Thursday, March 13, 2008

A little Math for the soul

At the risk of sounding geeky/nerdy let me make a confession. But this needs a little introduction. (wow those two lines were poetic;) )

I was a very bookish person, given a chance I would still be. Whatever I read back in school/college, I read with the sole purpose of cleanly slicing my exams.(You can call me a person with a single-minded determination, that would be most welcome and it definitely sounds much better!) Subhash on the other hand is a concepts guy. He never used to read for exams instead grasped the concepts and built on them. So every now and then, he starts shooting random questions in Math and Physics at me. And suddenly I freeze in my tracks. What was that one equation? What was Bernouli's principle? I have to rake my brains sometimes, and I feel terribly dumb after that, but we won't concentrate on that dumb part now.

This morning we started off in Geometry. Equation of a line. Equation for a circle (in case you are also scrambling for the nearest math book, it is x-square +y-square=c). Etc. I didn't get any of them, I simply didn't remember till he told me. Then we went off to Trigonometry. Sin and Cos and Tan and so on. And I successfully remembered that sin-square-theta + cos-square-theta is 1. And also managed to prove it using Pythagoras theorem. It was refreshing and reminded me all over again how much I love Math. And made me feel really awful about how much I have forgotten. I almost feel motivated to pick up my Intermediate Math text book (that was the best out there, believe it or not, it even helped me in my GRE though the GRE exam was not challenging enough to be worth that Math text book) and refresh everything.

So what is geeky about it? How many couples you know use Math as a way of spending time? Eh?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

:--) I guess most KV/CBSE folks are conceptual.
I do remember the equation of the circle, its a miracle.
I love Math as well. I have to use some at work as well, mostly binary ;--) still I thoroughly enjoy it.
Me and DH talk about such stuff at times, volumes and areas of strange shapes. College math is all gone right out of head :--D

Cute post. ;--))

-Z

Anonymous said...

Wooow this sounds so scarily familiar. Really do you guys quiz each other on Math too ? Me and my husband keep doing that so often. I always thought I was very good at Math until very I started to fail miserably at these impromptu quiz sessions. I'm amazed how he can quickly derive the area of trapezium while I struggle to remember the formula to calculate the area of a triangle.

Great post. Feels like you've captured a day out of our lives up here. Keep writing!
Smitha.

Anonymous said...

Well, our conversation goes something like this....who in the world would be using that ax2+bx+c = 0 equation in their day-to-day professional lives?? or who would be using the probability eq-n for their work?? other than somene in some research labs in schools??

And then come back happily to movies or songs!!! weird but, we too try to remember those old formulas but, ignorantly/innocently concur that they are of no use to us any further:) I was a fan of math, but now since I struggle to remember anything....I feel shy about it.:)
Keep Posting.

Anonymous said...

contd from previous post...I forgot the last discussion we had on...Who uses parabolas and hyperbolas???and the ellipse eq-ns?? help me('cause I know my hubby lost interest in this immediately after we left that topic!!) in figuring out who still uses these or where are the practical applications of these things?? I learned these things so sincerely, but I forgot them as soon as I passed out Intermediate, and now when I think back on them, I can't help but have the feeling of LOVE LOST. HELP!!!I know I can use the almighty google, but u c a disc with like minded people always helps in furthering the knowledge, and also add our 2(now in recession, but still the US) cents to it.

DivSu said...

Hi Anonymous

It's true. Lost love is very apt for what we learnt and what we have forgotten:) Ellipse and Parabolas and Hyperbolas, I think probably the only likely people using them are space scientists? What say? That is a good guess, they might need all these, no? Let me know what you think ;)

Anonymous said...

Yeah the space scientists..I think there should be a more generic application to it. It would be interesting to apply something like that in our simplistic day to day life chores, and make those things more appealing to the general public!!, so that it atleast can save itself from our memories extinction.:).
I still can't for my life remember the formulas for any of those things:((

But, yes those were the days..when I was in love with my Maths Text:x:)

Your blog is not only a nice read, but also a good discussion platform.

DivSu said...

Thanks Anonymous, I am most flattered :)

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