Random Raves 54: You will succeed. It is inevitable.

I'm studying elliptic integrals. I got into reading whole discussion about which country in the world has the most difficult math in high schools.


It turns out that it is China, Singapore, India, Russia. Some post USSR countries as well.

I found a PhD in math on YouTube who talks about math in a booming voice. At the MA+ level, but quite understandable. https://www.youtube.com/@mathcuratorzanachan3574

I found a Romanian film about popularizing math in high schools/lyceums."Liceenii" https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liceenii

I found that series not only diverge and converge, but also oscillate.

Great day. Between working on math and reading all that practiced darts and chess.
 
I found that series not only diverge and converge, but also oscillate.
That was how the first rigorous approximation of π was given, by Archimedes: the circumscribed and inscribed ever increasing in vertices polygons in a circle. The length of their periphery approaches that of the circle from both ways.
Iirc the idea for such a method (only from one side then) was given originally by a philosopher in Plato's Academy, and is mentioned by Aristotle.
 
Clearly you should add that to your advertisements.
 
Here's a rave: I met some Republic of China Air Force members on my Taiwan trip, including F16 pilots. This was a super cool experience for me. We even hung out multiple times! Such down to earth people, not at all like the F16 pilots you see in the movie Top Gun. If you had no idea you'd guess that they have common office jobs or something. They even seemed more excited to have met me - a Canadian programmer. No, I told them, you have it backwards! It's way more exciting to meet Taiwanese F16 pilots! But they did not see it my way at all.

Here's another rave: One of these new friends of mine just had lunch with the President of Taiwan! That might sound like an outrageous claim, but hey, maybe not. The video checks out and does not seem AI generated at all. Not that it would be, but when you claim that you just had lunch with the president, you better have a video. It might have been a PR type presidential lunch with a couple air force officers, I'm not really sure. All I know is that is definitely my friend sitting right beside the president of Taiwan, and that's pretty damn cool.

It strikes me that one day the reality of my coolness factor might as well become apparent. I need to meet some heads of state for brunch before anyone catches on
 
It strikes me that one day the reality of my coolness factor might as well become apparent. I need to meet some heads of state for brunch before anyone catches on
I once attended a toga party with a former mayor of Red Deer.

Not that it's something that impresses me, since he's always been a jerk.

(the actual circumstances were that his wife and I were on the properties crew of a production of Guys and Dolls and he got to tag along to the toga party the producer decided to have for the tech crew at her house; I was pretty much the only person there not wearing a toga)
 
I met an advisor of ministry of education of Latvia this week. For this meeting I read about 15 books, 20 papers and a lot of discussions online. Also interviewed some other people first.

I studied whole month basically. I gave him 18 questions which he deemed very hard and couldn't answer few of them. He is the top specialist in Latvia regarding math education in Latvia.

In the end he said that judging from his own observations and mine things are spiraling down regarding education in Latvia, which is common sense to parents, teachers, headmasters, pupils, but not people who have graduated school 40 years ago and are in the parliament.

He also asked me a question why education in Finland is worsening (Finland was supposedly best country for math education in last decade) and I had to say that I haven't dug that deep, but I will. Also he suggested a book about intuition's role in learning math.

**
I haven't studied or prepared this hard, I think, ever in this life. But it was SO satisfactory to realize that my conclusions fit with this living legend's (he has written the best books in math education in Latvia for ages 5 to 13) and he at his ripe age of 69 could understand my viewpoint and I could understand his.

My goal is to establish a private school at year 2028 - 2030 and I have a lot to learn about education as whole, because teaching math is just one subject, I need much bigger picture about whole school system and all subjects.

Along the way I realized that I would love to have this picture in Mathematics cabinet:
 

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Here's a rave: I met some Republic of China Air Force members on my Taiwan trip, including F16 pilots. This was a super cool experience for me. We even hung out multiple times! Such down to earth people, not at all like the F16 pilots you see in the movie Top Gun.
Lols... I wasn't reading closely at first, and I was thinking "How the eff did the Chinese military get a hold of our beautiful Murican F-16s? :confused: but then I noticed "Taiwan", duh:p :lol:
 
"A Matter of Faith"

This week I bought a book "Latin grammar" (published in 1927) at an antique shop that my Latin teacher highly recommended to me when I was studying classical linguistics.


It is a matter of faith that I still believe that there will be people who will find my knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek useful. There will be people who will still need someone to translate texts from these languages in twenty years. Many books that are currently in private collections will come to light, will be declassified, because in the 17th and 18th centuries a large part of scientific texts were written in parallel in two languages - the national and Latin.

Currently, Latin is taught to lawyers, doctors, historians, theologians and at the Riga Classical Gymnasium in Riga (capital of Latvia). Ancient Greek is taught to theologians.

A hundred years ago, these two languages were taught in many Latvian gymnasiums. Classical Latin is said to be 2,100 years old. Therefore, 98 years since the compilation of this book in 1927 are not many.

I quote the author of the book: "Latin expands the horizons of every citizen, introduces the development of European culture and gives the key to the correct understanding of the ancient past, the Middle Ages and, consequently, the current living conditions."

Know the past, know the present, it will be easier to predict the future!

The name of the book collection "Ausma" (Dawn in English) is significant.
 
I never had a chance to learn either Latin or Greek. The only other languages offered here were French and German (during my school years; I understand others are offered now, but still no Latin or Greek).
 
I had 3 years of Latin in HS: Amo amas amat.... Hic Haic hoc....et tu Brute?
 
I wouldn't have either, if not for applying to BA of classical philology. At the time I was disabled and couldn't study math. Ancient Greek has tricky grammar and was very hard at first (being 3000+ years old), but I had previous experience with Latin from BA of Baltic languages so I felt confident.

A quick Wikipedia search landed me this

"Canada
Latin is occasionally provided in a small number of Canadian secondary schools, usually studied as an elective."

French has Latin origins therefore it is a bit surprising.

However, this BA was mainly meant for translators who would choose a modern language as their MA main focus. So we spent months translating lots of Cicero, Homer, Cesar etc. just to hone our translating skills. We didn't have to talk in Latin or recite poems, but we had to have a large vocabulary in written form. And we had to be able to translate poetry which was a truly hard task for BA level students. BA in classics in 2016 was one of the most useless BA degrees if you don't plan to become a translator or an academic. I was going to go for MA in English if I hadn't recovered from my disability.

But I got better and could switch back to math.
 
Pretty much everyone here takes at least some French. Unless you're homeschooled, you'll get at least 3 years of it in elementary school. After that it's optional, unless you do a B.A. in university. If you haven't taken high school French by that point, they require you to do a year of it.

That profoundly annoyed a friend of mine who did a B.A. in drama. She hadn't taken any French in high school, so she was struggling with it in college. She and I were part of a small group of people who ate lunch together, and she and I were also taking anthropology, Canadian history, and physical & cultural geography (we had a study group for that one). I spent about 3 sessions per week, tutoring her in French - at least enough to help with whatever her current homework was. My own French classes at that point included reading some of the most depressing plays and other stuff. If I didn't know about the swashbucklers (Three Musketeers) and have some French translations of various comics (Archie and Peanuts), I'd have sworn that no French literature exists that's actually cheerful or fun.
 
Lols... I wasn't reading closely at first, and I was thinking "How the eff did the Chinese military get a hold of our beautiful Murican F-16s? :confused: but then I noticed "Taiwan", duh:p :lol:

I admit I know that I welcome potential confusion when I refer to Taiwan as that, but that's the formal name of their air force, it didn't feel right to refer to it otherwise. Not after looking at all the photos of their planes with the insignia and that name on it, seeing "Republic of China Coast Guard" on ships, etc. you sort of fall in line with feeling that "Republic of China" feels more formal and respectful. Plus you gotta keep people on their toes
 
I really need to rave about this a bit, as I am very thankful for it.

I spent 15 hours in the hospital, they did a whole bunch of tests on me, including bloodwork, a CT scan, and a bunch of other stuff, I spent the night there and was looked after a bunch of doctors and nurses. They pumped me full of a whole bunch of stuff including various antibiotics, steroids, pain meds, and fluids, and gave me a comfy recliner I could sleep in for a couple hours, in a dark private room.

The cost to me for all of that ---> $0

The one thing I had to pay for were the antibiotics they prescribed to me, but that's because I forgot to present my insurance card at the time. So, I will have to file that manually and likely get most of it reimbursed. The 2 week regiment of anti-biotics cost me $46 CAD tax incl.

I will recover just fine, this was caught in time and will not lead to any serious issues, but I do have to check my temperature and keep an eye on it and any pain or discomfort for the next 2 weeks and then get more (free) follow-up tests performed.

Why would I ever want to be a part of a country that does not care for its citizens this way? I love being Canadian.
 
I spent 15 hours in the hospital, they did a whole bunch of tests on me, including bloodwork, a CT scan, and a bunch of other stuff, I spent the night there and was looked after a bunch of doctors and nurses. They pumped me full of a whole bunch of stuff including various antibiotics, steroids, pain meds, and fluids, and gave me a comfy recliner I could sleep in for a couple hours, in a dark private room.
This feels so similar to when Mr. Burns' weekly treatment for cheating death is revealed in The Springfield Files.
 
This feels so similar to when Mr. Burns' weekly treatment for cheating death is revealed in The Springfield Files.

Nice, maybe my life duration has been extended by a couple weeks here
 
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