Figures

Now that Blogger has lifted its spam flag, I can happily direct you all to my new blog dedicated to the hotter-than-hell actress Leslie Bibb. You've probably never heard of her, but she's a star on the rise with a whole host of TV shows behind her and movies that include Iron Man and Talladega Nights.

The blog's a bit rough at the moment as I'm using this template, but it will get polished up over time. You can find it at http://lesliebibb.co.uk.

Going randomly off-topic, readers who have been with me since the beginning will know that earlier this year I signed up to do an Open University degree. Well, I started it in earnest last Saturday, going through the preparatory unit of the MU120 Open Mathematics course. What's surprised me is the amount of stuff I thought I knew, but which I had in fact forgotten, some of it fairly basic. As a result, I've been re-learning fractional multiplication and division, scientific notation and powers.

There are two things I'm hating so far. The first is estimation. While I understand the concept and it's importance as a reality check on calculations, I always seem to pick the wrong figures to estimate with. For example, a question I answered yesterday asked me to estimate an answer to something like 27.44 squared, so I estimated an answer between 25 squared and 30 squared, but the answer given was to estimate between 20 squared and 30 squared. I always seem to get this wrong, if indeed it is wrong. Maybe my estimations are just more precise. That might be the answer though. I like to be precise with calculations, I'm not naturally inclined to estimation, which is more about personal judgement than absolute specificity.

The second thing I hate is questions that require a narrative answer. Typically, these ask you to explain some mathematical concept or other in layman's terms. Again, I understand the value of being able to communicate mathematical concepts to other people and hence its inclusion on the course, but I haven't embarked on this degree with the intention of communicating what I learn with anyone else. It's a purely personal thing. I find these questions irrelevant to what I want to achieve and somewhat tedious (and difficult) to answer.