Okay, i was finally able to log onto this math blog, and can now write about my trip to the UBC math contest field trip.Well... it was fun. While I understood hardly anything in the actual contest, the experience of walking around UBC and doing the small math workshop were great. I liked working with Joon, and occasionally Margaret and Kimberly. Anyways, 10 things I learned about math are:
1. The ! symbol means like... continuing of all the numbers after the number... I think. For example, if there is (1-x)! , that means (1-x)(2-x)(3-x)(4-x)... etc...
2. It is much easier to do math problems if i don't actually calculate pi when doing them, and instead just substitute the n symbol thing. Like, instead of actually typing in my calculator 3.14 multiplied by 4, its easier to just write on my paper 4pi.
3. Hmm... I am already running out of things to write about... I liked the Chinese speaker man... I got to shake his hand... and he taught me about how to make one formula into other formulas and stuff... something that I recently did in Physics 11 class.
4. That reminds me, I learned that there are 7 or so math problems that if you solve, you get 1 million dollars! That's quite exciting.
5. Umm... I learned that I have quite messy writing when writing on chalk boards. But that doesn't have to do much with math. I hope this counts.
6. I thought that UBC was all Asian people, but, to my surprise, there was a fair amount of white people and other races. Again, I hope this comment is passable for something I learned about math.
7. I recently learned that I actually have to write a blog about this field trip. That is what I am doing now... even though I don't even have math this semester...hmm...
8. I actually already knew this, but I didn't ever really use it in anything ever or anything so...um... when two circles are tangent, they are touching and the angles on either side are equal... I think
9. I really can't think of anything else I learned about math... um... I guess I can say there are different ways to explain the Pythagorean Theorem...
10. Oh yea, some math problems have no answer... I think... there was one thing like a^2 + b^3 + c ^4 = d^5 .... or something like that... and it had no answer.
There, those are 10 things that I "learned about math". Thank you
- Jeffrey Boschman
edit*
Okay, so I actually also have to talk about what I learned through the talk. I learned that math talks don't always have to boring, and that some mathematicians have senses of humour. Anything else I may have learned through the talk I mentioned above.
Also, um... how can the workshop help me in future math endeavors or something like that? ... well... everything I did in that workshop was for grades 8-10, and so I had already learned all of it, and could do most of them. However, I guess I could say that I learned that there can be more than one way to solve math problems, I should have written that in my 10 things i learned about math initially.... oh well.
Now I am done, hopefully. Sorry this post is quite late Mr. Cheng
