The Nature and Growth (and Shrinkage) of Modern Mathematics

The Nature and Growth (and Shrinkage) of Modern Mathematics

I've struggled with math since elementary school.  In the 1990's, in my 20's, a late mentor of mine, Dave Mitchell, suggested the book The Nature and Growth of Modern Mathematics by Edna E. Kramer might help me overcome some of that.

It was slow reading for me, and over the course of a few years I made my way through a few chapters.  Until early 2001, when I moved to Pune, India for a year.  Since I was only going for a year, it wasn't among the few books that I packed up to take there with me.

Then I ended up spending a decade in India before I moved back to the United States.  When I did move back to the U.S. I moved to New York City, and didn't have easy access to my large library in storage out in Waldport, Oregon.

With the coronavirus pandemic this year, I figured I'd buy another copy and pick up reading it again.  I found a used one easily enough but there's a problem with it.  In the 20 years since I last read it, the print has shrunk to minuscule, Holy Cow! unreadable size.   (yeah, yeah, I know, it's my aging eyes...)

As for math, I actually did excel at math twice as a boy, in elementary school.  But each time the teachers punished me for it and I learned my lesson, never again excel at math.

The first time was in 2nd grade at the Fellowship Farm School in Piscataway, NJ.  My best friend, Brian, and I worked ahead in our math workbook, enjoying, having fun.  But when our teacher. Mrs. Cooper, found out she punished us.  Back then standard punishment was having to stand against the wall in the hallway during class, and then stand against the wall of the lunchroom during lunch, only eating quickly after everyone not being punished had finished.  We faced this for a week.

I never again worked ahead of the class in math again.

Then the second time was in 4th grade, in a new school, Waldport Grade School, where I was a new student, having moved there in October 1978. Mrs. Elsie Apt gave us the assignment to write all the numbers from 1 to 10,000.  Not all at once, over a few weeks, with some days a set of 100, or 500, or at most 1,000.

Quite an onerous assignment.  However, at some point in it I noticed a weird repetition in the digits of sequences of numbers.  It didn't take me long to figure out how to exploit that to make the writing of all the numbers go quicker.  Especially where the digit 1 (one) repeats in the same position of 10 or more numbers (bearing in mind the maximum repeats is 1,000 but the lined pages only had so many rows...)

Even with other numbers, I could just go down the lines, write 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 over and over till the page was full, then move to the next digit of all the numbers and repeatedly write something like 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, then got to the 3's and so forth and so on...  

Of course, my skill at handwriting and related isn't so great that this wasn't obvious from the way I turned in the page. 

Sample of 210 - 219

Mrs. Apt considered this to be cheating.  And I had to rewrite a number of pages.  

So, despite learning something more valuable about numbers than the teacher probably intended, I got punished for it.  Lesson learned, don't excel in math!

On the plus side, that school year my mother was a volunteer whale counter for the Oregon State University Marine Science Center, so I wrote a lot of those number pages, plus other homework, from the top of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse.  So that's a hell of a good memory.

My Photo of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse from 2016.

Close-Up U.S.A.

Close-Up U.S.A.

When I was a kid in the 1970s and my parents were preparing to drive across the country and find a new place to live, they bought a boxed set of maps from National Geographic named Close-Up U.S.A.  Now, as a kid, I misread the title, thinking it meant the heteronym, like a business at the end of the day would "close up the shop," I thought the USA, my home country, was closing!

It was a relief some time later to realize that the title meant something more like "I'm ready for my close-up now," and the U.S.A. wan't actually closing.  And it was kind of funny for years to think of my childhood misunderstanding.

However, now in March 2020, the U.S.A. is sort of closing up, like "close up shop" kind of closing.  With the novel coronavirus pandemic spreading and people getting sick with the COVID-19 from it.  The president is belated closing our borders, starting first with travelers from China, but now from Europe (minus the one European country where this president owns commercial properties).

States are closing schools all over.  New York State just shot down all Broadway plays in order to reduce the number of people in close proximity.  Several states have put a limit on the number of people gathered together.

It'll probably get more restricted before it gets back to normal, whenever it does...

The U.S.A., bit by bit, is closing!

Here are some photos of Close-Up U.S.A. thought I found on the internet.  None of these photos are mine.

Jury Duty in Manhattan, Again

So, last week I had jury duty, again.

This time it was at a different courthouse than my previous jury duty in 2013.  I had to go to 111 Centre Street, room 1121.  I think this was a New York County court rather than a state one, I don't know.

I got there around 8am, an hour early for the 9am time.  I walked around outside for a little bit, then decided to go through the security stuff early, before any lines formed up.  Security was easy, the guards barely paid attention to me, and once I'd walked through the metal detector and my stuff passed through the x-ray machine, they no longer even looked my direction.

Upstairs on the 11th floor I had a while to wait.  I snapped a few photos of the view just after sunrise. Then I saw the sign that said no photographs may be taken under any circumstances.  Although judging by the security cameras on the ceiling, there are circumstances...

The head clerk was the same fellow as last time, seven years ago, William T. Stevenson.  He was pretty cool, with a very positive attitude about, well, everything.  Actually, it was reassuring, considering how stressful I find jury duty.

The clerks began the orientation for jurors at just after 9am, showing us a video and giving us instructions on filling out a small demographic form, then turning in our juror ballots so they know who all is there.

Then we waited.  And waited.  One of the clerks, Mr. Stevenson, occasionally let us know that they were "waiting for work" to come from the judges.

About 10% of the jurors in the room were clearly sick, coughing, sneezing and sniffling pretty steadily.  There wasn't a "sick section," they were scattered around so there wasn't anywhere to escape the risk of infection.

Around 11am the clerks announced that a civil trial was sending up some lawyers to us to find some jurors, which was unusual instead of us going to them in a courtroom.

When the lawyers entered it was obvious who they were, their suits were definitely high quality, way above what the only male clerk, or the two male jurors who came in suits were wearing.

They gave us in the jury pool a quick introduction to their case, asbestos poisoning.  They said it would last about 6 weeks, and listed the dates, which in my head I totaled up to just under 8 weeks.  Then they handed out a questionnaire to everyone, which also listed the dates of the trial, just under 8 weeks.

We stood up, raised our right hands and swore an oath, then sat down to fill in the questionnaires.  The first question was if we would face any hardships sitting on a jury for that length of time.  Of course, I would, so I wrote an essay there about being the sole breadwinner of my household and that missing my regular paychecks for that duration would be a hardship, but if absolutely required I could sell some assets, pawn some items, or pay my rent on a credit card.

Another question was "have you ever been in jury selection for another asbestos case?" For that, I checked "yes" because, in fact, I have.

The lawyers then gathered up the questionnaires from everyone and went into a small side room to go through them.  It wasn't very long before they went to the clerks and asked for a small number of people to come forward.  I wasn't one of them, but the discussion was loud enough to hear, that they picked those jurors who would then go home and on some specific evening call the courthouse for instructions where to appear the following day.

The clerk then asked us if we wanted our questionnaires back or we would be ok with him shredding them in the room in front of us.  He made it clear that whatever we chose, he would release us for lunch after he finished whichever choice, and if we wanted them back it would take a lot longer to call people one-by-one to come up and get their own than for him to stuff the papers in the shredder...    We chose shredder...

Then it was out for an hour and a half lunch break.  The whole jury selection process is monstrously stressful for me, so I didn't think I could eat without tossing it back up.  I just walked around the neighborhood for a while, getting fresh air.  It's nice walking around that area on a workday, when I'm usually in my office elsewhere.

After returning from my walk I bought a couple of bags of chips from the vending machine in the jurors' assembly room, one of plantains and one of corn chips.

The afternoon session was pretty similar.  We sat around, the clerk came around everyone now and then to let us know that we were "waiting for work" from the judges, but that there simply weren't any trials starting that needed jurors.

This went on till about 3:30pm when the clerk, Mr. Stevenson, said he'd called the judge and there wasn't anything going on, so he got permission to release us, not just for the day, but from this summons.  He had us stick around while they distributed the letters to keep that said we served and the courts under the state system cannot call us back for another four years (used to be six, but the laws changed).

And that was that for me, I walked up to Canal Street and took an N train back home, getting there slightly earlier than I would on a normal workday.

Honestly, I feel a little guilty that twice now I've gotten out of my civic duty based on money.  It's supposed to be something of a sacrifice for the greater good of society, etc.  I get that, I'm willing to make some sacrifice.  But both times, eight weeks out of work was just too much.  I'd have had to either sell off assets or go into debt, paying rent and buying food on a credit card, in order to serve.  I know if I ended up on one of those juries, I'd spend eight weeks sitting in the courtroom seething, angry that the judge is getting paid to be there, the lawyers big bucks, probably, to be there, the clerks, the bailiffs, the reporter, the expert witnesses, the news reporters, almost everyone else getting paid to be there, while I'd be there myself paying to be part of it.

I mean, I'd've been willing to serve on a jury for a trial a few days, one, two, five, six, 10 even, you know, in length, I could swing that.  It'd only be a minor dent in my finances.  But eight weeks would just be crushing.