Each participant here takes two seminars. There are, however, three seminar periods in a day and I lucked out and have the first seminar period (8-10AM) free. So, Ernie Chen is sleeping in. There are, however, one hour talks that happen throughout the day and I have attended a couple of those.
At 10:30AM-12:30PM, I am in a seminar learning ways to use simulations in Statistics to make it more accessible to students. It is turning out that you can basically design an entire Statistics course around M&M's. Chi-squared is obvious, but one can aolso simulate an exponential regression by shaking a bunch of M&M's up and then removing those that aren't showing M's. We are also being exposed to the power of "Fathom", which is an amazing statistical software package. Today, I actually was able to understand the Central Limit Theorem for the first time. Let's just say that last year when I taught it, I was not exactly in complete command of the idea.
From 1:30PM-3:30PM, I am in a course touching some of the history of Math. This is the HEIGHT of geekdom. There are 13 of us in the class, but it's myself and three others that are totally grooving with the instructor. It's like our own personal seminar. Do I feel bad that the other's aren't keeping up? NO!!!!!!! I'm having way too much fun.
We started with the Babylonians and their numbering system. We moved onto Thales, the father of modern Geometry, and tackled the problem of quadrature of a polygon. Chris Davies if you are reading this, because we teach this, I totally rocked this in class. I had to shut myself up so I wouldn't look like a smartass. We then talked about the 3 problems that were unsolvable by classical mathematical antiquity.
1) Quadrature of a Circle
2) Trisecting and arbitrary angle
3) Doubling the volume of a cube
Well, with a bit of modern technology, we can create the following
The Cissoid
which allowed us to solve #3. And,
The Conchoid
which allowed us to solve #2. For those of you who want to see the proof, I'll show you.
Today, we worked with Archimedes and his method for deriving the formula for the volume of a sphere, using the concept of Moments. We also derived a way to find every single pythagorean triple using the rational points on a unit circle. (Davies, I have cool stuff for you).
Yeah, yeah, I drone on, but having the geektime of my life.
At 10:30AM-12:30PM, I am in a seminar learning ways to use simulations in Statistics to make it more accessible to students. It is turning out that you can basically design an entire Statistics course around M&M's. Chi-squared is obvious, but one can aolso simulate an exponential regression by shaking a bunch of M&M's up and then removing those that aren't showing M's. We are also being exposed to the power of "Fathom", which is an amazing statistical software package. Today, I actually was able to understand the Central Limit Theorem for the first time. Let's just say that last year when I taught it, I was not exactly in complete command of the idea.
From 1:30PM-3:30PM, I am in a course touching some of the history of Math. This is the HEIGHT of geekdom. There are 13 of us in the class, but it's myself and three others that are totally grooving with the instructor. It's like our own personal seminar. Do I feel bad that the other's aren't keeping up? NO!!!!!!! I'm having way too much fun.
We started with the Babylonians and their numbering system. We moved onto Thales, the father of modern Geometry, and tackled the problem of quadrature of a polygon. Chris Davies if you are reading this, because we teach this, I totally rocked this in class. I had to shut myself up so I wouldn't look like a smartass. We then talked about the 3 problems that were unsolvable by classical mathematical antiquity.
1) Quadrature of a Circle
2) Trisecting and arbitrary angle
3) Doubling the volume of a cube
Well, with a bit of modern technology, we can create the following
which allowed us to solve #3. And,
which allowed us to solve #2. For those of you who want to see the proof, I'll show you.
Today, we worked with Archimedes and his method for deriving the formula for the volume of a sphere, using the concept of Moments. We also derived a way to find every single pythagorean triple using the rational points on a unit circle. (Davies, I have cool stuff for you).
Yeah, yeah, I drone on, but having the geektime of my life.
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