Autumn and algebra

Autumn cometh. Snow in the mountains, leaves in the wind. Just kidding about the snow, since we're in Wichita and there are no mountains within several hundred miles. But the leaves really are beginning to drift up at the edge of the yard and and we've run the furnace a couple of times. Something about fall: this is the time of year some of us ponder the middle distance and reconsider our old best dreams.

My dreams never involved taking introductory algebra again. About 40 years ago I was happily certain I'd left that subject behind for good. And yet here I am, sitting a classroom every day, struggling through the little tricks involved in graphing polynomial equations. I don't hate it as much as I expected to. Algebra has an elegance of its own, not least because the correct answer is not a matter of subjective judgment. After working exclusively with English words for nearly all my life, with all their unruly ways, it's kind of refreshing to learn the precise language of mathematics. 

Anyway, that's what I've been reading lately: Introductory Algebra, 10th Edition, by Marvin Bittinger. The plotting is wooden and the characters nonexistent, and the used paperback version I bought cost $85 -- about three times what Dan Brown is getting for The Lost Symbol.  Let's just say it's not for everybody.

Comments

Unknown said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
September 28, 2009 at 6:00 PM
Unknown said…
After reading your last post I thought you were done with this blog! And I couldn't comment!

I was quite sad, actually.

But this is nice. I'm glad you're back. Keep up the wit and fantastic writing, man.

I thought it'd be funny to make an algebra joke relating my interest in the blog over time to an exponential growth equation, but I'll spare myself the embarrassment.
September 28, 2009 at 7:10 PM
Anonymous said…
Dave,

Best of luck with the algebra -- figuring equations is great practice for puzzle lovers and authors of intricate crime fiction. You'll do fine. After failing miserably at algebra in high school, something clicked in college and I ended up tutoring the subject in the math lab at UM. Go figure ...

P.S. Glad to see the blog is still alive and kicking.
September 29, 2009 at 9:02 PM
Unknown said…
It's great to see you're blogging again! I was trying to deal with my Dave blog withdrawal, but now I'm better. Thanks for writing!
September 30, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Dave Knadler said…
Thanks. I kind of lost sight of the reason I do this, and became frustrated. For me, it's a writing exercise, and best not neglected. Sorry it's been so long between posts.
September 30, 2009 at 11:16 AM
Anonymous said…
Bravo, what phrase..., a brilliant idea
December 11, 2009 at 4:01 PM
Anonymous said…
It seems magnificent phrase to me is
January 2, 2010 at 3:13 PM
Anonymous said…
What remarkable phrase


I advise to you to visit a known site on which there is a lot of information on this question Hot Health
January 8, 2010 at 6:21 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine ...
Read more

A farewell to copy

Image
On Friday I walked out of a newspaper building as an employee for the last time. During the stroll to the far end of the parking lot, I did a brief review of my career. Here's the high point: I've worked at newspapers that have won Pulitzer prizes. And the low point: None of those Pulitzers were won while I was working at the newspapers in question. Hey, I'm sure that's just bad timing. Of the half dozen papers I worked for, the best was the Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst was the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. When you enter the cavernous newsroom of the Inquirer, you pass by a wall festooned with pictures of reporters and editors who have won Pulitzers. It is a measure of my love of journalism that when I looked at these pictures, I usually reflected not on the prize-winning stories they reported, but on the clothes they were wearing. Look at them: All these gifted journalists, photographed at the very apex of their careers, and most of them are dressed like t...
Read more

Wall Street and Willa Cather

Image
I've been reading My Antonia , Willa Cather's 1918 novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie. It's a beautiful book, poignant and uplifting, full of characters who reflect the truth of life in all its joy and pain. It's also an instructive portrait of the time in America when explicit toil was required for mere survival, never mind success. I've been reading it against the background noise of Wall Street's collapse, men and women on CNN droning gravely about the consequences of greed, and the need to ensure that the greediest of all do not, in the end, go broke. It's a complex issue. It takes someone like Yale business student David Bledin, writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, to put a human face on the unfolding tragedy. You think you have it tough; think what it's like for Masters of the Universe-in-training who now rue the rigors involved in chasing a seven-figure salary: "... once I could afford to splurge on a Zagat-rated "$$$...
Read more