Wednesday March 21, 2007 5:10 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:33 Sunset 19:44 Hours of daylight: 12:11

A. Morning Musings

5:45 am It is -2 C at the moment with a forecast high of +8 C

CBC Headline: Defence Portrays Black As A Victim; Prosecution Calls Him A Thief

Conrad Black's trial in Chicago begins with opening statements by both the defence and the prosecution. The central allegation is that Black misappropriated millions of dollars from the sale of Hollinger newspapers and kept the money for himself instead of returning it to the shareholders. This promises to be a high profile trial with many rich and famous people making statements and having views about both the case and the people involved.

Canadian Headline: see above

Australian Headline: (from The Australian): Rudd Proposes $4.7 bn National Broadband Network

This is a reversal of Labour's stand to oppose the privatisation of the Telstra telephone company. There appears to be agreement that Australia is lagging behind many industrialized countries in terms of its broadband capability. It will be interesting to see how Howard's government responds to this statement as they are currently behind in the polls leading up to an election later this year.

My weight is steady at 190.

From rear window	South patio
Both images taken at 12:20 PM

 

B. Plan

Immediate
Mathematics	Read & make notes on Spivak, chap. 3 Functions	2 hr
Literature	Complete reading "Baudolino" by Umberto Eco	1 hr
Technology	Update Parallels and Parallels Tools software	5 hrs
History	Begin reading "Maya"	1 hr
Later
Technology	Read manual for cell phone
	Convert LPs to MP3 format
	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
	Burn backup of images onto DVD
Mathematics	Make notes for "Mathematics: A Human Endeavor" ch 1
	Read "Fearless Symmetry" chap 9: Elliptic Curves
	Begin reading "Algebra: Abstract and Concrete" by Frederick Goodman
Model Trains	Add ground cover to oil refinery diorama
	Follow tutorial for version 8 of 3rd PlanIt
	Continue assembly of coaling tower
	Purchase DCC system
History	Read Watson "Ideas"
Philosophy	Read & make notes for "Breaking the Spell"
GO	Complete reading "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go"
Puzzles	The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #10
Major Goals
Learning	Review week's pages each Sunday
	Review all pages for the month at the end of each month
Technology	Review & edit iPhoto files for 2006
	Become proficient with cell phone
Model Trains	Become proficient with 3rd PlanIt software
	Install DCC on model train layout
GO	Learn to play GO at something better than a beginner level
Drawing	Learn to draw!! (I keep saying this, yet I have yet to put a pencil to paper).
Mathematics	Continue to play with mathematics.
Literature	Continue to read Literature
Bird Watching	Continue to engage in bird watching activities.

C. Actual/Note

5:30 am I received a timely email from Allan pointing out that my images were not displaying on my notes from May 19. I had forgotten to upload the images when I uploaded the web page for that day. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I have a meeting set for 8:30 this morning at my local office (aka The Ugly Mug) to discuss the ideas I mentioned on my May 17 web page:

For the first time since I retired last July I began thinking about a couple of ideas regarding possible new ventures. I want to get the basic ideas down in case I forget them, even though they are just ideas at the moment and maybe should be forgotten.

One idea would be to approach a nearby school district and see if they would be interested in pursuing the idea of an in-service venture for mathematics teachers. This could be at any grade level. Initially the plan would be to simply get a group of interested teachers together and see what they think would be most useful to them. And then we go from there. Concomitant with this, I should try to find out a bit more about what other efforts along these lines have been tried, particularly with ASIS grants. Maurice would be a good person to have a coffee with, as would David.

The second idea, unrelated to the first, would be to approach a nearby school district and see if they would be interested in playing with the idea of having a group of students in one school learn to use the Web for creating a set of online notes of their learning. This would likely involve both a content component as well as a journal component. Initially this would involve one group and one subject. Once again, I need to do a literature search and see if I can find a few similar projects.

The big negative with both ideas is that I am not sure I want to carry forward with these ideas. At the moment I am having a grand time with no commitments to my time.

If I decide to pursue either, or both, of these ideas, I would like to integrate the idea of keeping track of each project with a web site. I did this when I was a visiting researcher at Southern Cross University and felt at the time that it was a worthwhile activity.

Now to have an early morning coffee, before my coffee at TUMs.

10:00 am I am back from coffee and am feeling energized. Now for some mathematics.

	Mathematics 09 March 21
Mathematics Chronology
10:00 am I am presently looking at two books: Spivak's "Calculus" and Kelley's "The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems". The treatment of the two books is at two wildly different levels. My last math session involved working through some problems from chapter 2 on Polynomials which was at a high school level. The Spivak book is definitely at a university level, probably for advanced undergraduate students. Today I will begin with Spivak and see how it goes. Calculus. Third Edition (1994) by Michael Spivak. Chapter 3: Functions "Undoubtedly the most important concept in all of mathematics is that of a function." [p. 39] Fantastic! A clear statement of what is important. Functions are important. This is a chapter worth paying close attention to. Spivak points out that an informal provisional definition of a function is a useful way to begin the topic. "Later, we will consider and discuss the advantages of the modern mathematical definition." [p. 39] "Provisional Definition: A function is a rule which assigns, to each of certain real numbers, some other real numbers." [p. 39] "A function is any rule that assigns numbers to certain other numbers." [p. 40] "The set of numbers to which a function does apply is called the domain of the function. [p. 40] "... We badly need some notation." [p. 40] "The standard practice is to denote a function by a letter." [p. 40] "... the letter "f "is a favorite, thereby making "g" and "h" other obvious candidates, but any letter (or any reasonable symbol, for that matter) will do ..." [p. 40] If f is a function, then the number which associates to a number x is denoted by f(x) ... and is called the value of f at x. This is basic review and notation. Now let's play with this a bit, using both more complex notation as well as Mathematica. The latter four expressions are taken from Spivak [p.42 - 43]. I am pleased that I am able (relatively easily) to transcribe them onto this web page.I have absolutely no idea what the graph of these functions might look like. Let's see if I can use Mathematica to see them. Here is the sample Mathematica notebook. 5:35 PM The Mathematica session went very smoothly. BUT ... I ran into some serious technical difficulties with Parallels when I tried to transfer the files for the Windows xp enviroment to the Mac OS X environment. After about 4 hours of trying various options I finally hit on the idea of looking for an update to the software. There was one, and after I installed it, everything worked fine. But it was a frustrating 4 hours!

D. Reflection

9:15 PM Thiis was a day of ups and downs. The meeting this morning was an up as we discussed the basic ideas underlying the two possible projects that I might pursue. Then the Mathematica session where I obtained the graphs for some very complex functions was a definite up. But then when I was unable to get Windows xp to recognize any peripheral devices was a real downer. I have now upgraded both Parallels as well as Parallels Tools and it seems to be working, but the general look-and-feel is different and takes a little getting used to. These upgrades are a fact of life when one is using technology, but it is a drain of energy.

However the fact that everything appears to be working at the moment means that I will sleep soundly, knowing that all is well for the moment.