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Status Reports
Status: Mathematics (2019 - December)
(Text as at 19/01/2020 23:41:17)
(For earlier versions of this Note, see the table at the end)
The text of this report – apart from the automatically-generated statistics – hasn’t been changed since end September 2019 as this project is substantially in abeyance. This report is generated automatically.
Rationale for this Project- This is rather an eccentric activity, partly an attempt to exorcise some ancient demon – the rather bruising experience of reading mathematics at King’s College Cambridge back in the mid 1970’s.
- However, any modern educated person should be reasonably up to date with the mathematical sciences, and statistical and probability theory are essential tools for evaluating evidence, and are useful in Bridge! If only advanced mathematics wasn’t such a difficult subject.
- This project is diverging from Mathematics per se to the Philosophy of Mathematics and other related subjects. For instance, Philosophy of Mathematics features in Philosophy of Religion by providing an analogy or model of the sort of necessary existence that God is supposed to have.
Summary of Progress during October - December 2019- I spent 8.5 hours in 19Q4 on this Project, or related work (8.5 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2019). That's 65.7% of the planned effort (65.7% YTD). Overall, 1.3% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 1.3% YTD) - as against 1.7% planned (1.7% YTD).
- YTD Activity1
Mathematics (Total Hours = 8.5)- Mathematics - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 7.5)
- Mathematics - Admin
- Mathematics - Lectures
- Progress (if any) in the current quarter can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List2, and YTD in the current & future “automatic” editions of this report.
Plans for the Near Future: - Because of the need to focus on higher-priority projects, it is not possible to schedule much time on this project, but I have put down 1 hour / week as part of an over-stretched budget. We’ll see how it goes.
- So, if I do find the time, I’ll be looking into:-
- Aeon: Read papers as they arise.
- "Feynman (Richard), Leighton (Robert B.) & Sands (Matthew) - The Feynman Lectures on Physics - Vol I": Read.
- "Gowers (Timothy), Barrow-Green (June) & Leader (Imre), Eds. - The Princeton Companion to Mathematics": Browse.
- "Polya (George), Stewart (Ian) - How to Solve IT: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method": Read.
- Try the puzzles in
→ "Polya (George) & Kilpatrick (Jeremy) - The Stanford Mathematics Problem Book: With Hints and Solutions", and
→ "UKMT, du Sautoy (Marcus) - The Ultimate Mathematical Challenge". - "Shapiro (Stewart) - Thinking about Mathematics - The Philosophy of Mathematics": Complete reading.
- "Smith (Martin) - Why Throwing 92 Heads in a Row Is Not Surprising": Analyze.
- "Tammet (Daniel) - Thinking in Numbers: How Maths Illuminates Our Lives": Read.
- "Wilmott (Paul) - Machine Learning: An Applied Mathematics Introduction": Read.
Mathematical Resources
In-Page Footnotes:
Footnote 1: - As this project is substantially inactive, I don’t update the text quarterly as for the active projects, but only at the end of the academic year.
- If there are hours in the Plan, the Quarterly and YTD figures appear against that plan and are “as at” the end of the last Quarter.
- The YTD Activity-list is to make the end-year task easier, and to give a clearer idea of what – if anything – has been going on in the interim.
- Items on this list are “as at” the date of production of the report – which may be at any time in a quarter, so totals don’t necessarily cross-cast against the QTD / YTD figures.
Footnote 3: - These are not left over from my Cambridge days as these few books were given away to my sister’s high-school in Gloucester by my mother during my brief sojourn with the Carthusians.
- Rather, I found them going cheap in bulk at a local second-hand bookshop.
- They are accessible via …this link.
Printable Version:
Table of the Previous 12 Versions of this Note: (of 50)
Summary of Note Links from this Page
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Summary of Note Links to this Page
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Text Colour Conventions
- Black: Printable Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2020
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2020