Or why, after many years, I still can’t get over the fact I flunked complex variable analysis
I’ve got something to prove.
It probably all started many years ago when, as a small child in grade school, I was deeply envious of my best friend’s ease with arithmetic. I wanted that power and it always bothered me that I couldn’t force myself to sit down and acquire or exercise it. Thus began a lifetime love-hate relationship with mathematics. Mathematics is hard for people to do. The human brain, despite what Penrose thinks, doesn’t have the hardware to do math naturally. Doing math is a highly unnatural act. That’s probably why it appeals to me.
Supposedly, according to Myers-Briggs, I have a personality suited for the study of mathematics. I have a strong appreciation for its beauty and power but, the thing is, I just don’t have the patience for it. Math takes a lot of mental ditch-digging and I have never been one to practice anything. I’d probably make a poor musician for the same reasons. And now that I am well past my mental peak, it seems unlikely that I will astound the world with some new and powerful proof.
I still toy with the idea of doing math as a hobby and I have decided that this page will be devoted to some of the more interesting ideas in mathematics. And perhaps I might include some of my own efforts here along with progress reports.
One of the more astounding ideas that was introduced to me in high school was the idea of different kinds of infinity and that it was possible to organize these kinds of infinity into a numbering system called the transfinite numbers. The sheer audacity of it! Of course mathematicians have always flirted with mysticism