What have I done?! June 21, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, papers, research.Tags: math, minion, textbooks
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(As I sat down to write this post, I realized I have a dilemma tangential to the point of the post. The Minion is officially no longer a minion, given he’s finished his undergraduate education. Formally, he’s been upgraded to a henchman. However, if I start calling him the Henchman, I realize no one will know who I am talking about. Therefore, I shall continue to call him the Minion, but please try to remember that his rank is officially that of a Henchman.)
A couple days ago, the Minion asked me for help on something. He’s doing some work on a topic with which I have very limited knowledge. (I consider this sad because it’s something I have interest in but little time to explore.) However, what he needed help on was a mathematical aspect. After finally getting a handle on what he was doing, we sat down and came up with a way to solve his problem. Mike came in and overheard us talking and suggested there may be a paper in what we’re doing. The Minion thought it would be interesting but wanted to talk with someone who has more knowledge of the field (as I obviously don’t), and he was going to check with someone he knows.
I sat down and spent an hour writing out the formal mathematics for the problem so that it would be easier to present this to someone. It looks very pretty (especially since I did it in LaTeX). However, I couldn’t help thinking, as I proofed it, that I managed to take what, to me, seemed like a straight-forward approach to solving the problem and obscure it with symbology.
I think I could potentially have a career writing textbooks.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
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