I have not had much time to do math this week due to pressures at my day job and preparations for the World Science Fiction Convention. I'll be showing prints there, of many of the pieces that you can see on my main website. Unfortunately, I won't be showing any new or non-printed "original" work. I simply have not had time to make any.

I have had to cut about 60 mats and mounts, the cardboard frames that hold prints. This is one of the most tedious jobs in commercial art. Not only do I have to cut them using a mat-cutting knife (I have no room for a professional mat-cutting device), I have to place the signed and numbered print on the mounting board, place the mat over it in just the right position, fasten the print to its mounting board, then fasten the mat to the print's mounting board to produce a sturdy package. And even then my work is not done. I put documentation and a written (printed) note about the picture on the back of each print. Finally, each print needs a tag for tracking and pricing at the print shop of the convention art show.

Even with all this slicing and sticking, I have done a little math. I can't live without doing at least some of it. "Positive addiction," you know. I've been reviewing my recently learned logarithms with the two more modern math texts I mentioned an entry or so ago, namely Barron's and "White Paul Klee." Barron's is much more practical than 1958. Interestingly, it still has logarithm tables, though it recommends the use of a calculator. Barron's problem sets are not totally abstract, but are related to widely used logarithmic-scale measurements such as decibels (for sound) and the magnitudes of stars (brightness as seen by observers on Earth). 1958 had some of these, too, but not many.

When I read the Barron's text introducing logarithms, for a minute I thought that I was reading about some other type of math altogether, something that I had completely failed to learn. This was a frightening minute. It was just like one of those nightmares you have where you are sitting to take a final exam and realized not only that you have not studied, but you don't know the material at all. But reading on in the Barron's text, I realized that they were just putting the elements of logarithms and exponential functions in a different order, and that the stuff I was familiar with was right there.

I get that review panic feeling sometimes when I look back into an algebra or trigonometry text and realize that I would not be able to pass a test on a subject that I slaved and struggled over just a year ago. The antidote for this panic, of course, is to do more reviewing, until I am re-familiarized with what I need to know. For instance, I want to revisit series and progressions, along with their sums and limits, which I last worked on in early 2003. I will also need to review my beginning studies in classical mechanics, such as accelerations, vectors, and Newton's laws.

Interestingly, I don't get panic when I look back at things like quadratic equations, polynomials, or congruent triangles. I have been through these things so many times that I feel at ease with them. I'd like to have that feeling with many more things in both math and physics. Only revisiting and review can give me that facility. It's the way my path goes; sometimes I have to go back in order to go ahead.

Posted at 2:04 am | link