(April 26, 2017 at 10:56 pm)Kernel Sohcahtoa Wrote: CIJS,
I remember Thanksgiving of 2014. During this day, my family was away doing their own thing, and I ended up spending the day by myself. Now, this was actually not a bad thing for me, as I'm very introverted: I often find solitude very energizing and relaxing. Thus, on this day, I pulled out my trig book (I had been teaching myself trig and was nearing the end of my studies) and started working examples and problems on my dry erase board. In particular, I was tackling some trigonometry concepts (perhaps De Moivre's theorem/products and quotients in trigonometric form or learning how to find complex roots), and I recall that this was actually a very fun, enjoyable, and relaxing time: I was immersing myself in the beauty of ideas and didn't want to pull myself out of the wonder that had consumed my mind. Hence, upon reflection, on that day, I enjoyed the companionship of trig ideas; this enjoyment eventually culminated in me gaining more of an interest in mathematics and building up the confidence, motivation, curiosity, and audacity to teach myself calculus.
Live long and prosper AF members and anyone else.
CIJS, I admire that you are so motivated to self study so much mathematics. I did a little of that on the side during my studies at university, and during my "career", though that was mostly electromagnetic scattering and propagation. Hard shit to work on, yet so beautiful, at the same time. When I taught high school math, I got a real sense of the beauty when solving problems for the students (and on my own time, for that matter).
Nerd admission time- I studied matrix theory during the summer between my junior and senior years in high school.
If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.