Martin’s Blog

In keeping with this blog’s mission to make boring things interesting and interesting things boring I will present merely the destinations and activities in my short Western USA holiday with my parents. If anybody wants details or opinions feel free to ask.

Tucson - Desert Museum.

Grand Canyon - The south rim. Ranger talks about the Colorado river, fossils, condors and the trees on the rim. Some walks around the rim and a bit down.

Las Vegas - Circus Circus (accommodation, acts, gambling $20). A magic show with big cats. Looked at lots of casinos: The Venetian, The Mirage, Caesar’s Palace, MGM Grand…

Yosemite - Stayed at the Wawona hotel. Visited the Mariposa grove of giant sequoias and the Yosemite valley. Did walks and saw talks on bears and trees. Saw a bear.

San Francisco - Walked around Fisherman’s Wharf. Cycled over the Golden Gate Bridge. Went to Alcatraz. Saw the crookedest street in the world. Went up Coit tower. Rode cable cars.

The spelling bee is on TV. I’ve always considered myself a pretty good speller so tested myself against the contestants. I started well but as you’ll see had a serious losing streak.

The contestants are allowed to ask for meaning, pronunciation, language of origin, if it comes from a root (eg “Does it come from the greek canus” (sic - should be Latin canis - thanks Dave)), alternate meanings, use in a sentence. They have 2 minutes.

My answers with ‘y’ if I got them right, ‘n (correct answer)’ if I got it wrong.

Beginning somewhere in round 5

peristeronic - y
ullage - y
goravon - n (gorevan)¹
chevay - n (chevee)²
festschrift - y

Round 6 (last 24)

advocaat - y
tarmic - n (ptarmic)
oliocellosis - n (oleocellosis)³
porbw… (didn’t have a guess before the kid) - n (pourboire)
durach - n (duroc)
sciathaform - n (cyathiform)
phillarine - n (phyllorhine) ⁴
sutache - n (soutache)⁵
ticour - n (tiquer)
milliary - n (miliary)
surdab - n (serdab)⁶
hissup - n (hyssop)
galbulous - n (galbulus)⁷
phollodosis - n (pholidosis)
sugdulation - n (suggilation)
opthalmoplegia - n (ophthalmoplegia)⁸
redap - n (redoppe)
secernant - n (secernent)
crystocrene - n (chrystocrene)⁹
piolonephritis - n (pyelonephritis)⁹
hipabyssal - n (hypabyssal)⁹
seigno - n (segno)
phrenosectomy - n (phrenicectomy)
floraisonne - n (floraison)
phyrratism - n (pyrrhotism)¹⁰
canicular - y!!!!¹¹

Notes:
1. This kind of word which comes from an Iranian geographical name is just impossible unless you’ve seen it.
2. I don’t know French spelling: this will be a problem as you see down later.
3. Should have got this.
4. Meaning is “pertaining to leaf nosed bats”. This should give away rhine and phyllos as Greek roots.
5. Comes from French via Hungarian. The Hungarian doesn’t help…
6. Great comment from the analyst: “If he hasn’t seen this word before he just needs to trust his knowledge of Persian phonetic spelling.”
7. Knowing that it’s a noun should give away that its ‘us’ not ‘ous’.
8. Should have got this.
9. Ugh. I need to learn Greek.
10. Meaning was “red headed”. I realised it was from the word pyrrhic but couldn’t remember how to spell it.
11. Phonetic spelling, confirmed by the alternative definition as being close to the time when the dog star comes out.

So I’ve finished my first year (you can read my rather hastily written report here). I had the Algebra exam on Friday which went pretty well. The one question I didn’t quite figure out was finding all 2 by 2 rational matrices which are solutions of . (This question might stump people who learnt all their algebra at UQ: the way to do it is using rational canonical forms and characteristic/minimal polynomials).

I’ve got my grades back and got A’s which is good. They aren’t particularly important but it means I’m on the right track I guess and also I think means I get a payrise next year. The actually important thing is the qualifying exams which are around the start of August.

So I’ll take a while off (looking for house this week, moving house the week after, traveling around with my parents for a couple of weeks after that) and then preparation for the quals begins. The qualifying exams are three three hour exams loosely based on the core courses (real analysis, algebra and geometry/topology) + some undergrad background. But they are meant to be independent of these courses so the fact that we didn’t cover some of the material just means we have to learn it ourselves.

There are a set of old quals that we’ve got so I’ll spend the summer doing those questions / all possible variations on them. All the first year students will be meeting with some helpful grad students from later years throughout the summer.

So I’ll spend most of the summer doing questions, playing softball (the summer league plays something like three times a week) and watching baseball/listening to cricket. Fun. It’s already hit F a couple of days this week so it’s going to be hot.

After my usual panicked web searching (ABC streaming doesn’t work in the US when the cricket is on) I found a West Indian stream at http://stream.netro.ca/cananewslive.

Katich is gone already! Jim Maxwell on the radio! Cool.

The other cricket news that has amused me recently is a reminder of the arrogance of Australian cricketers. Hayden has given an interview that is entirely him talking about how good he is.

And Warney is once again giving hints that if everybody just admitted how much they love and miss him he’d be happy to return the conquering hero. He said this for years about one day cricket and nobody ever took him up on it. I certainly hope they don’t go back to him for the Ashes. Even if they have to pick McGain, Casson, Cullen … it’s worth it just to keep up the rule that you have to play real cricket to be picked for Australia.

Edit: At drinks in the last session they are talking to some Australians who are singing the song from Cool Runnings…

For all the category theory/footnote freaks out there you might enjoy this seminar abstract:

Arithmetic

The natural numbers* arise frequently in mathematics, having applications in fields ranging from non-linear ordinary differential equations to non-linear partial differential equations**. Many mathematicians are foolishly content with only a mediocre understanding of these rather intricate objects, leaving the foundational underpinnings of the theory subject to such whimsical farces as intuition, emotion, and set theory***. The more enlightened among us recognize the importance of establishing a solid base to the theory. In this talk, we will cover topics from arithmetic such as “decimal notation” and “carrying the one” from a true mathematician’s point of view. This talk should be accessible to everyone****, and will illuminate some insightful new ways of teaching arithmetic to elementary school children*****.

(*)-by which I mean the natural numbers object in a suitably chosen topos category
(**)-and possibly beyond
(***)-“naive” indeed…
(****)-with some background in group cohomology
(*****)-who you do not like

The actual talk was pretty good. The highlight was probably when the speaker asked why use the digits 0 to 9 then decided to use -4 to 5 instead. But instead of -4 he wrote an upside down 4 and pronounced it ruof and similar for -1,-2,-3. He then proceeded to do high speed long division and get the right answer - very impressive.

Another occasionally amusing math department tradition can be found here. I won’t mention its name to keep it off google.

College Algebra final grades: 12 E’s, 7 D’s, 6 C’s, 5 B’s, 1 A, 2 W’s, 2 WP’s, 1 I. Ouch!

Analysis take home final exam. Part of question 6 is wrong and question 4 is incomplete but apart from that I did a reasonable job.

Topology take home final exam (lacking hand drawn pictures). Question 8 is backwards and 2,5,6,… could be wrong if I wasn’t thinking about them right.

Topology paper on cobordism. This was kind of mediocre. I didn’t put enough time into it so the first three pages are nice enough then it starts to become less complete. I finished off by putting all the results I wanted to prove and then failing to flesh them out. If you’re reading Greg, sorry I didn’t send you a copy - I’m sure you could have improved it (I don’t really know what I’m talking about in parts) - but I was writing it up until 10 minutes before it was due.

Algebra exam tomorrow and then I can take some time off!

I don’t think that I’ve ever read a Lancashire League scorecard before this season but it is a competition that I was vaguely aware of. However, with my hometown hero Brendan Drew playing for Lowerhouse as their professional this year I have started to take a slightly more serious interest.

Wikipedia describes Lowerhouse CC as the most unsuccessful team in the league and they’re continuing that this year with three losses. Drewy took 3/41 opening the bowling and scored 2 batting at number four in their latest outing but lost to the Nathan McCullum inspired Rawtenstall.

The best part of the Lancashire league is the pros: it’s where New Zealand cricket come to die. Chris Harris is currently playing his 10th season in the league and other New Zealand pros include Craig McMillan and Lou Vincent.

So I was doing my algebra homework on Monday night when who should arrive but Chris (blog link) and Dane (wikipedia link). So we went out and had a beer. Some discussion of what to do the next day led to the choice of Mexico, so down to Nogales we would go.

After my early morning office hour we set off in the rather luxurious Plymouth Grand Voyager that they had purchased to visit each of the lower 48 states (progress so far). The trip down was about as boring as most Arizona driving with the exception of the discovery that road signs south of Tucson are in kilometres!

Once we got to Nogales we parked on the US side and crossed the border by foot. You don’t need a passport or anything to get into Mexico - just walk past a bored looking guard. (Getting back into the US would be more of a problem without the requisite documentation).

Once inside we were amazed by the huge numbers of dentists, pharmacies, places selling cowboy boots, small children selling ‘curios’ or just begging, and by the distinct lack of bars.

Our naive hopes of Mexican debauchery were quickly dashed. Perhaps 11:30 on a Tuesday morning was a little early for the bars to be open but there seemed to be about 5 bars in the entire place compared to at least 30 pharmacies. It’s a real commercial border town but not much of a tourist town: there are guys with donkeys on the corners who you can get a photo with but really not a whole lot else to do except buy crap.

So we wandered around looking for a place to drink and finally settled on a place to eat. Inside a friendly man told us we would have the beef and potatoes. We shrugged and he served up some alphabet soup and then some kind of beef and potatoes. It wasn’t the most exciting meal ever…

After confusion over the cost with the Spanish speaking girl at the register (US$14) we decided to head back to the one bar that we had seen to be open but had ignored because it wasn’t authentic enough (It had Budweiser signs and everything). There we had some Dos Equis and nachos and ignored the pitiable entreaties of the street merchants.

After a while of this we admitted Nogales had broken our spirits and headed back to the good old USofA. The guy at customs asked us if we were Canadian…

So, not the most successful trip ever. I think Mexico could be very interesting, but I wouldn’t recommend Nogales.

The next day we played putt-putt golf and went to the batting cages. Much more fun.

The basic criteria are power and fielding ability for position players and arm strength for the pitchers. I’ve probably picked more Australians than is justified but they just feel more like baseballers than Indians for example. I probably should have picked more South Africans but I don’t like them.

I’d like to see this. I feel that with a years training the batsman would be solid in the field and occasionally score some runs. The pitchers would be more hit and miss but if you can throw accurately at 95mph you really only need to develop one other pitch (changeup or splitter perhaps) to be effective.

Catcher: Adam Gilchrist
First Base: Kevin Pietersen
Second Base: Michael Clarke
Third Base: Herschelle Gibbs
Shortstop: Ricky Ponting
Left Field: Shahid Afridi
Center Field: Andrew Symonds
Right Field: Andrew Flintoff

Starting Rotation:
Shane Bond
Brett Lee
Shoaib Akhtar
Mitchell Johnson
Dale Steyn

Bench:
Brad Haddin
Brendan McCullum
Cameron White (Designated Hitter in AL games)
Dwayne Bravo
Shane Watson

Bullpen:
Nathan Bracken
Stuart Clark
Shaun Tait (Closer)
Makhaya Ntini
Mohammad Asif
Zaheer Khan
James Franklin

Manager: Shane Warne

I’m watching the feed from http://www.iplt20.com/ There is no commentary which is an interesting way to watch cricket.

My thoughts:

The Kolkata Knight Riders have ridiculous gold helmets (and name).

Cheerleaders are as crap as ever.

Asad Rauf looks pretty good in a cowboy hat. He’s got a bit of swagger in him.

McCullum starting to go nuts. Ponting and D Hussey to follow, Kolkata should be able to get a good score here.

On comes Noffke. 5 wides! I blame Boucher. Then another one down leg side that McCullum helps on its way for 6.

Ooh, commentary just came on. And I can also hear the guy in the truck saying what camera they should go to. This is fascinating.

They’ve sorted out the sound. McCullum has 35 off 16. Ganguly is slower paced.