Random memory

[pne]

One of my physics teachers in high school occasionally said that chemistry was basically only a tiny subset of physics (basically, the bits involving electrons in atoms and how they react with one another). I think he intended the statement to annoy the chemistry teachers.

Once, I told my chemistry teacher about that claim; as best I recall, he said that essentially, all of science (including physics) is basically a subset of mathematics.

Might explain why I took Maths, Physics, and Chemistry at Higher level for the IB. Along with only two or three other crazies.

(My fourth Higher was German B, since the teachers wouldn't let me into German B Subsidiary classes—where I, as a native speaker, would totally be far and beyond anyone else—, and I figured German B Higher was less work than German A Subsidiary, and I didn't want to take two A languages anyway. My Subsidiary classes were English A and History.)

(FWIW, they also gave me the option of attending the German BH classes but taking the German BS exam; however, since my plan was to avoid work during the last two years of school rather than at the final exam, that wasn't particularly appealing.)

I always found maths fun, and to this day have difficulty understanding (in the visceral put-myself-in-their-position sense) people who don't. I also consider myself a poor maths teacher since I don't quite "get" people who don't understand maths as well as I do; I have a bit of difficulty following their way of thinking and realising where they started getting confused in a problem.

It helped that I found maths easy; my typical score on tests was 39/40.

And I remember at the end of one year, when students were calculating how many points they needed to score on the final exam to bring their average grade for that year up to a 6 (out of 7 possible grade levels); I think I would have needed to score below 30%, or something like that, in order to bring my average grade down to a 6.

I did find integrals hard, though, for anything non-trivial.

Comments

[opal1159.livejournal.com]

I hate theoretical math. :(

[pleiades829.livejournal.com]

I got to college and found that biology was really chemistry,k chemistry was really physics, and physics was really math. :)

Can't remember who said it first, but oh, so true.

I ♥ math. Calculus was my favorite class EVAR and I still regret that I didn't continue on that path.

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those people who didn't get math. Well I can add, multiply and figure out things.. my problem came when the figuring out couldn't be done without knowing the *rules*. I always found I liked looking at things from different directions and being able to work it out from different sides to check myself. Rules that didn't make sense (ie, my teachers couldn't explain them in a way which made sense) just weren't workable for me. I need to understand, not just blindly follow.

But although it's a bit late.. congratulations on your highschool marks :D

[pthalo]

,hi ,phillip6 ,i d[nload$ ,p]kyduck4 ,x's excell5t brl practice4 ,i d\bt ,i'll comm5t at y 9 normal ,5gli% from h]e on \t4 unless y object4 k:o

[pne.livejournal.com]

,oh eep1 ,,ascii brl6

I'll try it out for now :) If I get stuck, I can format it with the "SimBraille" font I have. (Or if you like, you could format your comments with that font, to force me to read it as dot patterns rather than being able to cheat and read the letters easily.)

BTW, two typos I'd like to point out: my name has only one 'L', and I think you meant "k3o" at the end rather than "k:o" (":" is ASCII Braille for "wh"/dots-156).

[pthalo]

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[pthalo]

,bah4

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