Week 2 - Uphill, Both Ways, Barefoot
Three walls of his office are lined with chalkboard, and the forth boasts the smallest window I’ve ever seen. The boards are filled with a variety of Greek letters, numbers, complicated diagrams and mathematical symbols. He has graciously shoved over a couple teetering stacks of paper to the corner of his desk so that, as I sit across from him, I can at least see his face and the majority of his body.
I hand over my paper.
"I am just a little confused about problem 13 from the homework assignment," I say, as he lets the page float from his hand and land on the desk in front of him. He begins to open a few draws, searching for the eyeglasses that are resting on the tallest stack of papers directly to his left. "I don't see why my answer is different than the one in the back of the book. I think I have the right equation..."
"Let's see what you've got, then," he says, still looking around his desk and blinking rapidly. When his eyes settle on the spectacles, he gives a small sigh of relief, and the joy on his face is that of a reunited, long lost lover.
My computations fill the paper entirely. I can see them through the page - in certain places I have scratched out an entire section and recopied it further down. I am sure I've got the equations right, and three attempts to verify my calculations have all proved that I could not have made an embarrassing decimal or rounding error.
"No, this all looks correct," he says a few minutes later, sticking one hand into the deep pocket of his oversized mathematician's sweater. The geometric pattern woven into the wool is a crazy array of dancing triangles and tetrahedrons in fantastic blues and greens. I pull my eyes away.
A certain swell of vindictive glory rises up inside of me. I knew I did it right. The answer in the book must be incorrect! But he brings me back down to earth with resonating slam.
"But it doesn't look like you've finished the problem. The question is asking you to solve for the data sets w, x, y, and z. You've just done w here." He points to the very bottom of the page, where my numerical analysis of data set W is boxed.
"So...I have to repeat the same equation for each set?" I ask, knowing that this work alone had taken me over an hour, and it was the smallest of the data sets presented. I am hoping he'll say he is kidding and explain that 30 years of math and inhaling chalk dust has addled his brain.
"Yes. And then you need to take your answers to part A and begin work on part B, where you need to provide visual analysis and describe the cohesion of each intercept."
Graphing. PART B?
"Oh, I see," I comment quietly, accepting my page back from the professor. My eyes are glazed and I can't see the pen marks any more. I steel myself for some small relief to the sinking feeling I am now drowning in.
"And there aren't any tips or tricks on the calculator? I should do this all out by hand?" I ask these questions with a small smile. My frustration isn't aimed at him, merely at math and his profession in general.
"That would be optimal. There are certain shortcuts with our graphic calculators, but I'd prefer if you got the hang of this way first. This is how you will be expected to present your work on our midterm next week." He is holding the mathematical secrets close to his chest, like a winning poker hand.
As I sit at the bus stop a few minutes after leaving his office, the sky begins to darken as the sun makes its way behind the line of trees.
Problem 13 was the first of 7 identical problems assigned for the next day.
Mathematical Certainty: There are not enough hours in the day.
I hand over my paper.
"I am just a little confused about problem 13 from the homework assignment," I say, as he lets the page float from his hand and land on the desk in front of him. He begins to open a few draws, searching for the eyeglasses that are resting on the tallest stack of papers directly to his left. "I don't see why my answer is different than the one in the back of the book. I think I have the right equation..."
"Let's see what you've got, then," he says, still looking around his desk and blinking rapidly. When his eyes settle on the spectacles, he gives a small sigh of relief, and the joy on his face is that of a reunited, long lost lover.
My computations fill the paper entirely. I can see them through the page - in certain places I have scratched out an entire section and recopied it further down. I am sure I've got the equations right, and three attempts to verify my calculations have all proved that I could not have made an embarrassing decimal or rounding error.
"No, this all looks correct," he says a few minutes later, sticking one hand into the deep pocket of his oversized mathematician's sweater. The geometric pattern woven into the wool is a crazy array of dancing triangles and tetrahedrons in fantastic blues and greens. I pull my eyes away.
A certain swell of vindictive glory rises up inside of me. I knew I did it right. The answer in the book must be incorrect! But he brings me back down to earth with resonating slam.
"But it doesn't look like you've finished the problem. The question is asking you to solve for the data sets w, x, y, and z. You've just done w here." He points to the very bottom of the page, where my numerical analysis of data set W is boxed.
"So...I have to repeat the same equation for each set?" I ask, knowing that this work alone had taken me over an hour, and it was the smallest of the data sets presented. I am hoping he'll say he is kidding and explain that 30 years of math and inhaling chalk dust has addled his brain.
"Yes. And then you need to take your answers to part A and begin work on part B, where you need to provide visual analysis and describe the cohesion of each intercept."
Graphing. PART B?
"Oh, I see," I comment quietly, accepting my page back from the professor. My eyes are glazed and I can't see the pen marks any more. I steel myself for some small relief to the sinking feeling I am now drowning in.
"And there aren't any tips or tricks on the calculator? I should do this all out by hand?" I ask these questions with a small smile. My frustration isn't aimed at him, merely at math and his profession in general.
"That would be optimal. There are certain shortcuts with our graphic calculators, but I'd prefer if you got the hang of this way first. This is how you will be expected to present your work on our midterm next week." He is holding the mathematical secrets close to his chest, like a winning poker hand.
As I sit at the bus stop a few minutes after leaving his office, the sky begins to darken as the sun makes its way behind the line of trees.
Problem 13 was the first of 7 identical problems assigned for the next day.
Mathematical Certainty: There are not enough hours in the day.