Reading, and reading, and teaching, and reading, and reading, and…

So, to summarize the direction of my most recent mathematical endeavors: I woke up and decided that part of my aspiration was to become a geometric topologist, and I did that despite the fact that topology is (far and away) my worst subject.

That sounds precisely as terrible as it probably is.

Been reading a lot.

Reading a lot a lot.

Spending a lot of time on the precalc class I’m teaching this semester, too.

A routine is finally starting to shape up, which means things are getting back to normal; I’m hoping blogging becomes a part of that again. Hoping.

Right now, I’m learning about surface automorphisms in hyperbolic space and working on collecting a library of data about the current status of classifications of manifolds with hypercomplex structures. I’m downloading articles constantly, reading seemingly nonstop, and always feeling behind.

I couldn’t be happier.

Here’s hoping that the new year is being as kind to all you folks!

Wonderment, or The Passage of Time.

Today is the first day of the eighth week of the semester.

The middle of the semester was officially last Friday.

Some people may read that and deduce that it’s all downhill from here. Any time I hear that phrase to describe midterm, I’m always a bit blown away. Really, it makes me wonder: Is this what downhill feels like?

I really hope there’s more to it than that. Heh.

Anyway, so here’s the usual rundown:

• FSU’s Math Fun Day 2013 was Saturday. It was pretty okay. Here’s a .pdf copy of my poster, for anyone interested.
• Apparently, I’m the speaker at Wednesday’s Complex Analysis seminar. Abstract and other info can be found here.
• Our next topology exam is scheduled for next Friday. I’m also anticipating an exam in Galois theory around the same time.
• I’m on a short deadline for picking a presentation topic for my Riemannian Geometry presentation.

So, I said all that to say: (a) I still exist. (b) Life is hectic. (c) I’m not sure when I’ll get around to posting more of Hatcher 2.1, but I’ll probably be moving on to Hatcher 2.2 here in about…30 seconds. Also, (d) I really need some down-time. And a haircut. And a drink.

I really need a drink.

Goodnight, Monday.

And, it’s Sunday….

Tomorrow is Day 1 of Week 7.

You thought I’d stopped counting, didn’t you?

Today, I posted a couple more solutions from Hatcher. I also got the okay from Dr. Petersen on my poster for Math Fun Day. I’ll probably post a .pdf image of the poster as the big day gets closer.

For now, I’m going to come study some Riemannian Geometry: I have to (very soon) pick a topic for a presentation in that class, and so it’s getting more and more necessary that make sure I know what’s going on now. Maybe I’ll surprise myself and know a lot.

I don’t expect to surprise myself. 😛

Quick in-between-TAing-assignments Update

I have another TAing duty starting up in about 20 minutes, but I decided to spend the rest of my time putting something here.

(I spent the time before this doing differential geometry computations on the blackboard)

Things are going. I made it through exam week(s) volume 1 without too much pain (other than the preparation therefor), and though I’m still waiting to hear back on how I performed on my homology exam, I think I managed to do pretty well overall. That’s a plus.

I also managed to finish the rough draft of my poster for FSU’s math fun day! That’s also a plus.

Now, I’ve begun looking to the (near) future. Indeed, I have some presentations coming up and I’m in the process of learning material and picking topics, etc. etc., to try not to put that stuff off until the last minute. Overall, I’m pretty excited: At the end of this semester, I’ll have grown quite a bit as a mathematician and will have done some of the “most meaningful work” of my career in the direction of being a professional mathematizer.

I like it.

I plan on spending some time this weekend putting Hatcher solutions up, as well as trying to finish catching up in do Carmo so I can be prepared for my Riemannian Geometry presentation.

Things right now are pretty not-terrible, though, despite my ceasing to exist here every now and again.

I hope to have some big things to roll out soon. Keep me honest, interwebz!

Peace.

Edit: In all this talk about my career, I forgot the most exciting news to happen in recent weeks! On September 23rd, my son turned the big zero-one! Yep, that means my wife and I managed to raise an amazingly awesome bag of awesomeness for an entire year without killing or seriously maiming him! We’re both as excited as that last sentence seems to convey we would be!

Week 3, Day 1 or Properties of Lie Brackets

Today is the first day of the third week of the semester. I know that counting down like this is going to make it seem longer than it already seems, but it seems so long that I can’t seem to help remaining conscious of the precise time frame I’m dealing with.

Such is life, I suppose.

I’ve noticed an amusing trend in my page views involving solutions from Dr. Hatcher’s book, namely that I’ve been receiving an abnormally-high level of page views lately, almost all of which seem to center on those solutions. I guess that means that the semester has started elsewhere too and that people find topology as difficult and frustrating as I do.

For those of you who fit this bill and who are reading this right now: My plan is to start doing more problems ASAP, so that page might get its first update in quite a while.

Today, though, I want (read: need) to talk about differential geometry. In particular, we spent some time in class last week discussing the Lie bracket and its properties, and because we have a derivation of one particular property, I wanted to take the time to put that here for my own benefit.

One week in

So, I’ve officially survived the first week of my (second) second year as a Ph.D. student. It’s hard to imagine sometimes that I’ve been a grad student for over three years.

I’m such an old man.

It’s been even less easy than I’d anticipated, too, which is nicht spaß; sadly, too, this is the first week where teaching responsibilities are actually a thing (we get week 1 off from such things), so now it’s difficult and time-consuming. Jajajajaja.

Rather than making this entry all about Yours Truly, I figured I’d pit stop in and use some of my (*gasp*) unoccupied time write up a little spiel I saw for the first time in my Riemannian geometry class last week.

In topology, there’s an idea called invariance of dimension which can be stated in many different contexts, situations, etc. This can be modified in the case of manifolds with differential structures, and because the idea of the proof seemed a bit cool, I decided to throw it up here for you guys. Throughout, the notation denotes a manifold of dimension with an associated differential structure.

Update

I just wanted to drop in and update here. I haven’t been posting much in the last day or two, but not because I haven’t been workin’ it!

Here’s what’s been going on.

• Wednesday, I stayed home and had a Clifford Analysis day. I read a solid three or four pages of my professor’s paper before calling it a day.
• Because I felt like I hadn’t done enough on the Clifford front, I went to my office Thursday armed with new writing supplies and spent a solid few hours verifying the claims made in the aforementioned three or four pages I’d read. That was a good feeling.
• Friday was (differential) geometry day, and I started the day working some “trivial” problems from Spivak’s little book. In the middle of the day, I had a phone interview with Pearson for a potential part-time job; that interview went well and I’m moving on to the second stage of the employment process. I spent some more time in Spivak’s little book before spending the remainder of my evening working problems from Volume One of Spivak’s magnum opus. Those problems are also “elementary” but they’re a bit harder. The challenge was good.
• Today is supposed to be algebra day. Because we only recently were in a position to remedy some previously-existing financial woes, however, we spent most of the day split between running errands and spending time out and about with our son. I did take both Eisenbud/Harris and Perrin with me, along with my trusted G2 and Composition Book; very little progress was made, however.

I’m actually about to dip out for the evening here in a few minutes, but depending on how much energy I have tonight, I might buckle in and try to figure out some of this sheaf theory stuff. If I had a fourth Algebraic Geometry Observation published, it would be that transferring between theory and problems which apply said theory is very VERY difficult.

Okay, I’m out. Later guys!

Study Plan, tentatively, + Algebraic Geometry Exercises

So I think it’s probably best to have a rotating study plan schedule that allows me to do certain topics on certain days. So far, I’m thinking of having a rotation that looks something like:

Differential Geometry -> Algebra -> Clifford Stuff -> Algebraic Topology (optional),

and since yesterday was (unofficially) differential geometry day, I’m going to spend today doing algebra.

First order of business: Eisenbud and Harris. And, since I’ve been meaning to write down some of the solutions to exercises I’ve passed, I guess I’ll do that here.

Study plans, or Why it’s embarrassingly late into the summer and I still haven’t finalized a good way to learn mathematics

So it’s now creeping into the third (full) week of June. School got out for me during the first (full) week of May. Regardless of how woeful you may consider your abilities in mathematics, I’m sure you can deduce something very clear from these facts:

Summer is about half over.

Generally, that fact in and of itself wouldn’t be too terrible. I mean, big deal: Half the summer’s over, and I’ve been working throughout. How big of a failure can that really be?

In this case, it’s actually a pretty big one.

Despite my having read pretty much nonstop since summer began, I haven’t really made it very far into anything substantial. Compounded onto that is the fact that I’ve had to abandon a handful of reading projects after making what appeared to be pretty not-terrible progress into them because of various hindrances (usually, a lack of requisite background knowledge).

It’s been a pretty frustrating, pretty not successful summer, objectively.