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January 23, 2008
Math - Just Say No
It's good to be back in State College, even though we dragged the cold air with us. It was definitely a bit of a whirlwind weekend, from having to get up mega-early Saturday morning in Boulder to go to the Denver airport to finally getting back to State College in late afternoon. Shortly after I got back, it was time to head right back into campus for the PSCG Spring Semester Kickoff party, which had plenty of free pizza and games. Tim taught me how to play some Chinese variant of chess which was pretty cool, and then the rest of the time, while everyone else played other games, he & I played Megachess (my three-person chess game), rotating the board and taking a turn making the best move possible for the color in front of us. It was definitely an interesting and different way to play, not being able to come up with or execute any sort of coherent strategy (not to mention Megachess having completely different strategies from regular chess). I still prefer playing Megachess with three instead of two people though. :-)
I spent parts of Monday and much of Tuesday copying Kerrie's notes from the Linear Algebra class (Math 436) that we'd signed up for. After copying those, reading through chapter 1 of the book carefully, and starting to work on the assignment, I really got to thinking that the class wasn't gonna be all that useful to me, while also being a lot of work (you know, trying to translate math language and think like a mathematician instead of a "normal" person). So with today already being the drop/add deadline here at PSU (they always have it so ridiculously early in the semester, especially compared to GAC), I had to put in some hard thinking of whether to stay in a class that I hadn't even attended yet. And to be honest, I was dreading it (especially after Kerrie decided to drop the class, because then I didn't know anyone), and didn't really want to go through an entire semester like that. It would've been a different thing entirely if this were a linear algebra class from an applied math perspective, but instead it was clear after getting this far into it that it was gonna be from a pure math perspective. And that's a world of difference. You see, I like applied math and physics-type stuff. But pure math? I despise it. It's just too abstract for me, and my brain really doesn't think that way. The way I see it, math is a tool that should be used to solve real-world problems; math (in my view) is somewhat pointless when it's treated as an end in and of itself, and isn't used to do anything practical. So I decided to drop it, and register instead for Remote Sensing of the Earth System (i.e., a class about satellites!). I was trying to decide between Radar Meteorology (which would've also been interesting) and Remote Sensing, neither of which is really remotely relevant to my research, but I think the latter will be potentially more interesting, spanning a wide range of topics (ozone/atmospheric composition, ice/snow cover, cloud properties, oceanography, etc., basically any field that uses satellite measurements). It should also be a bit less work that Linear Algebra, which would be a huge plus and would allow me more time to do research. And another plus is that Caren, Anke, Luna & Isaac are all taking it too, meaning I'll have some company during that once-a-week 2.5-hr class.
While I was in Boulder I finally got around to reading a novel (gasp! reading something for fun while in grad school? perish the thought!), "Hood" by Stephen Lawhead (my favourite author!), book 1 of the King Raven trilogy. It's a pretty cool book, basically setting Robin Hood in Wales in AD 1073, complete with Welsh place/proper names, giving it an authentic feel (Lawhead always does that in his books, which are typically Irish, Celtic or Welsh in flavor). I had originally started reading it last spring on my way down to New Orleans for Katrina clean-up, but didn't get very far before thesising took over my life once I got back to PSU, so I just started over. I didn't wanna put it down, and I was tempted all along last week just to keep reading, but realized that sitting through a bunch of presentations on little to no sleep wouldn't be a wise plan. So I just waited until Sunday night to stay up late finishing it all! It's definitely been awhile since I've done something like that. I wish I had more time to do reading for fun. But now that I'm hooked, I've gotta get book 2 in the trilogy, "Scarlet"!
So now that Fred Thompson has dropped out of the GOP presidential race, who am I supporting? That's a really good question, and I wish I knew. All I know is that it's certainly not Mike Huckabee or John McCain! Both of them are running pretty dishonest campaigns, in my opinion. I guess my top three right now would be Romney, Paul & Giuliani, though I'd have to hold my nose to vote for any of those three. Is it too cynical to say that I'm quite disillusioned with our current slate of candidates? A third party might look very attractive to me this year!
Posted by Jared at January 23, 2008 11:36 PM
Comments
"The way I see it, math is a tool that should be used to solve real-world problems; math (in my view) is somewhat pointless when it's treated as an end in and of itself, and isn't used to do anything practical."
To quote a cartoon character, "Zoinks!"
It's just very funny that you say that, considering this:
1. You are in a meterology grad program.
2. Meteorology uses a lot of math, including differential equations, linear algebra, and a lot of statistics. In fact, the weather models used for predicting weather take the fundamental equations--many of them partial differential equations, and uses approximation techniques to solve them on a grid, as I'm sure you know.
3. Henceforth, knowing the basics of ODE and PDE, linear algebra, statistics, etc. is pretty important. Then again, that's why I left my PhD program in meteorology, as it was almost laughable in it's lack of attention to physics and math.
4. You should know a lot of these things, as you were a physics major.
5. How could you have graduated with a physics major without taking linear algebra? You should definitely consider completing the class. I know that some of the teachers who teach it do so from a "pure math" perspective, complete with almost irredeemable proofs that have no bearing on anything(I had the same thing), but you will take away things from it, trust me. ;)
Sorry, but I just had to chime in. Good blog, though. Hope you're studies are going well. :)
Posted by: Jim at March 2, 2008 01:46 PM
Jim,
Thanks for your comment. All the points you made are entirely valid, I won't deny that. But I think the whole reason that I've been drawn to fields like physics and meteorology is that the math they use is applied; it serves a purpose. It's just a preference of mine that I don't like pure math or doing math for math's sake. It just doesn't appeal to me one bit.
Part of why I junked the Lin Alg course this semester was that in the fall there is a comp sci/engineering course being offered on numerical methods for applying linear algebra or some such thing that seemed like it would teach me a lot of cool stuff while simultaneously giving me applications. However, now the word on the street is that the meteo dept will be offering numerical weather prediction in the fall, so that'd be even more applicable to my research (and teach me a lot of the relevant math along the way). It basically just comes down to a cost-benefit analysis of what I expect I'd get out of the course in relation to how much work I'd have to put into it (and how much research I could get done in the meantime), and that's the main reason I dropped the pure math version of lin alg.
And in response to point 5, the GAC physics dept didn't require a specific course in lin alg to get the major because they sprinkled enough lin alg through all the other courses we had to take anyway (including a couple "math methods for scientists" courses). So maybe all I need is to brush up on a little lin alg on my own anyway. Another reason not to take that class, haha.
So you say you used to be in a PhD meteo program? What do you do now?
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoy my blog! I'll try to keep it good/interesting!
Jared
Posted by: Jared at March 3, 2008 12:09 AM