Math Linguistics II

Tired.

Math: That feeling you get when you have a qualifying exam on Monday.

Pedestrian:  That feeling you get when you partied to hard the night before.

Brain Dead.

Math: The state of one’s brain when they have spent the last month studying endomorphisms.

Pedestrian: The state of one’s brain when they have watched too much TV.

  I’ll see you next week!  Hopefully with more time and more working brain cells!

Math Linguistics

In general, mathematicians speak in non-normal ways which don’t have simple translations when they project into English grammar.

Allow me to break this down for you:

In general.

• Pedestrian speak: means usually.  In general, I get to work on time, but today I was late.
• Math speak: means always.  It’s always true in a larger sense.  ie: In general, every element in a field has an inverse, not just 2.

normal.

• Pedestrian speak: a property which most things are assumed to posses. ie: It’s normal to hate Mondays.
• Math speak: a nice property most commonly associated with group structures. ie: H is normal in G when gHg^-1 = H.

simple.

• Pedestrian speak: a negative property, sometimes suggesting mental disabilities.  ie: That man is simple.  or That puzzle is too simple for one of my intellect.
• Math speak: a nice property.  If a proof is simple, then we like it better than a complex one.  Also a group theory property for which a group has no subgroups but 1 and itself.

translations.

• Pedestrian speak: the act of interpreting one language into another, requiring alterations in some of the meanings perhaps.  ie: I read a translation of The Iliad because I can’t read Greek.
• Math speak: The act of sliding something on a surface without changing it’s shape.  ie: translate a line to the right by adding 1 to every point.

project.

• Pedestrian speak: To enlarge an image through the use of shaped glass and a light source.  ie: Movie theaters project the movie onto the big screen.
• Math speak: a map which loses some information in order to better understand a multi-dimensional object.  ie: the cube projects a shadow onto the floor.

English.

• Pedestrian speak: the language which normal people speak, except the mathematicians for whom standard English is not good enough.
• Math speak: the language we butcher and redesign to fit our needs.  Also a form of communication we deign to use when we have to include some explanation, but we would rather just use symbols (σψμβoλσ?).

Many people complain about the use of English in the mathematicians world.  But what are they going to say about it?  “This is the sort of utter nonsense, up with which I will not put?”

I wanna be a sponge when I grow up.

I’m madly studying for prelim #2.  I learned that I was not a very good sponge on prelim #1.  The professor included many questions that we did in class that I had not fulling absorbed.  A friend later commented it was not an exam on intelligence, but an exam on “how good of a sponge you were.”  I learned I was not a great sponge.  I was okay, but not truly great.

So, when I grow up, I want to be a good sponge.  I’m practicing my sponge skills now as I study for algebra.  The professor who writes this exam is fairly axiomatic about his topics.  Thus, I’m dutifully studying and trying to understand all the concepts.  But it feels like memorization.  Perhaps that is step one to understanding? Perhaps not?  Regardless, I am here memorizing tactic after tactic and proof after proof, hoping that they will appear on the prelim as I expect them too.   Below I have included an image of the sponge I hope to become.  You can almost see the layers of proofs and theorems hidden in the little holes!