It has been brought to my attention by a British reader that a song by the rock band R.E.M., on their new album AROUND THE SUN, is titled "Electron Blue." I am mildly astonished. I am not an R.E.M. fan, I don't even listen to their music, and I had absolutely no knowledge that they were using this title for a song. And it is inconceivable that the songwriters of this band have ever encountered this Weblog. I quickly referred to one of the pop-up and spyware-laden song lyrics sites to read the lyrics for the R.E.M. song, and they seem to have something to do with a hopeless relationship with a woman who is addicted to speed and adventure. Well that certainly isn't me. I can only speculate where the writer got the idea. "Electron Blue" (as I mentioned in my "Why the Title" section here) is the color of a car, which has been used not only for my modestly powered Honda CRV but for other, faster, more powerful sports vehicles. It is also, as a Google search has just shown me, the name of a fancy professional graphics computer monitor, and a pre-designed template for PowerPoint presentations. Gosh, who knew this was so popular? I'm not changing the weblog title here, though.

Now I have these embarrassing visions of being accused by R.E.M. fans of appropriating one of their song titles. Honestly, guys and gals, I didn't know. But in honor of this piece of synchronicity, I went to an R.E.M. fan site, where the new album will play for you in "streaming audio." I heard my namesake song, sung by the forever wistful Michael Stipe:

Adventure has laid its claim on you
It's all you want to do….
You know where to run
You run Electron Blue.

The Big Sig

Meanwhile, all five of you readers out there may be wondering why I haven't put up any new entries for a week. Well, first of all, I've been distracted by a heavy workload at my day job, by studio artwork I had to get done because I had put it off for far too long, and also by enticing new equipment in my studio that I want to play with. Not only that, I am much involved with some fantasy writing, which has taken up the time I usually use to write this Weblog. So am I slacking off with the math and physics?

Well, let me explain. I am a math wuss. I should already be well into Calculus, but I am afraid of it. Why? Because almost every person I talk to about learning mathematics says something like, "I was real good at algebra and geometry, but when it came time for me to do Calculus, I tried it and I just HIT A WALL. I failed in the first semester and never tried again." I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this! I cannot evade the thought that there must be something so intimidating, so difficult and incomprehensible about Calculus, that it will defeat even the best students, let alone me.

So I am biding my time by re-visiting sequences, progressions, their sums, and factorials. This latter is something I had not been formally introduced to before, but I've seen the notation. A number with an exclamation point, such as 5! which signifies 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5, or 120. To my innocent eye, seeing that notation with the exclamation point adds an emotional intensity to the number, as if it were saying, Wow! Pay attention! This is exciting….FIVE! 5!

But why that notation for factorial numbers? Maybe they just used the exclamation point because all the other punctuation marks had already been used. Or perhaps there really is something exciting about a factorial number, especially how they mount up precipitously into absurd gazillions by the time they get to 100!

Factorial numbers are one of those things which will be significant later on, when I get the courage to proceed into calculus. But actually, I think that these sequences and progressions and sums do lead into calculus, because from a previous go-round I learned how to take the limit of a progression which is just at the threshold of calculus.

I am also reviewing sigma notation, the code mathematics uses for the sum of a sequence or progression. It involves a big Sigma, around which little cryptic numbers and letters orbit. Even though I'm a Greek scholar, this big Greek letter is scary. It is the first Greek letter in math that I have encountered since friendly old Pi. I think it's the size that is scary. It looks like a Kabbalistic diagram, where a big dark master letter is surrounded by its lighter disciple letters. So the one at the top is the upper limit of the progression, the one at the bottom is the lower limit or beginning of the progression, and the notation at the right side of the Big Sig is the formula for how the progression proceeds. And then the Sigma means that you add it all up.

As I remember from my first attempt at learning this, there is always that underlying structure of advancing by integers, from 0 to 1 to 2, etc. No matter how elaborate the formula for creating the progression, there are still 1,2,3,4….steps in the progression. You can't get away from plain old one, two, three, many.

Posted at 2:49 pm | link