MarkPNeyer.com

I added a math major today. That brings the total up to 3 (Computer Science, Physics, and now Math). I was so happy. One of the profesors (Joshi) shook my hand and said ‘good job, man!’ as he is want to do. I even teared up a little as I went to go hand in the form to the registrar. I figurd i’d be happy but I didn’t realized I’d be that happy about it. It feels great to do the things you want to do with your life.

I thought I’d heard that word somewhere before, so I looked it up on wikipedia, but it doesn’t sound nearly as cool as Cryptology. Oh well.

Edit:
Upon further review, I guess it is somewhat interesting.

I was signed up for a ‘Discrete Math’ course, which fulfilled a requirement for my Computer Science major, as well as the Math minor that I planned on adding. I knew I’d learned pretty much everything that we would go over in this class, so I decided to switch to a Cryptology class that was being offered and sounded interesting.

I am very glad that I did – I was running out of mathematical phenomena to puzzle and ponder and mull while going about my day, but this field is just full of things to think about. Delightful!

Further Note: I enjoy reading about historical developments in science and philosophy. Occasionally, I run into people who remind of myself or whom I greatly admire. Archimedes is my favorite scientist because of the proliferation of his works and his humble attitude, especially in contrast to the philosophers of his day. Charles Babbage, on the other hand, sounds a lot like me. He thought about many different things, and drew up great plans but usually tired of them in the process.

Another characteristic we share is a nagging desire for mathematical accuracy. Tennyson wrote a poem, “The Vision of Sin,” one line of which is “Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.” This line bothered Babbage, who had done a little looking into mortality statistics. He suggested an correction:

It must be manifest that if this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill … I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem, you have it read – “Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 1/16 is born.” … The actual figure is so long that I cannot get it onto a line, but I beleive the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,

Charles Babbage.

This all comes from a very informative and entertaining book.

One of the many annoying characteristics of my mind is its tendency to fluctuate quite frequently on what it is that I want. There are days that I want to go to graduate school and study come crazy computer science/math related things. Then there are days when I just want to get a simple job and just start living. I’ve been told repeatedly that I don’t need to decide these things just now, but for some reason my mind refuses to cooperate with them. My mind creates elaborately detailed fantasies of how my life would be if I made either choice, and I decide I’ll go with whatever
fantasy suits me best at the moment.

It’s rather frustrating..

I’m taking a basic music class, for my fine arts requirement. I was hoping for a little more theory-based class, but this one fit my schedule best. Today our professor said that if our ability to see was as powerful as our ability to hear, then we could see a dime on the moon.

‘Power’ is given in units Energy/time. Obviously he’s not talking about our ability to do work with our ears. I wanted to ask him what exactly he meant by this, but didn’t have time before class ended. The purprose of sensory organs is to gather information about our surroundings. There are different ways you could ostensibly refer to the power of a sensory organ. For example, our ears respond to fluctuations in air pressure. There is a range of frequencies our ears will pick up (and thus a range of frequncies which we are capable of hearing), and so I could kind of see how you might say that our ears were ‘more powerful’ than our eyes because they could respond to a larger information bandwidth.

There is also the question of precision within a given bandwidth – the ability to spot a dime on the moon is a question of resolving power and not bandwidth, so I guess he meant resolving power; but then what exactly is the ‘resolving power’ of our ears, and how would this be measured?

I’m sitting here thinking about these things, and I realize that most people really could care less. I guess that’s the price you pay for curiosity.

Me: So, am I correct in my understanding that there is a finite amount of entropy in the entire universe, and therefore a finite number of states in which the universe could exist?

Dr. Fatuzzo: Well, the entire universe is kind of tricky …

This year, Xavier started using a +/- grading system. Prior to this year, your grade was either A, B, C, D or F. My grades were typically in the low ‘A’ region, so it worked out for me, because I usually got all A’s. I figured the shift would negatively impact my GPA, because I don’t get B’s, so there weren’t going to be any B’s transformed into B+’s, but likely I would have A’s ‘tuned down’ to A-’s. I was right; I got an A- in both Theoretical Mechanics and Electromagnetism. So I guess my GPA will be slighly lower than I would have been if I’d gotten A’s. Oh well.

Sometimes physics problems drive me nuts. “Here, do a bunch of math. The application to the real world is easily understood but there isn’t much else to do on this problem, so just derive a bunch of equations that we’ve come up with here, and we’ll call it a day.”

I like it when they give you a problem and you have to figure out how to solve the thing. I hate problems of the form “Show that X Behavior takes the form of this complicated equation. We’ve taken the liberty of replacing these very ugly things with constants, but you’ll still have the manipulate the equation in its gargantuan form if you’re to complete the assignment.” Ugh.

Also, happy thanksgiving I guess.