Thursday October 12, 2006 6:10 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:48 Sunset 18:48 Hours of daylight: 11:00

A. Morning Musings

6:10 am It is +1 C at the moment and foggy. The forecast is for a high of + 11 C.

My weight is down 2 to 185. Good. I am back to the level I was at before thanksgiving. This morning is coffee at 8:30 at our "other" coffee shop.

From rear window	South patio
Both images taken at 12:30 PM

B. Plan

Immediate
Health	Walk & exercise	1 hr
Birds	Add September birds to North American data base	1 hr
Mathematics	Read & make notes for "Fearless Symmetry" chap 4	1 hr
Literature	Begin reading "The Major Plays" by Anton Chekov	1 hr
Later
Chores	Investigate water softeners for home
	Paint new bathroom vanity cabinet
Technology	add keywords to iPhoto records
	Read manual for cell phone
	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
	Begin reading "iPhoto"
	digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings
Literature	Read "The Art of Living" by Epictetus
	Read "The Song of Roland"
Mathematics	Larson "Calculus"
	Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 3
	Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles"
History	Continue reading "Citizens"
	Watson "Ideas"
Model Trains	Continue wiring outer mainline
	Build oil refinery diorama: add ground cover
	Assemble second oil platform kit
Puzzles	The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #9

C. Actual/Notes

	Mathematics 10 October 12
Mathematics Chronology
7:00 am I want to continue with "Fearless Symmetry" this morning. I completed the exercise on page 28 last evening. There are very few exercises in this book (it is not a textbook but a book for the individual interested in the ideas of symmetry and how they might be explored using ideas such a groups. Conceptually I felt I understood what I was trying to do with the permutation groups. And I understand the idea of a cycle. But the challenge is the notation, both written and on the screen. I am beginning to think that it may make more sense to use paper and pen and then scan the result into these notes. There are two issues here. One is understanding what one is doing (i.e. first applying a sequence of functions to a set of elements that results in a permutation of these elements). Second is Learning how to represent this action using a notation that is used by mathematicians. Here is a quote from the book that caught my attention: "Many people believe that all of mathematics has already been discovered and codified. Mathematicians (they think) do nothing except rearrange the material in different ways for different types of students. This seems to be the result of the cut-and-dried method of teaching mathematics in many high schools and universities. The facts are laid out in the cleanest possible logical order. Little attempt is made to show how someone once had to invent it all, at first in a confused way, and that only later was it possible to give it this neat form. Many textbooks make no effort to tell about directions that are still to be explored, conjectures that are unproven, nor, of course, of ideas that are yet to be formulated. Project yourself back in time to 1000 BC. Very little mathematics was known then. It all lay in the future to be discovered, debated, arranged, and improved. The situation today is nearly the same!" [p. 29] 8:00 am

Here are 4 images from Nicholas Sheran park that I took while walking to the coffee shop:

D. Reflection