Never before this year have I found school so engaging; that is to say, I am finally, finally taking the classes that I'd like to be in. Those being: Calc II, which I enjoy far more than is normal (teehee), AP Lang, which is interesting and challenging, Choir, and Orchestra (2 of them!). Physics and L2k I could live without quite easily. Physics bores me on a regular basis, but at least I get a chance to draw and plot bunny. For L2k I've been exploring various topics in mathematics and teaching math; my most recent log was about the irrationality of pi. Before that I was writing about Taylor Series, which we actually started today in Calculus (I'm so excited!), and before that I was exploring teaching styles, which I will admit was kind of boring. I'd rather try to understand proofs and ideas that are way above my head (Calc III and advanced number theory, anyone?).
I'm having a blast in Calc. I wouldn't mind if the rest of the year was about infinite series, taylor series, indeterminate forms--and espescially conditionally convergent series! Mr. Dietel showed us Riemann's series theorem (that might be the wrong name...hmmm) today and I basically flipped. How can a convergent series be proved to equal half of the actual answer? I went and talked to Mr. Dietel after class (I was very late for AP Lang, but I don't much care) and he told me that the alternating harmonic series, when added together, converges on ln(2), like we had originally proved. The fact that you can make it add up to 2ln(2) or (1/2)ln(2) is very strange indeed. He reminded me of the graph which, when rotated around the x-axis, had finite volume (1?) but an infinite surface area. Oh, it boggles my mind. But I just love it.
There's enough of my rambling for one day, I think. This weekend was exhausting (CMEA, Sen Shin no Gyo) and I was up late last night trying to figure out that proof about pi's irrationality. So I'm going to bed.
Bread still not made; sister's birthday. Didn't get anything done. Tomorrow, I hope.
