stoutfellow

This is the last week of classes; finals are next week.

Naturally, I have students asking when the final is. People asked on Monday. On Wednesday, in the same class, people asked again. A couple of people have e-mailed me.

The date and time of the final is posted on a little placard right outside the classroom door. It can also be looked up online, on the university webpage.

Tomorrow, in class, someone will once again ask me when the final is. I will point at the door.

Even in the midst of crisis, life goes on. This semester, I'm teaching History of Math (of course) and Linear Algebra I, which I haven't taught in a while. I was scheduled to teach A Geometric Introduction to Topology, but not enough students signed up, so it was cancelled. Instead, I'm teaching a section of GenEd Statistics. So far, the classes seem to be going well, but serious grading hasn't yet begun.

I'm back in the groove on cooking, too; I made a batch of chicken cacciatore last week, and minestrone casserole is cooking away in the kitchen for this week's dinners. I want to get back to some non-slow-cooker dishes sometime this year - maybe in summer; I've got some new Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern cookbooks I'm anxious to try.

On the reading front, my Kindle's Current collection holds Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, E. E. Smith's Skylark 3, Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, and a translation of the Laxdaela Saga. I'm enjoying the Kipling, in particular; the saga is starting to get interesting; secrets are beginning to be revealed in the Bronte, and the Smith is, well, Smithian.

Life goes on, even in the midst of crisis. Last I heard, customs officials at Dulles are refusing to comply with the court order. This could get even uglier than it already is....

It begins now. I finished grading a stack of term papers a couple of hours ago, and entered the grades for that course. :heaves big sigh:

Saturday was my turn to attend Commencement. Since the ceremony was to begin at 10:30, and since the bus schedule is a little wonky on Saturdays, I had to leave the house at 8AM, and wait at the bus station for about half an hour for the connecting route. I got to campus a little before 10:00, and hurried over to my office, to pick up my cap and gown.

The door to that wing of the building was locked. Another door, some distance away was open; but the interior door to that wing was also locked. I found someone who seemed authoritative, who summoned an engineer to let me in. I got myself robed and hurried over to the place where faculty are supposed to gather.

There was no one there. OK, says I, maybe I'm early; I spent some time propping up a wall and watching the clock tick away. 10:15. 10:30. What the hell? 10:45. Maybe I misremembered the time? I headed back to my office to check the mail that had reminded me of my obligation.

The door was locked again.

...

Eventually, the wing door was unlocked, and I went back to my office. En route, I met V, who told me that the ceremony was at 12:30. The first message, telling us when to gather, had been incorrect, and I had not noticed the later correction.

Oh, well. Done's done, and all the disasters that could have happened didn't, and the semester's over. I'm going to take a week or so to relax, and then gird my loins for renewed battle with SWP. (New ideas continue to swirl, with isotomic conjugates, trilinear polars, and circumconics through the centroid all demanding a place at the table. I'm going to ignore the circumconics, but the other two do seem to clarify things, so a partial rewrite is in the offing.)

My History of Math students (one set of them, at least) are working on their first term papers in that class. One of them has been sending me questions about various stylistic and organizational matters; his curiosity satisfied, he thanked me for "answering my spam of emails with precision and haste".

A "spam of emails". I like that.

Two days till vacation. I've done my share of grading the common final; now I've got to take the data from my students' tests and sort it into the spreadsheet. (My policy of letting parts of the final boost midterm grades is a little stickier to implement, now that I've been dragged into the Common Final arena.) I also have to grade the take-home finals from my geometry course; the last one came in fifteen minutes before the deadline I'd imposed. (Nearly a third of the students e-mailed me their finals.)

Meanwhile, I've been giving my bookkeeping program real data, looking for bugs and fixing them, and simplifying some of the code - I finally figured out the relationship between FormOpen and FormActivate, which allows a good bit of dekludging! So far, I've been able to fix all of the flaws in the routines I've tried. The innovations I've added to this version are working fine, but there are some redundancies that keep tripping me up - modular code has its benefits, but there are a few places where I've changed my mind about where to handle certain actions, and one in particular is causing me problems. I'll have to *make up my mind*....

I've hired a dogsitter; he came by on Sunday and I gave him the lowdown. I'll probably send him an e-mail with some additional comments - "When to let the dogs out the back door", "On the giving of treats", etc.

Skyrim proceeds; I'm up into the early 50s as regards character level, and I've activated several of the Daedric quests. (I've finished the deals with Clavicus Vile, Hircine, Mephala, and Vaermina, winning the Masque, the Ring, the Blade, and the Skull; Azura, Boethiah, Mehrunes Dagon, Meridia, Molog Bal, and Sheogorath are on tap.) Smithing's up to level 100; Alchemy and Enchanting are both at level 81, and I'm pushing to get them up to level 100, with all perks. Then I'll make all the top-flight armor, weapons, and jewelry I'll need for every persona - Barbarian, Warrior, Marksman, Rogue, and Mage - and let Smithing and Enchanting go Legendary. Alchemy stays put; its products are consumable, unlike those of the other two, so I want to keep that skill maxed out.

I'm a bit annoyed by my research at the moment. To make further progress, it would be really good if I could come up with continuous analogs of some of the character-theory tricks I've been using. They may not exist, say some dim memories; sadly, there's nobody in the department who specializes in that area. (There are a couple of people who might be able to make useful comments, but I haven't been able to catch either of them in the last few days.)

Definitely ready for break.

Well, the semester's almost over. Yesterday, my Senior Assignment student made her presentation, and passed; I'll be meeting with her this afternoon for post-mortem edits. I gave a final review session in Intro to Analysis afterward. Tuesday will be the Cinco de Mayo potluck, then two finals on Wednesday and one on Thursday, and the semester's done.

I won't be teaching this summer, but I will be busy. I'm starting to organize my research on polygons into papers; I tentatively see a set of three, overall title "Towards a Taxonomy of Polygons". ("I: Isolated Classes"; "II: Affine Transforms and Extremal Classes"; "III: Families and Singular Classes".) Also, teaching QR forced me to use the Blackboard electronic supplement system, and now that I can see some of its potential, I'll be putting together materials for my fall classes. Meanwhile, there's stuff to be done around the house (replacing weatherstripping, fixing the roof, etc.) and databasing to be done (finishing the Skyrim db, revamping my financial software, and redesigning my library catalog). Not to mention, at the tail end of August, a three-cornered visit to San Diego and Spokane.

But first, a week or so of lazing around....

We're two weeks into the semester.

I'm teaching three courses: History of Mathematics, Introduction to Real Analysis, and Quantitative Reasoning 101.

History of Math, of course, I've taught many times before. Intro to Real Analysis is the course I taught last summer; basically, it's Calculus Done Right (for math majors, as opposed to scientists, engineers, etc.). I wasn't too pleased with my performance in summer, but this time I've got a full fifteen weeks (instead of ten) and hope to do better. It seems to be going reasonably well. (I have Quiz 2 sitting on the dining table waiting for grading; we'll see.) QR 101 is a relatively new course, which pretty much everybody who isn't a STEM major has to take. It's very low level; we just finished a chapter on converting units of measurement within and between the US customary and metric systems. I'm getting suggestions and such from the course coordinator, but I'm nervous about how I'm doing. I'll be giving a quiz in that class on Monday, and we'll see how things go. (QR also has an online component, which I *think* I've gotten straightened out after a couple of days of misfires.)

History of Math and QR meet M/W, and run an hour fifteen each; Intro to Real Analysis meets T/Th, and runs an hour fifty. That first Tuesday, I tried to dismiss the class after 1:15, only to be brought up short by one of the students. The following day, I tried to continue past the 1:15 mark (thinking I had another 35 minutes to go), only to be brought up short by one of the students. There's one student - not the up-short-bringer in either case - who's in both classes. He found this hilarious....

Here's to improvement - mine and theirs!

It is somewhat annoying when a student forgets to put their name on their final exam. It need not be catastrophic, if everyone enrolled in the class actually shows up for the final.

It is somewhat more than annoying when two students forget, even if everyone shows up.

:shakes cane:

Yesterday was the last day of class for the semester. (It was also the first snow of the season - a bit late this year....) The last week, in my calculus class, was devoted to review, and the last day in particular was only sparsely attended. (Twelve students, out of an official count in the high forties, and several of them left early.) They were running out of questions toward the end, and then one of the students asked me what other courses I taught. I told them: calculus and advanced geometry this semester, a different advanced geometry class and two classes on the history of math. One of them - the sharp young lady who sits in the middle of the front row - looked interested at that last bit, though several others were clearly less enthused.

"What's your favorite class to teach?"

It is more than a little gratifying to hear a question like that. I'll admit, the students who are less happy with me probably weren't there that day.

Heigh-ho. Time to start thinking about the final.

That was interesting.

One of my Senior Project students is working on continued fractions. I was looking over his (in progress) paper today, and reached a point where he discussed a theorem discovered by Galois in the 19th century. I stared at what he'd written, and could not make the proof gel. Something was wrong; I e-mailed him, saying that we would have to meet to discuss this bit. Then it occurred to me: thanks to Project Gutenberg, calibre and Kindle, I have Galois' complete mathematical writings right here. I pulled up the copy on my computer; the very first paper was the one my student was referencing, and a brief perusal made clear why the proof works. My student had left out some crucial computations, which he'll have to add to his paper.

Isn't it neat, how things work out sometimes?