Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 16 to 24 of 24

Thread: Mathematics Paper

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Location
    Villa Park. CA
    Posts
    13,051
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Falsetti View Post
    Mike - thanks for sharing, you obviously put a lot of effort and energy into the paper! Your introductory section, with some life lessons learned, might be the most important part, especially in todays social media driven world.

    In the preface, you ask if readers would respond. What feedback have you gotten over the years?

    Jim
    Well, I never tried to publicize the paper. I just had it on my web site so it was not something that people would easily find. I also wrote a paper on how logarithms were calculated years ago and I did get some responses from that one. Surprised me.

    And to address Frederick's question about copyrighting it - I wrote it to help young people. If someone wants to steal it and still uses it to help young people, I'm okay with that. But next time I edit it, I'll put a copyright line on it.

    A story about people using papers like this: I wrote a tutorial paper on SONET (Synchronous Optical Networks) that was well received. Some years later I found out that the paper had been used as a chapter in a book. Trouble is, the author had never contacted me to ask if he could use it. I suppose he contacted the company I had worked for (I had left them) and I assume they gave him permission but no one ever contacted me. I don't remember how I discovered the usage but I contacted the publisher and told them that I had never given permission for its use. They did send me a free copy of the book. I didn't mind and would have given permission but I didn't think it was very polite.

    And to give a plug of another paper that I wrote (which I think is pretty good) - "DS1/DS3 and E1/E3 Framing and Multiplexing". The material is not used all that much today but back in the day it was the major communications technology.

    Mike

    [For those of you who mentioned statistics: I agree. I didn't take statistics until I was working on my masters but it was really useful throughout my career. I didn't have to calculate statistics but when presented with statistical data I knew how to interpret it.]
    Last edited by Mike Henderson; 07-01-2020 at 6:25 PM.
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  2. #17
    Wow, well done. So where did you teach?
    Assumption is the mother of all screw ups
    Anonyms

  3. #18
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Location
    Villa Park. CA
    Posts
    13,051
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Allen View Post
    Wow, well done. So where did you teach?
    I don't teach mathematics. I'm just a retired engineer. When I retired, I contacted all the high schools in my area (don't remember exactly how many, maybe four). I volunteered to tutor students in advanced mathematics, especially those who planned to go to college for engineering, mathematics, physics, etc. Not one would accept me.

    I think what they wanted was someone to tutor the students who were not doing well - they just weren't interested in having someone work with their advanced students. I even volunteered to come in and do a presentation to the mathematics club on something like complex numbers. Again, no interest.

    I met one of the mathematics teachers for coffee so that he could see that I wasn't some oddball but I still couldn't get any interest (maybe he did think I was an oddball).

    I just wrote that paper for the son of some friends and while I was writing it, I decided to target it to a general audience - not just him.

    I did a lot of writing in my job so it was fairly easy to write this paper. I had to research some of the mathematics to make sure I was doing it correctly. It's been a long time since I was in college.

    Mike
    Last edited by Mike Henderson; 07-01-2020 at 8:08 PM.
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    Evanston, IL
    Posts
    1,424
    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Henderson View Post
    And to address Frederick's question about copyrighting it - I wrote it to help young people. If someone wants to steal it and still uses it to help young people, I'm okay with that. But next time I edit it, I'll put a copyright line on it.

    Mike, Depending on how many years ago it was that you first "published" this paper, you likely don't need a copyright notice to protect it. My recollection of copyright law is sketchy and faded, so here is what Wikipedia says:

    For works first published on or after March 1, 1989, use of the copyright notice is optional. Before March 1, 1989, the use of the notice was mandatory on all published works. Omitting the notice on any work first published from January 1, 1978, to February 28, 1989, could have resulted in the loss of copyright protection if corrective steps were not taken within a certain amount of time. Works published before January 1, 1978, are governed by the 1909 Copyright Act. Under that law, if a work was published under the copyright owner's authority without a proper notice of copyright, all copyright protection for that work was permanently lost in the United States.

    Never hurts to include it though!

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    E TN, near Knoxville
    Posts
    12,298
    Your write-up looks interesting and useful. I'll save it for future use. Too bad the teachers were not interested. (Hey, expand that into a book in your spare time!)

    I'm no mathematician but when taking college courses I found fellow students often confused about basic math such as trig, even simple derivatives. Meeting at the library for study I found that just showing them how I liked to visualize things with graphs and diagrams helped a lot.

    JKJ

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    NW Indiana
    Posts
    3,078
    Calculus and differential equations were like opening a new world of understanding for me. It tied things together in such an elegant way. People often ask if I speak a foreign language and I reply I speak fluent Calculus and Thermodynamics. I get weird looks. I have very little facility for language but have been proficient in these. The majority of people have no idea the power and usefulness of Calculus.

    Since I retired, the use of these is pretty much gone.

  7. #22
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Burlington, Washington
    Posts
    72
    Mike, reading your paper caused me to recall my college days. I enjoyed all my math classes until I got to dify q. I was never so happy when the course was behind me. Because of my results in the prerequisite math classes, I was put into an honors differential equations class with a bunch of math majors. My contribution was to bring the curve down for the class. Never had any reason to apply the fundamentals during my career as a civil engineer.

  8. #23
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    NW Indiana
    Posts
    3,078
    I did fine with Calculus until the last class I took which was Vector Integral Calculus with triple integrals and grafient, divergence and curl.

    For the most part, I have only used Calculus in college where it was used for derivation of formula and ideas.

  9. #24
    Very generous of you, Mike.

    David Sochar's response dovetails with that of my older son. He was a terrible student in high school, didn't graduate in fact. He didn't like to fail so he didn't try to do things that didn't come easily so he spent his time reading and playing video games. He was especially bad in math, even basic arithmetic. When he got interested in timber framing he taught himself enough so that now he runs a successful business, designs his frames in Sketchup, develops accurate cutlists and oversees the bookkeeping. He'll probably never use a differential equation or calculus, but I am sure that if he saw the need he would learn it.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •