July 26

Thursday July 26, 2007 7:20 am Lethbridge

It is +10 C with a high forecast of +32 C. Sunrise 5:53 Sunset 21:23 Hours of daylight: 15:30

A. Morning Musings

7:20 am

It is difficult to believe the difference that a few degrees makes to the temperature. Yesterday was positively exhilarating after the last couple of weeks of mid-30's. But today looks like a return to high temperatures.

I bought one non-fiction book, "The Black Swan" by Nassin Nicholas Taleb. I must develop a daily routine that includes this book as one of the activities. More generally, I need to set aside 3 hours/day: 1 hour for maths, 1 hour for fiction, and 1 hour for non-fiction.

Taleb

Immediate	Description	Time
Literature	Begin reading "The Metamorphosis and Other Stories" by Franz Kafka	1 hr
Mathematics	Continue ch. 1 of "Abstract Algebra" by Herstein	1 hr
Mathematics	Complete problems 2.13 - 2.22 of "The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems"	1 hr
Mathematics	Begin reading "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb	1 hr

C. Actual Learning Activities

9:50 am

A fascinating beginning to the day. I suddenly realized that the pen I was using for making my hand written mathematics notes was too strong - the ink came through the paper, which was not a problem when I was only writing on one side of the sheet, but became a real problem when I tried using one of my black notebooks for making spontaneous notes. The black notebooks are convenient in both size and weight for carrying around.

As a result I tried a few ball point pens that were lying around and found that a Pilot BPS-GP (F) with blue ink was superb. I then tried doing a calculus session with this pen and loved the result. I am now rethinking my inking and may try blue, or possibly blue-black when I visit the stationery store in Calgary next week.

Mathematics 27

July 26, 2007

11:00 am

I used a new pen this morning. Now to see how the scan of these pages turns out.

The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems (2006) W. Michael Kelley

Chapter 2 Polynomials

Here are my scans (original at color - photo, 150 dpi, custom size 8 x 10.5 in, export at width of 600 pixels) of the problems I completed in a one hour session this morning.

calculus

11:30 am

I am almost back to where I was a couple of years ago. I now have my zipper porfolio which holds both a pad of blank paper as well as my black notebook. At the moment it has a Pilot BPS-BP <F> pen (blue ink) as well as a Pentel RSVP Fine (red ink) pen. I think I am set to proceed. My APWeb 98 carrying case from Beijing is just the right size for my three maths books.

9:00 PM

I have just finished reading the first 25 pages of "The Black Swan". I am annoyed and angry! I just looked for a book he extoles at both amazon.ca and chapters.ca with no luck. Strange. I then googled the author and title and find a blog by a reviewer who also tried to find out more information and concluded that neither the book nor the author exists. I no longer trust Taleb and am uncertain about the book.I am tempted to stop reading it, but I still feel that many of the points he makes are insightful and useful. Perhaps he is trying to epitomize what he is saying about categories such as fiction and nonfiction being too restrictive, but I am not amused.