ThePanda

It is the thought that counts or so I would hope. I have been forgetting weird things of late, or confusing dates. Arguably confusing dates is not a new phenomenon, but ya the kind of things I have been forgetting is weird. Like the other night, I decided I was gonna wear a fresh pair of socks, and I pulled out new socks, put what I thought was a new pair of socks and walked out, only to come back and discover I was wearing half of my new socks, in that I had one of each kind. The fact that one of them was dark green, and the other was bright white should obviously be mentioned here, hmph. Something must be said about liking to wear pants which cover your socks though, no one ever noticed the mismatch, and that’s a good thing, I was out with friends, I am sure quite a few of them would have found it amusing, hmm in retrospect I find it amusing, but ya, it’s not nice to tease people about their socks… Similarly until early last night I was under the impression that my friend’s birthday was tomorrow, well guess what it isn’t tomorrow it is today, and I didn’t know that, or rather was confused about it, and have been chided by at least one person about this (silly bear was the exact expression used, darn), it’s strange I have never stopped forgetting things which are of importance, but remembering random facts at awfully random times…

I have a black Pelican case lying in my room right now, I am sure if this was back home, my father would be pleased about having a Pelican case in my room. Well it isn’t mine in case anyone was wondering, I am nowhere near as rich as I need to be to buy one of those and keep them in my room, it’s Brown’s, it carries small video camera, a really cool directional mic and cables, it’s sort of nice, it will hopefully serve its purpose tonight.

They sent out mails about the housing lottery today, so that is most definitely on us, hmm, it isn’t before super deadline day as some people expected, but after, which would mean we are definitely loosing one person, and may loose more. Hmm it’s amazing that in the past few week we have all gone through the process of making housing plans and then giving up on them, it seems inevitable that we be assigned to random spots, and hmm I don’t think too many of us are sure that’s a completely bad thing anymore. Wonderfully well knit as our group currently is, the fact that living together may mean a reduction in personal space is not something everyone is particularly happy about, and hmm things are changing, and the changes are not that slow, so things could go very well or very weirdly and I wouldn’t know…

Earlier today I had a conversation with my CS professor, concerning Macs, Java and certain academic concerns I had, and that was sort of interesting, which is not to say much. Amazingly he agreed that Java was probably making the class less interesting for people who were already into computer science, he agreed that it could be more interesting, but said that that would require him to put in time, time which he supposedly doesn’t have, and he agreed we needed a CS 19. He essentially said he would toss the idea around the CS department for a more algorithmic computer course so that future generations of students don’t have to be go through this, and that in itself is a fairly cool idea. Hmm maybe someone in the CS department will pick up this idea, it isn’t that bad, and I guess it could be a lot of fun, since you could take ti wherever you wanted, put a lot more than anyone can imagine. Resource allocation however is an issue, or so he said, the CS department has too many introductory courses and stuff, hmm, I guess it’s like the math department where some people openly speak about how fewer people want basic courses, simply because that’s not their main area of interest, but then the math department has MA35, and from what I hear from people in Ma18 (which is being taught by TFB), that is also a lot more fun than it was last semester, so obviously intro courses are not all that bad, but then obviously they aren’t that great an opportunity for talking about your field of interest, and I guess most people are interested in that.

There probably is a limit to how low you can fall while seeking that what you desire, well that low probably has a moveable bottom, or is too darn low. I feel stupid after having been a part of, what I am assured is an amusing production, for the housing first pick (no not using the domain, good thing too). There is still no news, somethings are going weirdly, and I have to correct those, and I will soon have a bunch of midterms over me, hmm…

As of yesterday (this is another one of those entries which is spanning multiple days) I am back to using LaTex and a computer for writing out math, why, well it was mostly because I have decided that writing out math on a computer is giving me somewhat of a greater chance to review my thoughts, and my solutions, since it is extremely improbable that I go through any of those when I am doing it on paper, I am not even sure how the graders manage to go through all of my math. Unlike AvdP’s usual problems, I don’t actually believe I scribble on any of the math I hand in, it’s just that I could write those solutions out better than I do right now, and my handwriting really doesn’t help. Besides after a semester of practicing how to write math on the computer (with things rather similar to TeX), I don’t really find it that bad, though umm knowing a bit more, or having a TeX reference handy would be nice. Also writing e-mails to professors in TeX is a lot more fun than I imagined, in general writing TeX, after excluding the bad editors and everything is fun.

As I sit here nestled with my abstract algebra textbook doing questions which ask for weird properties of orbits, I am happy about a few things. I felt stuff wasn’t going right, hmm I wasn’t getting some of this stuff, or taking more time than I should have, or not getting proofs which were more english than math, well turns out that proofs which are more english than math are acceptable, and I am really taking no longer than all those other hyper-intelligent people in class who have gone through more math courses than I could care about. I am happy, thought it is probably wrong to be happy, that I get abstract algebra and I get linear algebra, I am happy that I actually like the lin al professor, and that I find him interesting in someways, even though IMO he would be better off doing something like a lecture series introducing people to something about everything of math. Anyone who can spend three classes digressing about things, and openly admitting to doing so, is of course a good lecturer, and he knows strange facts about math, and often tells us how he believes Euler or someone else did something, about the Bourbaki and stuff…

There were people serving hot cocoa on the main green today morning, they put up a list of First-Pick finalists later tonight, I have homework I haven’t completed due Wednesday and Thursday, my friend is mad because his browsers are not blocking pop-ups, and I was told off by a close friend for caring about things too much, mostly because friend with pop-upy browser screamed at me, rather than everyone else. I don’t think it is fair to believe that, especially when told by a person who you think cares more about somethings than people generally should, but well I guess as someone put it a few days ago, “We are all a little insane”, and oh ya who cares. Hmm back to ab al, should publish this entry only because it’s been lying this way for too many days.

Also a certain person who may read this blog called up at 3AM today, and said that he would call 12 hours later, but no call was forthcoming, and umm I am sorry about hanging up yesterday, but I was sleeping and my roommate was sleeping, and it really isn’t fun to receive calls at 3AM.

Ze Panda

CS homework should be more interesting, it would be nice if it was interesting, it usually isn’t, sad as that is… Hmm but I shouldn’t think about CS homework as I take the tiny procrastination breaks, too many bad things are already happening in the world, bad CS homework is the smallest of the problems one can be faced with. So let us see, someone tried breaking into MoChamp (Morris and Champlin for all those who want to know, it’s this dorm connected to EmWool, and out key cards work their), and they now have this huge sign about how they will not give up their fight against vandalism and other things. Makes sense, the thought of having people breaking into dorms around EmWool is not a happy thought, even if you need two swipes to get the darn elevator working and at least one swipe to get into the stairwell, and seeing as people who break into that particular door probably do not have a keycard. It’d be nice if things were perfect and this did not happen, but it did, and no matter what anyone says Providence has crime…

So my friend claims that he has all his work covered in an invisibility cloak, and has no work. Considering the improbability of everything it sounded randomly funny. So this blog may go offline for a few days, not because it has anything weird, it’s just that I may redirect this elsewhere, and use the domain for a funny first-pick project (well first-pick is this really cool thing where you get to express why you should get the first-pick in the housing lottery and then get to pick first), and it was rather random the way it came up. Yesterday I was at the Gate with my usual group of people, when a friend who lives near by sat down and started talking to us. While talking he mentioned something to the effect of sending a first pick entry which essentially said he should get first pick because he can mix martinis, to which my response was something to the effect of that is strange, because if you can get first pick since you mix martinis, I should be able to get first pick since I am endangered (or my name makes it sound that way), and I guess enough people liked it to agree on this course of action. So we are going to do this soon, maybe, and if all goes well we might get first pick, which would be really really really cool… So ya the domain’s gonna be used to host stuff, perhaps, I don’t know how it’s going to work out, people have elaborate plans, and we somehow need to get 8 people in (we have 8 people, we need to fit them in), and other such. Hmm so we discuss this tomorrow, once I get back from classes, whee fun, even though it means shifting some tutoring around.

Hmm I just got back from watching Garden State, which as can be expected is about the Garden State, hmm New Jersey, and it’s kind of beautiful, and thoughtful. Hmm makes me wanna go to parts of NJ sometime, oh well we’re doing this one significant place I want to visit at a time, so I guess I could simply add NJ to my list and wait for the chance to go there.

Darn it’s been so long since I last heard from certain quarters about summer, darn it would be awfully nice to hear from them soon, it would be cool and stuff. Hmm this has gone into another day, and I guess I am not yet finished with the day. Hmm earlier today I received this call from people for whom I had filled out a survey (in exchange for money, so not exactly random), asking me about what they could do to entice me to come and fill out another one, and I felt bad about having not gone earlier. Like I knew when they came around wanting new ones, but I was busy, and I kind of forgot all four times I planned on going, and I guess there are those times when you would much rather head back to your room, than to Faunce to fill out a survey of how things work. Darn, I feel bad for that, it certainly would have been simple enough to go on any of those days.

Hmm there are things I wanna hear about, and no news is forthcoming, there are things I would rather hear about and I haven’t heard about them yet, so many things I wanna hear about, so little I have heard yet, the world is topsy-turvy, things aren’t happening nearly as fast as they should be… Everyone I know has exams and yet I am left untouched, which makes me happy, if only news came I would celebrate, but all pipelines seem to have dried up…

My CS professor just sent out an übber interesting mail to some of us. No wait this is a longer story, it all starts with my CS professors decision to buy a Mac, and a resulting mail to a friend of mine about the finer points of programming on a Mac. Well there are many fine points about programming on any platform (for instance XEmacs looks bad and is usually bloated), but none strike home as much as an obvious lack of Java 1.5 support. This after all is the same person who proudly proclaimed that we were one of the first courses to use Generics, definitely the first at Brown, and this after all is the same course which managed to forget that creating a generic array is not permitted, and the way around is to upcast and object array. But ya that is an issue, and hmm as it so happens sometime back I had mentioned this link to my friend, and well he forwarded it to the professor as a cheap hack to get generic support into Mac OS X. Earlier this week I received a mail enquiring whether I had ever tested this, and my obvious (and true) answer hinged on the fact that I like using my PowerBook for many things and without a backup of some kind, I am not sure about using software which is obviously pre-pre-release, and is out there for experimentation, and which not too many people seem to have used. Yesterday, three of us received a mail from the professor indicating: a) he did not know that Java 1.5 and generic support was an issue on macs, b) he was trying to coax Apple into giving him one of their pre-release Java 1.5 bundles for distribution (Java 1.5, codenamed Tiger, will ship with Mac OS X 10.4, also codenamed Tiger. Anyone who has a 10.4 preview release is currently running Java 1.5, as is anyone who works in a company which is above a certain level in the Apple Developer Connection), and c) he was searching for ways around it. The entire thing is übber funny…

I should end this entry, or I will fill more in here, and I have had complaints about entries which are too long, so ya, this file was created three days ago, a new file shall take its place today.

Ze Panda

So I probably really should be doing work right now, there is much that has to be done, and I kind of want to minimize the amount of work i do tomorrow, no particular reason for this, just that my übber long four day weekend comes to an end tomorrow, and it’d be nice to not do too much work. I remember last time we had a long enough holiday, we ended up in Boston, doing things, sadly it is not going to be this time around, we aren’t going anywhere, oh well, we might all end up in NYC over Spring Break, that would be fun, or so i’d hope… Hmm I just went and got good news back for a friend, that felt good, even though it involved walking through drizzly, dark, damp weather, oh well, said friend’s currently in Rutgers, so I guess it is acceptable (Brownie points, whee)...

OK so I just got done with work, darn I still have more left, admittedly it’s little as compared to what I had, and I am mostly done, but ya tomorrow is not completely free, just free enough for doing fun things.

Hmm this is one of those entries which is going to just sit there incomplete for too long, maybe until I delete the words I wrote. Has happened many times before, it is hard to maintain coherence across a span of minutes, let alone days. The fire trucks just came zooming by my dorm, and as I entered I could smell the distinctive smell of smoke, and no before anyone anywhere blames smokers, it wasn’t cigaret smoke, rather smoke from someone’s over toasted bread or something. Interesting, the fire alarms are obviously set on a hair trigger, and seeing as yesterday was somehow the anniversary of The Station House fire, no one was obviously taking chances. Interesting, this is the second time since being back that I’ve seen huge deployments of fire engines right outside my dorm, the last time round very few of us were around, and it was weird watching firemen with axes go in through the MoChamp door, going into the basement which was smoky due to unknown reasons. I am not sure they ever discovered why it was smoky, they just let the smoke clear up, figured no more smoke was leaking, and let it be. Hmm I am not particularly happy about having firemen in the building, they drive us out, well I guess having them is better than doing what I did the last time I was faced with a fire, which was essentially assume no one was going to come, and fight it without firemen (this was back in Delhi, weird things happened).

I spent a lot of the first semester wondering where the darn pool tables were on campus, like I am no great pool addict or player, I have played too few games to be able to do much, but come on, this is a college campus, pool’s good, and stuff. Hmm OK so I knew where the pool tables were, it is just that I hadn’t been to them often enough, and well after having spent parts of the last two nights playing various kinds of pool I must say I am getting better at this, woohoo.

Hmm so a lot of things seem to be going away, the CS newsgroup is gonna be gone soon, mostly because the Professor doesn’t like it. It’s sort of sad, considering a lot of us too this course because one of its aims was to improve cooperation, it is amazingly fun to cooperate on things. I don’t know, I am told by people that in my case it doesn’t make sense, but I love helping with stuff, and there are all these times I have fun with stuff on the newsgroup, it’s like this huge thing which reminds me of things gone by and now they plan to close it, not fair. I remember a time not so long ago, when as a new student in Math 35, I could not figure out how I was supposed to answer questions in math which deserved paragraph long answers (my abstract algebra mentions this theorem which has a proof spanning 250 pages), and I kind of screwed up. So obviously concerned, I asked about this in class, and was given an explanation about it. When I requested that I be allowed to erase it, since I was unused to graphing curved to do basic calculus, let alone write paragraphs about it, TFB said something to the effect of “Let it be, it’s a record of how this course change you”, and it was true. I don’t know, the newsgroup seems to be this collection of things about how we changed with newer language, and I shall miss it, if it goes away. I know someone who owns lots of boats, and hasn’t posted in a while, posted earlier today, and that provoked further posts from the professors itself, and I hope that means we are getting to keep it.

I watched Closer yesterday, and despite the assurances of a huge bunch of people that it was übber depressing (it was), I still say it was an awfully good watch, one of those movies it’d be nice to watch again. Hmm I don’t know if that would happen, maybe it would, but I wanna watch it again, even if no one else ever will.

Hmm now it’s time to sleep, and ponder about things while I do that.

Ze Panda

Because I forgot to include this in the last entry.

“Cows in the Netherlands go boe (pronounced boo) instead of moo” – someone

Ze Panda

Irrationality strikes at the very roots of rationality, that probably is one of the many reasons it is called irrationality. Well I guess, because the opposite of being abstract is being concrete, not inabstract or something, but I guess language is weird, cannot argue with that. So for now we shall believe that irrationality strikes at the very roots of rationality. Well rational people are supposed to numerically analyze possible outcomes and pick the best amongst them, so says over a hundred years of rationalist political science theory, and well while I don’t really regard myself as a rationalist, I certainly have to pick stuff, hence rationality may prevail through some of this entry (having GEB handy at this point of time would have been nice).

The first task would obviously involve stating the problem (hopefully in a set of clear logical statements, but I kind of suck at this), so here goes:
Problem 1: Housing Dilemna: As of two days ago, I am not certain about whether we will be applying to 111 Brown Street (13 person house), or what we are applying to per se. Entity 1 wishes to be an RC, which would be really nice for her. We have someone who can try for 11 Brown St. in place of said entity. Entity 2 through 5, have a feeling that they might want to join TechHouse, and I can in all probability do that, however I have issues. Entity 6 is rushing ADPhi, but there is a replacement available. Entity 7 and 8 were initially planning on joining InterFaith house, but that seems to have fallen to the wayside. Limited information is available about entities 9 through 14. Constraints as they currently exist are: for H = {(2,3), (4,5), (1,9), (10,11)}, all pairs in H would wish to live together in one building unless one member of the pair is engaged as an RC (applies only to (1,9)), entity 7 would preferably like to end up in a single or a suite, but if forced to would room with 8. Also guys can room with guys (I am not listing that out, it was long), and girls can room with girls. Preferences exist within rooming, strong preferences, I for instance would not wish to room with 4; 9, 12 would not like rooming with me; 2,4 may make good roommates, and other such things too numerous to list, and not relevant to this discussion. Also, and this is a major constraint we would like to end up in a situation where distances from everyone’s rooms to everyone else’s is kept low. Obviously it is ok for a few people (me for instance) if we are slightly further off, since walking is not that big an issue, but in most cases that is an important thing.
Part a Should I apply to TechHouse.
This is a harder question than it would sound, hence to make things better I will list out my points for and against, because lists seem to be nice and rational…

Bad:

• People at TechHouse told entity 6 that they had one humanities people every year, and seemed to imply they were cooler than him. Said entity is cooler than them
• TechHouse consists of people who are mostly CS, Math, Physics, or something similar concentrators. I kind of like living with people who are not all doing that, because it’s a lot more fun to talk to people and not discuss what the professors have been droning on about, or extensions of that, and while talking to most CS, physics and math people is fun (I do what they do, it’s fun) I kind of like having people discussing other issues in the world, it’s fun.
• If entity 3 and 5 room together at TH, I would have to have a randomly assigned roommate or hope to get into a single, not that cool an idea, though I don’t mind per se
• Their events so far seem to indicate video games are the common thread of connection, they all play all kind of video games. With the exception of Mario Kart which I suck at and have played twice, I have never really played much on gaming consoles, hence am concerned about the entire concept
• It is on Wriston, not exactly my favorite place in campus. It is closer to the Ratty which makes me feel I’ll be the only one who’d walk down to the V-Dub, and we all know the V-Dub is better
• I don’t want to live in a house where all I do all day is debate Linux versus everything else

Good:

• TechHouse is a lot of CS people, being in TechHouse presents an opportunity to learn about a large section of the CS Department
• If enough people are convinced, a lot of us will be really near each other
• Getting discs, and stuff would involve walking down the hall to someone’s room and borrowing it
• If entity 3 and 5 room together, and don’t get single, can meet new roommate who may be nice
• The fact that everyone’s engaged in Video Games gives me a ready excuse to stay in my room and do my own stuff whenever I want to
• Wouldn’t have to hope people are going to the Ratty every Sunday
• Higher probability of getting this than 111 Brown St (approx 1/14)

TechHouse has reasons why I don’t wanna join, and with everything being equal, the main issue I have is with not living with people who are doing a variety of stuff, and that has me concerned. Are there other parts to this problem, well there probably are, I will state more in later posts so that I don’t attract people’s angst for having long posts.

Ze Panda

Accronyms
GEB: Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid

I really should not be writing this at this point in time, hmm well for one it’s too close to when I am going to leave, so it is doomed to be left incomplete for a while, also there is Lin Al work I really should complete soon, and hmm well doing it now would make sense. On the other hand I have time after class for doing it, there after all is no lab today evening, and unlike most of Brown I am not going out, so ya, evening, can complete stuff, not an issue. I attended a set of math lectures on Saturday (no I am not the loser who attends math lectures during the weekend, you who don’t are definitely one), given by these really cool people (hmm the two I attended were by people from Princeton and Wellesley), and it was fun. Unusually enough (or rather I picked the lectures I wanted to attend in a way) the two lectures I attended discussed mathematical relations using games, so for instance the first one was about how the game SET has really mathematical rules (OK there’s one rule, so ya, a really mathematical rule) which connect onto geometry, and then onto fourier analysis, and it was beautiful. The second one was by someone from Wellesley on hat games, Nim and perfect codes. It was a brilliant lecture, except that I somehow messed up things once I walked out of the lecture, and had to mail the professor to send me a copy of the presentation, oh well it was really really fun.

Hmm so I am back to complaining about things… For one people don’t make any sense, and they really should categorize themselves into well defined groups which can be understood more easily. Also economics should be easier, not because I am in any economics class, but because it would help with helping people with homework, like it’s really really close to being like math, but it isn’t. They should tell me which summer programs I am accepted for, and all about the math faculty at Caltech, hmm well since I am inspired by a friends away message they should also spell out final solutions to such things as when the damn winter ends. But no that’s minor, well at least it’s a minor concern today, and today is not yesterday or day-before, but no concerns today… Hmm for one Apple should release JDK 1.5/5.0 whichever it may be, like I can see all the beta testing and everything that they need to do, but right now I am ready to settle for a buggy shitty version of Java 1.5 which lets me do Generics, because frankly the people over at the CS Department really haven’t figured out which they want to settle for, making it imperative that I use Eclipse to run 1.5 code. Now what makes it far worse is that Eclipse cannot simply open a file and run it, oh no I have to import stuff in, do fancy things, well I don’t like it, I don’t like being logged onto a CS Department machine while using X forwarding, and I really really hate using Eclipse on X, oh well I hate Eclipse with an undying vengeance, but i am forced to use it, and having JDK 1.5 would be so much simpler, and remove so many of the underlying issues. Yes I know there are people out there who’d tell me I should get Tiger from somewhere, but I honestly do not know whether I wanna have that as my main OS, seeing as I need a computer to survive, I am not sure whether I wanna install it on my iPod, seeing as warnings are out about the hard drive not being designed to take too many read/write cycles, and I am not sure about anything of that kind. This is sad, I haven’t done my CS homework, and for once I haven’t begun on my project simply because starting up means launching Eclipse (did I say I hate both Eclipse and Java 1.5 generics with an undying vengeance), and I don’t wanna do that. Hmm wait a minute I probably can do my project without using generic though I am sure one of the graders would take issue, something about past assignments gives me a feeling they would have problems. I cannot believe where we have gotten to, like last semester the same TAs had no issues with how I wrote my code stylistically, but now they have issues about whether I place my opening ’{’ on a new line or right after method/class/compound statement declaration, which in my opinion makes no sense, I have my way, they have their way. They have issues with having underscores after instance variable names, like what’s with that, for heavens sake, underscores look bad, why should anyone have to have underscores is beyond comprehension, but oh well they like their styles. I have heard a TA talk on about how there was the real world, Java world, and then Klein land, and we were in Klein land and were therefore supposed to design better implementations, and yet have him go on and on about this one implementation he had written down and brought with him. How can any okishly complex program have one single implementation, and seeing as we are allowed to implement any design we want, what’s with this entire thing about designing something as a lab group and then handing that in as a part of our documentation. I don’t know, I can see designing object oriented programs, and how the design phase is important, I can see handing in designs, I can see the entire object ownership issues we have been discussing, I can see documentation, but I honestly cannot see the point of some of the things we have been doing, and I wish it made more sense.

So yes today’s Valentines Day and I am sure there are people out there wondering if I have done anything. Well I haven’t, hmm ok except maybe put up a lil paper bag, and funny looking Shark Tales cards on the nunnery door, that’s like the extent of anything I have done anything. Hmm yup, and a few of my friends fell sick, the flu and all, and then I know of at least one plan which fell through and one which was executed in a weird manner, I guess the flu should chose a better month to strike. Hmm weird… Oh ya so I am looking for math professor’s in Caltech, and while I have never seen anyone from there visit my page, just maybe I’ll get lucky, and someone can tell me about good professors who work on geometry, linear, or abstract algebra, or in number theory, it’d be fun to find out more about people, outside of what I know from umm let’s see looking at math pages, or something, oh well I guess I could get lucky…

Also amongst other interesting things this week, I have shifted writing instruments, or so it would seem, well for the 4^th time it would seem, it’s strange, I guess in someways it’s a regression. Let’s see, I started out with pencils, went to pens, went to a computer (last semester), and am now back to pencils, well OK i went through pens in between, but then I was using pens even alongside the computer, and I am not sure I am gonna stick. Well OK in the forseeable future, it’s probably computer, pen and pencil, though I wanna shift back to computer. Math on computer however means typesetting on TeX, and I am not sure I wanna do that, hmm well I don’t know, choices, choices, choices….

Ze Panda

Somewhere during yesterday’s abstract algebra class I randomly zoned out, I generally do not randomly zone out, but well it was a beautiful day, warm and all, and the professor was dragging on about this proof, and I guess I was concerned about all the homework I had to complete (less so since I completed ab al yesterday, and that renders lin al doable), but whatever I zoned out, and ya amongst other things I zone out to look at abstract algebra more abstractly and try to figure out what in the world are we trying to do. Like we have spoken about groups, rings, and fields ad nauseam, and obviously there has to be some sense to the entire thing. Like I can prove what a group is, myriad properties about it, I have begun dismissing numbers, numbers of any kind, matrices and all, into one categorization or the other, have done dihedral groups, which in my opinion are beautiful geometrically, but you consider the geometry for an ephemeral second, after which it is just {1,r,r²,r³,...s,sr,sr²,sr³,...} with two relations, and that is supposed to be a perfectly acceptable representation of rotation of regular polygons in a plane, and even that I can accept, and use, and have used (I get homework done, and I don’t find it hard), but to what end, like I know most math is abstract and doesn’t have to relate to a non-mathematical end, but what are the groups supposed to do. So I ended up asking someone I knew in that class, what his views on ab al were, or more like how would he explain ab al to someone who hasn’t done this stuff, and consensus finally emerged on it being the study of abstractions which can cover different types of things, so that when you get a new mathematical thingamajig, you simply try and fit it into the framework of all you have discovered, and maybe it will fit in, and you can discover what its properties ought to be, because it’s related to things already studied, or maybe it does not fit into stuff, and it’s a new thing all by itself, perhaps it has less consequential mappings which would make its study useful.

Considering the amount of isomorphism and homomorphism stuff we have been doing, that should make sense, relating things, after all that’s the only reason we have been working on modulo arithmetic (arithmetic modulo a number gives a finite group, easier to study, though directly translatable in some cases to R and other things), and I did realize that’s what we were doing before I zoned out yesterday. Darn zoning out is not good, but thankfully I didn’t miss anything, because we had to do a pretty similar proof for homework, and not knowing how to do it made me happier, I like doing things which are not known before I begin. Of course the fact that four hours of ab al homework later my head was hurting minutely, is not something that should concern too many.

Ze Panda

PS: Since someone’s going to get mad if I don’t mention this in explicit detail
ab al = abstract algebra
lin al = linear algebra

PPS: In the words of my physics professor “Gravity really sucks”