they could have. Now I just need to do some work.

- Induced Homomorphism

Good Fortune

2007-02-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

Since I'm so lazy that I can't even walk four blocks to the grocery store or to a restaurant, I decided to get something delivered for dinner. The obvious choices are pizza and Chinese food, and since I don't quite feel like Domino's and I don't know any other pizza places that deliver to here, I ordered from the Chinese food place that's on campus.

It was highly disappointing. Not only did the bill end up being $15.03 pre-tip for a single order of sesame chicken with white rice, but there wasn't as much chicken as I was hoping for, and it tasted mediocre at best. The only thing they did right was give me four fortune cookies. Because really, who doesn't want four fortune cookies? I pulled them out and went through them one at a time.

"You are going to take a trip to the seaside" in bed. Okay, I wouldn't mind some sex on the beach. In fact, that could be a bit thrilling. Hopefully it'll be a beach in the southern hemisphere if it's anytime soon.

"A thrilling time is in your immediate future" in bed. Yes! I could certainly use a thrilling time after the last guy I dated. It wasn't that bad, but he just wasn't too comfortable with himself and he didn't really open up enough to really let loose. I think I'm liking these fortunes!

"Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time" in bed. Okay, so I shouldn't be slutty if I want to find a quality guy. You're right.

"You and your wife will be happy in your life together" in bed. Dead wrong. Damn. And I was really hoping for that thrilling time!

Well, maybe this is a case of the Mall Santa. You know, just because the fat guy wearing the suit at your local mall isn't the real Santa Claus doesn't mean he doesn't exist. The real one is obviously at Macy's in New York. I wonder if they have a Chinese restaurant in their food court.

- Induced Homomorphism

Who's Your Daddy?

2007-02-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

For some people, the search for a PhD advisor begins while they're an undergraduate applying to graduate schools. For others, it doesn't happen until the second or third year of graduate school. For me, it's actively starting right now.

When I first visited my department as a prospective student, I was asked by the graduate advisor which professors I'd like to meet for lunch. I browsed through the website and picked out the geometers who didn't seem too intimidating (read: old and scary). There were two of them, and to this day they are the only professors I want to work with.

It's somewhere between lucky and miraculous that I will have taken a course with both of these professors and I will have been exposed to both of their research interests by the end of my first year. This means that as early as next year, I might be in a position to take a reading course with one and maybe even start thinking about doing research with one of them. However, for one of these professors, this presents a problem.

One of the professors is going away next semester. This could have presented a problem, and so because I have no patience about waiting things out and seeing how things happen, I went to talk to him today about it.

I asked him first if he'd be interested in taking on more students - not really asking to be his student, but making sure he'd be up for another student just so that I don't line myself up to love his research interests and then find out that he has too many students. He told me that he has one definite student and one probable student right now, but he would actually like to have another student so that there'd be a few to collaborate and chat amongst themselves.

So basically, if I end up wanting him to be my advisor and I don't do anything to really screw this up, it seems like he'll have no problem taking me. This is glorious news!

On the other hand, it now makes me want to talk to the other professor. Perhaps I'll do that tomorrow, if I can find him in the deparment. If he gives me a similar response, I'll be in math heaven.

- Induced Homomorphism

And Then There Were Three

2007-02-06T18:21:00.000-08:00

It seems as though a lot has changed since my last post. It seems as though algebraic topology is going to be much to difficult, and differential topology has begun to bore me to death. That said, I officially dropped the former and have mentally dropped the latter. After speaking with the graduate advisor, I decided it would be good to drop the hard one so I could focus on my three other courses, two of which are very important to me because I'm considering them as areas of research.

So now I think I'm in a good place. Although the differential topology course is going to bore the hell out of me, the other two geometry courses seem to be going really well. Both are taught by pretty engaging professors, and both seem to be areas of math that are really interesting to me. So, we shall see. I haven't been too incredibly constant on my feelings towards grad school, so my next entry could completely contradict what I just said.

- Induced Homomorphism

Back to School, for Real

2007-01-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day of classes (where by classes, I mean classes that actually met). I had both an algebraic topology course and a differential topology course, both of which went really well. The professor for the algebraic topology course was very good at anticipating when people were lost and at explaining himself well. Or at least he could tell when I was lost. Either way, it works for me. The differential topology course is going to be a lot of review and it'll likely be boring for parts of the semester, but after the semester from Hell I can use a break.

And because I don't have Friday classes this semester, it's the weekend for me. What a tough first week!

Back to School

2007-01-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day of classes. Well, it was supposed to be my first day of classes; however, the one class I had that was supposed to meet today was cancelled. So I slept in. No. I was supposed to sleep in. Instead, the web-based component to my department's e-mail system has been shut down, and so I didn't get the e-mail. Only people who have their e-mails automatically forwarded to their Gmail accounts (which was actually pretty much the caucasian part of the class, minus me) were privy to this information. So I woke up at an hour that was quite early for me, even though almost everybody else in my timezone was already off at work, and I walked the mile to campus and got ready to class. And then I sat there for a good ten minutes before calling someone else and realizing that the class was not meeting until next Monday. So I went back home and watched six episodes of Brothers and Sisters because obviously watching TV on the internet is a better use of my time than going to school.

- Induced Homomorphism

Not Failing Out Is Happiness

2007-01-04T16:50:00.000-08:00

I finally have all of my grades: B+, B+, A, and A. Somehow it doesn't even bother me that B+ is the lowest passing grade.

- Induced Homomorphism

The Price of Admission

2006-12-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges - and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Daniel Golden, and my biggest criticism is that the book is very repetitively written. Page after page, the information is set up in the following manner: "Suzie had perfect SAT scores and passed all of her Advanced Placement examinations, but the only person at her school who got into Harvard was Bobby, who had subpar SAT scores, was arrested for driving under the influence, and was the heir to a Fortune 500 company." The book is built on such case studies, and although it would have been difficult to really spice up these statements of statistical information, quite possibly that's a sign that it should be written in a different way.

One of the most interesting things I read was the actual cost of buying your child's way into college, which is much less expensive than I had thought. Of course it's true that if your parents donate $10 million to Northwestern to build a new student center, you're not going to have a terribly difficult time getting in; however, the book states that some consultants have calculated that a gift of $100,000 can buy a one way ticket to a top-25 university, and $250,000-$500,000 can sometimes (but not always) buy a spot in the Ivy League.

Another interesting fact was really how many spots go to alumni and recruited athletes. The book states that at Amherst College, alumni make up 10% of the student body and recruited athletes make up 15% of the student body (I'm assuming the overlap of which is negligible). Of course these numbers are different elsewhere, such as Notre Dame (which will blatantly state that it prefers alumni children over others and is also known for athletic recruitment) or NYU (which doesn't care enough about sports to recruit many students), but it's surprising that sometimes the normal applicants are really competing for 3/4 or less of the available spots.

So yeah, it was certainly an interesting read, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who isn't really interested in college admissions (which I am, since I've gone through the process twice and am always having conversations with friends who are going through the same thing).

- Induced Homomorphism

10% Over

2006-12-20T07:12:00.000-08:00

Well, my graduate career is (hopefully) 10% over. Hopefully because if it's not, that means I'm either failing out, I'm going to take more than five years to get my PhD, or I'm going to have a midlife crisis and go back to graduate school again in the future. So far I've received two grades. Both are B+'s, which is basically the lowest passing grade. A grade of B can sometimes be passing, although it requires some sort of additional project or retaking the final exam, which I'm very happy hasn't happened to me yet because I don't want my winter break ruined.

How do I feel about this? I'm actually pretty happy with this (assuming I pass my other courses). Actually, I'm so happy about this that I did a happy dance in the hallway when I found out both of my grades were passing. And then after that, I found out that I don't have Friday classes next semester, and I did another happy dance in the hallway. And then I went to a fellow student's hosue for latkes. So you could really say that yesterday was one of the better days over the past month or so.

Looking back on the past semester, I've realized that the one thing that really hurt me was not studying so hard in the beginning. The first half of the semester was pretty laidback, as there was a lot of review material and not too muc homework. But then about halfway through, the homework started to pile up and the material started getting very difficult, and I think that I would have been in much better shape if I had went into that part of the semester ahead of the game. And so this will be my New Year's resolution.

Happy holidays!

- Induced Homomorphism

First Grade Is In

2006-12-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

B. That's on the border between passing and failing. I'd almost rather fail it and retake it next year, as I'm sure that the combination of having already seen the material and having a better professor would make the experience much better.

Still waiting on two grades and working on one take-home final.

Hopefully over break I can get back to more meaningful entries.

You Know Things Are Bad When...

2006-12-12T17:04:00.000-08:00

One of the questions on my final exam asked us to state and prove a certain theorem that we had covered in class. This is one of (I'm told) 95 theorems that our professor proved over the course of the semester. Not only could I not remember the proof, but I could remember which theorem the name was referring to. I thought I was in deep shit.

Apparently I wasn't. When I asked the professor if he could give me the statement of the theorem, and then I could only get credit for the actual proof (assuming I could prove it), he stood up and wrote the statement of the theorem on the board. They always say that you should never be afraid to ask a question in class because there's usually five other people who have the same question. Well, that was true. Five people came up to me after the exam and thanked me for asking the professor for the statement of the theorem.

That said, the final exam was much more difficult than anyone had expected it to be, almost every student seemed to be struggling through it, and I personally do not believe I solved a single problem correctly. We'll see if I end up having to retake the course next year. Hopefully I can hold on by the skin of my teeth.

- Induced Homomorphism

So Much To Do

2006-12-05T18:17:00.000-08:00

I have two homework assignments due on Tuesday. I will be getting a take-home final this Thursday that is also due on Tuesday. And I have an in-class final on Tuesday that I need to begin studying for. But do I study? No. I go shopping. I go see a movie. I go to a friend's party. I go to the gym. I have absolutely no motivation whatsoever. This needs to end soon.

- Induced Homomorphism

I Just Don't Care

2006-11-30T20:47:00.000-08:00

I find that with each real analysis problem set we have, I end up giving up earlier and earlier the night before they're due. The last assignment I gave up at around 1:30 AM. I gave up on this one before 11:30 PM. Lord knows, I'm nearly to the point where I wouldn't really care if I failed this course and had to retake it next year. And you know what? It feels really good to not care :)

- Induced Homomorphism

Midterm

2006-11-27T20:10:00.000-08:00

The take-home midterm was very difficult, but I did as much as I could do and was happy with the end result. I didn't have any time to actually study material for the in-class portion of the midterm, and I was freaking out all morning about it, thinking that I didn't know anything and was surely going to fail the course. Then I actually took it, and the professor made it very straightforward. In fact, there was only one problem that was a bit tricky, and he gave us a hint half way through the class that basically showed us how to go about it. I now feel much better about myself.

Now, if only I knew what I was doing with my real analysis homework...

- Induced Homomorphism

The Difference Between Being an Undergraduate and Being a Graduate

2006-11-25T19:30:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a seven day vacation, including missing a half a week of classes. As an undergraduate, this would have been completely fine and tomorrow would be a lazy day. I'd have a homework assignment or two to work on, but nothing too difficult or time-consuming. I may have even decided to stay an extra day to take advantage of the entire weekend, and then work on the homework Monday afternoon.

As a gradute student, my tomorrow will be hell. I have a very difficult take-home midterm due this Monday that I'm going to have to spend all of tomorrow slaving over. Then I have another very difficult homework assignment due this Friday that I'll have to work on, on top of general studying for my courses. I feel as though I'm suffocating in all of this math. If I hadn't had such a wonderful vacation this past week, I would almost regret leaving for so long.

Then I realize that my happiness is more important than my grades. Hopefully this won't lead to failure, but if it does I will have enjoyed at least some of my time here.

- Induced Homomorphism

I Need My Stomach Pumped

2006-11-23T16:49:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving dinner number three was by far the most stomach stretching one yet. I ate (in chronological order) a bowl of butternut squash soup, about a half a bowling ball worth of challah (in volume, not weight), some spicy fish (apparently that's the direct Hebrew translation of whatever this dish was), pot roast, turkey, and stuffing. Then there was dessert - apple/strawberry pie with vanilla ice cream and cookies. Tomorrow I plan on going on a very, very long walk.

I return to school on Saturday when I can start my take-home midterm that's due on Monday. The questions don't seem to be the sort that will require long, complicated proofs as solutions, but I definitely don't know how to do many of them yet. Hopefully everything will click for me over the weekend. I don't care enough to start thinking about them now. That's not a good attitude to have towards grad school, but I guess that's the best grad school is going to get from me.

- Induced Homomorphism

Thanksgiving Vacation

2006-11-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

As you may have already realized by the extreme amount of loathing in some of my previous posts, I have been in desperate need of a vacation for the past month or so. This desire for a break reached its climax at around 1:30 AM on Friday when I gave up on finishing the last problem of a heartbreakingly difficult real analysis assignment and, with a sore back from getting very little sleep the night before, literally collapsing into bed.

Though my school's Thanksgiving break officially begins next Wednesday, I have decided to take the entire week off and visit family and friends (although in two days a complex analysis take-home midterm will be posted on the internet for me to work on next week, thus nullifying a good portion of my vacation). Because of my weird traveling schedule this week, I am lucky enough to have no fewer than three Thanksgiving dinners. And after having been on a diet for the past seven months, I have decided that I am going to eat everything in sight. So instead of telling you about how much I hate math, I'm going to blog about the wonderful food I'm eating this week.

The first Thanksgiving dinner was actually just a normal meal that happened to consist of turkey, stuffing, and other side dishes. I quickly stuffed myself with turkey and stuffing that I had been craving for the past few weeks, and I brushed aside the side dishes that were low on my radar. I appologize for that sentence. Anyway, I definitely had enough turkey to tide me over until Thursday.

Today is the second Thanksgiving dinner, and it's my favorite. We're having a beef tenderloin cooked in a burgandy wine sauce (basically, the meal my family has when we really want to eat well). And then we're having my aunt's cheesy potatoes, which I absolutely love. And then we're having my aunt's boyfriend's shrimp, which isn't anything special but is one of my favorites nevertheless.

I will eat way too much. And I will enjoy it! Hopefully you're doing the same.

- Induced Homomorphism

Days Like These

2006-11-12T17:47:00.001-08:00

I only left the house twice today. I went to the grocery store to get something for lunch, and then I went to the other grocery store to get something for dinner. Yes, I know purchasing both meals at the same time would have been more efficient, but I work on last-minute cravings more often than not.

The rest of the day was spent slaving over my topology assignment. I wouldn't even call it "working" or "laboring"; that would imply that I made some progress. "Slaving" seems more appropriate. The assignment is demanding, to say the very least. The problem sets are much more involved than the material covered in the lectures, and thus they require reading and rereading the text a few time times. Even then, half of the problems require a leap of inspiration in finding the solution.

This only becomes a problem when you're working on the problems by yourself and when you're not enjoying the material. *Waves hand furiously* I don't think that there's much at this point that can get me to enjoy the material more, so I guess I'll have to find a study buddy. Until then, it's back to slaving.

- Induced Homomorphism

Complex Analysis

2006-11-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

For those of you who aren't math majors, let me explain complex analysis. In high school it's likely that you came across the problem with taking the square root of a negative number. If you take a positive number times itself, you get a positive number (for example, 1 × 1 = 1). If you take a negative number times itself, you also get a number (-1 × -1 = 1). So there's no real number that equals the square root of negative one. So, for lack of better explanation, mathematicians decided that they would denote the square root of negative one by i. Thus any multiple of i is known as an imaginary number, and any number in the form of x + iy that has both real and imaginary parts is known as a complex numbers. We can plot the complex number x + iy on the plane at the point (x,y), and so there is a one to one correspondence between complex numbers and points on the plane.

Now that we have such a representation of the complex numbers, there is a multitude of things that we can do with them. We can do simple things like addition and subtraction by adding and subtracting the real components from the real components and the imaginary components from the imaginary components. We can also do multiplication by remembering that i×i = -1. But we can also look at geometry on the complex numbers, look at functions of complex numbers, and even consider the calculus of complex numbers. It becomes quite difficult very quickly, but some of the most amazing results I've seen in any math class have been in my complex analysis classes, and I have taken my fair share of them.

I took an undergraduate complex analysis course during my first year of college, and it was quite an uphill battle. Our professor went through the material so quickly that our enrollment dropped from 25 to 9 within the first two weeks (quite possibly the steepest drop I've ever experienced in a college course). If we were to use a relationship metaphor, it was as though complex analysis were doing a brilliant job of playing hard to get, turning me on with her beautiful theorems and then kicking me in the balls with difficult problem sets. It was a rocky start, but I was lucky to learn what I needed to prepare me for the next stage of our relationship.

During my senior year I took an intensive, one-semester graduate course in complex analysis. We used Ahlfors, the classic complex analysis text, and our professor covered chapters 1-5 and parts of chapters 6 and 7 (basically, enough material to fill two semester-long courses). This could have been a complete disaster, as a professor has to move extremely quickly to cover all of this material in a single semester; however, everything ran smoothly because the professor did a wonderful job of keeping the students engaged, I had a great friend to study with, and I had enough prior experience with the subject to follow the fast-paced lectures. Basically, I learned how this temptress of a subject operated and was able to get a glimpse of some of her naughty bits.

The complex analysis course I'm taking this semester is quite the opposite. We are moving through the material choppily, the professor is doing a poor job of explaining the importance of the theorems we're covering, and the lectures are just plain dull. This, combined with the fact that the professor rarely assigns homework problems, has led to a complete lack of motivation for me to study. I feel like the relationship has gotten to the point where we both come home from a long day of work and are too tired to acknowledge each other's presence, let alone get freaky in the bedroom. We sleep on different sides of the bed. No, literally. I'm a slob and use half of my bed for storage, and my complex analysis book sits on one half of my bed while I sleep on the other half. Maybe it's cheating on me with The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges - and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, an interesting read that I'll have to discuss in a later entry.

Luckily the second semester of complex analysis should be much more interesting, The professor who is scheduled to teach it is much more engaging (quite possibly even someone I would want to be my advisor), and the material will be much more geometric, as we will be covering Riemann surfaces. This combination should be enough to make things more interesting.

- Induced Homomorphism

Why Grad School?

2006-11-07T15:34:00.000-08:00

I was one of those people who always liked and was good at math. My earliest memories of my aptitude for math were in third grade, when my class would play the game Around the World. I nearly always won, to the point where I ran into one of my third grade classmates in high school, and she recognized me as "that kid who always beat me at Around the World." Starting in fifth grade, I participated in math competitions, and it was apparent that I was exceptionally strong in math and that I would major in math in college. Majoring in a subject in college because you enjoy it and are good at it is a good idea - it's generally enough inertia to get you through the program.

Graduate school is a completely different ballpark, but my reasoning stayed the same. I was enjoying my math classes as an undergraduate, and when the time came to decide between graduate school and the real world, graduate school just seemed like the better option. Perhaps I should have spent more time seriously considering the amount of hard work required for doctoral studies. Perhaps I should have asked myself why I wanted a PhD. Or perhaps I should have at least taken a closer look at the jobs I could have had. Nevertheless, I applied to graduate programs and never looked back.

I applied to ten programs, and I was accepted to four and rejected from three, having withdrawn applications from three safety schools. After visiting two of the schools, seeing how polarly opposite their campuses and programs were and falling in love with one, I signed on the dotted line and sold my soul for the next five years (or however long my soul could handle graduate school).

And now I'm here. Not entirely because I know that I want to be a research mathematician, but more along the lines of induction from other factors (hence the alias). I'm about as stressed out as I had expected to be, but I'm enjoying it less than I was told I would. I think this is mostly because I can't stand two of my classes (which you can read about in subsequent posts). At least I hope this is so, as situational problems like these are only temporary. Hopefully by the beginning of next semester, when I know how I did in my classes this semester and when I have new professors, I will be enjoying graduate school more and stressing out less.

- Induced Homomorphism

The Obligatory 'Decision to Blog' Post

2006-11-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

After spending over two months taking courses in graduate school, I suddenly realized I needed a better outlet in which I can bitch about things. The enticement of "cuddly comments" from a friend was enough of a catalyst for me to get off my ass and start typing. Hopefully in the next day or two I'll get around to talking about why I chose to go to graduate school (and specifically the one that I am attending), and then I can start talking about individual classes.

To keep an epsilon of anonymity and to try and spare anyone's feelings, I'm not going to mention which school I attend. I would feel dreadful if I were complaing that "Professor X is such a bad teacher - he shouldn't be allowed to teach," and then Professor X happened to read that entry and recognize himself. So if you do know who I am and/or where I go to school, please don't share this information with anyone at my school without my prior permission. Thanks!

- Induced Homomorphism

P.S. My alias is both a mathematics term and a pun on my homosexuality. Hopefully if you're here, you've recognized one of these facts.

P.P.S. For all of you non-mathies, in mathematics we generally use the term "epsilon" to refer to a variable whose value is arbitrarily small, hence the above reference. I'm debating how much math to actually include in here, although any advanced will be thoroughly explained so most people can understand it.