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Hi, everybody!
Well, I've decided to drop Number Theory 2. It's too bad, because I
enjoyed number theory so much when I took it at Carleton, and I was
really excited about this class at first. Unfortunately, the small
size of the class and its fast pace made me feel uncomfortable about
asking questions--like I was slowing the class down--and the professor,
like all the BSM profs, doesn't have regular office hours at the
College International building, so I couldn't just drop in with
questions on the spur of the moment. I was getting too stressed out
about the homework for the class, so I decided to drop it. I feel
content with my decision.
I've been plenty busy with the rest of my classes. Last night, Melody
& I made dinner together (fruit salad, rice, and frozen "Vietnamese-
style" vegetables) and then worked on the Conjecture and Proof club
problem: "A set of 13 real numbers has the property that, if any
one
number is removed, the remaining 12 can be separated into 2 groups of 6
numbers with equal sums. Prove that the 13 numbers are all
equal." We
proved this statement for 13 natural numbers on a previous homework
set; unfortunately, that proof used either divisibility by 2 or the
existence of a "smallest" counterexample, neither of which apply
to
this version of the problem.
We didn't solve the club problem (and we didn't have time to discuss it
in class, so we still don't know the solution), but after we had given
up, I started to work on one of the other C&P (Conjecture & Proof)
problems. I made some progress, but by then it was 10:30, so I
decided
to go home & sleep, and get up early in the morning to finish it.
I
did this, and happily, solved the problem! But even better than that
was that after I solved it, I still had half an hour before I had to
leave for class, so I decided I might as well take a look at another
problem that I had worked on before and not been able to solve...and I
figured that one out too! I wrote up my solution while riding the
metro to class (and then dropped my pencil on the escalator out of the
metro station). How's that for eleventh-hour success?
Last Sunday, the History of Math class took a field trip to Szeged.
I'm not in History of Math, but the professor wanted to show off his
hometown, so he told people in the class to invite their friends!
Even
so, it was a small group, just 10 people, including the prof. (I
think
some of the History of Math students decided not to go.) Forrest
went,
but Mai Anh didn't, and Pei Zhuan intended to go, but he had a cold and
decided to stay home and rest.
It was about a 2.5-hour train ride from Budapest to Szeged, and the
professor met us at the train station in Szeged. We visited 3
churches
and the university where the History of Math professor went to school
and now teaches on the 4 days per week when he's not teaching at BSM.
The churches are the only old architecture in Szeged, because the Tisza
river flooded in the 1890s and destroyed almost all of the buildings.
On the door of one of the churches, there's a carved line a little over
my head with the inscription, "A viz vot it." ("The water
waz heer.")
For lunch, we went to a restaurant together and the professor ordered a
traditional Szeged meal for us: halaszle (a spicy fish soup) and
pasta
with a cheese-cream sauce. I thought the halaszle was tasty, but the
pasta was too rich and too much of the same flavor.
After lunch, we visited the Mora Ferenc Museum, which had a little bit
of everything: a few rooms of art, a few rooms of archeological
displays, and a few of science-museum type displays. What an
interesting museum! I suppose that's what you do if your town can't
afford 3 separate museums. My favorite part of the trip to Szeged,
however, was neither the museum nor the churches: It was the clock at
the university. Just before we headed back to the train station, the
clock chimed 5:45. (Don't ask me *why* it chimed 5:45.) As the
bells
played, painted wooden sculptures of students came out of doors on
either side of the clock! They went around on a track, and then
stayed
out while sculptures of professors and then the dean came out as well!
I've seen clocks with automated figures once or twice before in Europe,
but always in town clock towers, never at a university. I was quite
charmed.
The other noteworthy event this week was the John von Neumann Memorial
Conference at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Neumann Janos was
born in Budapest, which I didn't know before, and this was the 100th
anniversary of his birth. At 11:00 on Wednesday, our C&P prof
told us
that at 12:10, Benoit Mandelbrot would be speaking in honor of von
Neumann. So, when C&P ended at 12:00, I hurried over to the
Academy of
Sciences. On my way, I ran into Steven, Ross, Kellen, and finally our
C&P prof, who were all headed to the same place. What fun to be
able
to pick up on the spur of the moment and go hear famous people speak!
As it turned out, I had a hard time understanding Mandelbrot's speech;
he spoke in English, but his accent was strong and the auditorium sound
system weak. After Mandelbrot, John von Neumann's daughter, Mary von
Neumann, spoke, and she was much easier to understand. Her speech
didn't have a great deal of substance, but I enjoyed it, because she
talked about the things her father had valued--freedom, his family, and
computing--and said she thought he would be pleased with the changes
that have taken place since his death.
So, that's the news from Budapest; how are things going where you are?
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Hello (in the Hungarian sense),
Abra
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