July 22

Sunday July 22, 2007 5:25 am Lethbridge

It is +16 C with a high forecast of +34 C. Sunrise 5:48 Sunset 21:28 Hours of daylight: 15:40

A. Morning Musings

5:25 am

Sunday morning is a time for reviewing the past week and looking forward to the coming week. The past week had 3 notable events: my math activities in both calculus and abstract algebra have taken on a daily routine of at least one hour/day, alternating between the two topics. On some days I will aim for two hours. I am enjoying both topics at the moment. The third event was a sudden interest in fountain pens and all things related to this.

The warm weather is also a factor. Every day has had highs in the low 30's, with the afternoon and early evening very hot. It certainly takes the zip out of one, although I did some serious weeding yesterday. An alternative is watch movie rentals. We have begun to view the Harry Potter series and have now seen The Philosopher's Stone (1), The Chamber of Horrors (2), and the Prisoner of Azkaban (3). The next one is called The Goblet of Fire (4).

Here is my plan for the coming week:

July 22 - 28	Description	Start	End
	Sorted by Start Date
Literature	Complete "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami	Jul 17
Mathematics	Begin ch. 1 of "Abstract Algebra" by Herstein	Jul 22
Mathematics	Complete chap. 2 of "The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems"	Jul 22
Technology	Read more on XHTML and CSS: play with special features	Jul 01
Technology	Complete module 2 for a tutorial web site on using Dreamweaver 8 to create XHTML and CSS files	Jul 02
Birds	Engage in two bird watching activities.	Jul 08

This then leads to the following plan for today:

Immediate	Description	Time
Literature	Continue reading "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami	1 hr
Mathematics	Begin ch. 1 of "Abstract Algebra" by Herstein	2 hr
Mathematics	Complete problems 2.1 - 2.? of "The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems"	1 hr

The major disappointment has been the lack of bird watching activities.

C. Actual Learning Activities

8:00 am

Mathematics 23

July 22, 2007

7:45 am

I have decided to try the first few pages in the book I have identified as my primary resource (aka textbook) for learning about abstract algebra.

Abstract Algebra. Third edition (1999) I. N. Herstein

Chapter 1 Things Familiar and Less Familiar

I am going to continue using handwritten notes and then scanning the session's work onto these web pages.

Here are my scans (original at color - magazine, 200 dpi, export at width of 600 pixels) of the problems I completed in a one hour session this morning.

algebra

8:00 am

A perfect beginning to the day. Once I actually began reading this book, I had no difficulties. It is an encouraging way to start both the day as well as the book. The next sub-section is on Sets and it contains the first real set of problems: 11 easy, 10 middle-level, and 1 harder. That will be my first real test as to how well I am doing.

With the problems I tackled this morning, I particularly enjoyed # 3 with the square and triangle symbols. That shows how arbitrary the symbols are that represent "things" (i.e. the elements of a set). Sometimes these elements are the familar numbers (with constraints on either the values they may take, or on the operations that are valid with them), sometimes they are letters, which may stand for some type of number, and sometimes they may be abstract symbols that have no obvious additional meaning.