What Did You Learn This Year?

TheBody

As the 2013 draws to an end, what new maths did you learn this year? What topic annoyed the hell out of you but you finally got the hang of? Maybe it was someting from the Leaving/Junior cert course or maybe it is something from third level maths.

For me, I finally got started in learning some algebraic topology. I've been threatening to do it for long enough!! I'm still in the early stages but I hope to eventually do something with this and complex analysis.

How about yourself?

DJW11

Returned to finish my Mech. Eng. degree last year, entering into year 2 after 8 years out of University.

I forgot everything, so spent the summer digesting Stroud engineering Maths, Half of Stroud Advanced engineering maths and now Slowly digesting Kreyszig Advanced engineering, its been 12-16 hrs 5-7 days a week for 8 months of only maths (while my class have been away on Co-op placements), a slog but enjoyable once the groundwork was done.

Up to PDE's now course wise and starting game theory for ****s and giggles

TheBody

DJW11 wrote: »

Returned to finish my Mech. Eng. degree last year, entering into year 2 after 8 years out of University.

I forgot everything, so spent the summer digesting Stroud engineering Maths, Half of Stroud Advanced engineering maths and now Slowly digesting Kreyszig Advanced engineering, its been 12-16 hrs 5-7 days a week for 8 months of only maths (while my class have been away on Co-op placements), a slog but enjoyable once the groundwork was done.

Up to PDE's now course wise and starting game theory for ****s and giggles

Well done. It can be tough to keep with it but you have to keep your eyes on the prize.

Iderown

At last, in retirement from paid work, I have made a start on the study of tensor algebra and analysis. I'm going through the little book by Barry Spain. I'm interested in its application to General Relativity.

TheBody

Iderown wrote: »

At last, in retirement from paid work, I have made a start on the study of tensor algebra and analysis. I'm going through the little book by Barry Spain. I'm interested in its application to General Relativity.

I LOVE general relativity. Back in my college days, it was my strongest topic. Really beautiful stuff. Pity I've forgotten it all.

Colonel Sanders

Copulas! For applying dependencies within a capital model.

What a head frying topic (when you move away from the Gaussian). A topic with any number of theoretical papers but very little of actual practical use

El Siglo

Compositional data analysis, John Aitchison's stuff from the 1980s. It's enjoyable, not too difficult (rounded zero replacements are subjective and the pure mathematicians like to develop fairly obfusticated transforms). Along with that, being a non-mathematician (did pass maths in the LC) finally learned some linear algebra, actually now understand (I think) scalars and vectors, quite proud myself for that actually!

DJW11

TheBody wrote: »

Well done. It can be tough to keep with it but you have to keep your eyes on the prize.

Cheers, it was a slog, but when I grasped the fact that any new material we were learning was only going to be understood and even possible to do once I new the basics and new them well, once I got them back into my head, teaching myself the new material like laplace transforms and fourier series became alot more manageable.

I wish I had the chance to specialize in technical subjects in second level without having to do others, like they do in England. More time spent then at the likes of maths and physics, meaning a better chance of learning it and truly understanding it.

I'd love to push on maybe not academically but just for myself and get into some more physics based stuff like general relativity and quantum theory, also have a taste for the financial end of things after doing a module in stats and probability, thats real interesting stuff