Monday, August 06, 2012

Radio-aided Math

I truly think that Pandora is one of the finer things that have come out of the internet.  Sometimes it's tough to season a station till it's what you want it to be.  But I have one.  I named it Radio Gaga, after the Queen song, praising music and the radio.  Ironically, the station doesn't play much Queen.  But it's the spirit of the thing that counts.  Anyway, I find that the radio is a fantastic aid when I need to clean the kitchen or do mathematical computations.

I'm in the last week of my REU in East Texas.  I've just spent the last two hours labeling 8-crossing knots, and creating a matrix for each knot, then finding the determinant of that matrix, in order to determine the colorability of each knot.  I didn't think that it would take me too long, but I only made it through 4 matrices in the 2 hours.

At the end of the week, my partners and I will be giving a presentation on our work over the summer.  Preparing for a presentation is always nerve-wracking, and I always wish I had one more day, but I think we'll still be ready to do a good job.

And then: Home!  I can't wait to go home.

2 comments:

Li (Amos Huang) said...

You will give a great presentation with your partners. But the best part of course is your coming home soon. Yay :)

Adelina said...

Thank you, Li! Coming home IS the best part. But my partners and I practiced for the first time today, and we had a lot of fun with it! :D