|
Questions, comments and answers.
14 Oct 2006
hmmmmmmmmm
Do you think its possible to do well in this course if you did ordinary level for your leaving cert? Cuz I did ordinary, and I had to pick maths.....:(........
Reply It is intended that the course will be useful and accessible to people who did ordinary maths for the leaving and it should be possible for you to do well. This is my first year teaching this course and if I do seem to be assuming knowledge you don't have, let me know!
19 Oct 2006
personal demons
hi conor, I appreciate the fact that you like to express your interest in 80's indie pop but the fact of the matter is that as a child, my somewhat liberal parents exposed me to an unhealthy dose of Morissey and the smiths resulting in my having nightmares of said artists and frankly, i would very much appreciate if you would refrain from wearing any form of Smiths memoribilia while teaching your 1s1 maths class. Thank you. PS. What IS in that cup that you drink incessantly?
Reply Actually, I wear the t-shirt because it has a picture of Shellagh Delaney on it, she wrote the play A Taste of Honey which was made into a film with Rita Tushingham, so its more that I am expressing an interest in 60s British cinema, and, also, I like the colour. Sorry if it upset you, I used to wear only black and got hassle about that too, so I can't win. Tea.
27 Oct 2006
Smiths I guess if u have a valid excuse like that then i can live with it. Tea? I dont believe it. Most people surveyed think theres nothing at all in the cup. Im inclined to believe them. You dont look like you drinking somthing thsts hot and stimulating.
Reply Why would I drink from an empty cup?
11 Nov 2006
Spelling, and difficulty.
A few lectures back you wondered aloud how to spell 'necessary' and rephrased your sentence to avoid having to write it. There's a handy mnemonic for necessary: c comes before s in the alphabet, and there's just one c (cuz it's first) and two ss (cuz it comes second). This is the only useful fact I learned in my Leaving Cert English class. I have not yet found a mnemonic to remember the spelling of mnemonic.
You may also like to know that there is only one 'e' in 'argument', i.e. not 'arguement'.
I hope these gentle tips do not discourage you. I enjoy your lectures.
You also asked the other day which of our three Maths courses was hardest. I got the impression most people muttered 'Buttimore's', which is my belief too. I feel you cover more ground than Dr. Buttimore, which should make your course harder, but Dr. Buttimore's quiet voice and anchorage to the overhead make for a lecture bordering on sensory deprivation. I find Dr. Timoney's lectures perhaps easiest of all, but feel that he is moving very slowly (good!) and the computery stuff he shows us is much lighter than, you know, sums.
Reply Thanks for your email and for the spelling tip which is pretty useful. I am also pleased to hear some impression of the pace of the course, as I explained, it is my first time teaching a first year course and I amn't so tuned to what people find difficult and what they find easy. I have to agree about computer stuff too, I do a lot of programming in my work now I work on mathematical neuroscience and I find it a much easier way of working that doing, well, sums.
16 Nov 2006
NCR Your t-shirts are usually quite mind-boggling and
keep me amused 4 the hour, the only one i dont get is the NCR one. Its
distracting me from the wonderful world of calculus, really need to
know what it means. Most suspect its something to do with
probability.....? ps...LUVIN the lectures, im shite at maths, but its
the only one im actually motavated to open a book, prob cuz i cant
spell either!
Reply I am pleased you are enjoying the
lectures, I have been enjoying teaching them, it seems to be a very
nice class. NCR is North Circular Road, where I live now and my
favourite street in Dublin, I have always loved it, its so poetic with
the big old run down houses, the old trees and all the red brick and
black iron railings and, on a map, with that sweep across the whole of the
northside.
22 Nov 2006
The example you did
Hi, I'm a student in your 1S1 class. I'm just confused about the way you did a
problem on the board in today's lecture at 5.
Problem:Differentiate Cos(x^2+Pi). I was slightly lost at the way you did
it-would it be acceptable if I did the following way:
Let u=x^2+Pi
=>f'(x)= -Sin(u)
=>f'(x)= -Sin(x^2+Pi)
=>f'(0)= -Sin(0+Pi)
=>f'(0)= -Sin Pi
=>f'(0)=0
which is the same answer you got.
Many thanks.
Reply The way you do it happens to give the same answer, but it isn't
correct; you need to use the chain rule, in other words, if you write
f(x) as f(u) where u is a function of x, then
f'(x)=df/du x du/dx
so in this case I have
f=cos(x^2+pi) can be written as f=cos(u) where u=x^2+pi so
df/du= -sin u
as you write, but this isn't the same as f'=df/dx, df/du
tells you how f changes when you change u, we want to know how f
changes when we change x, and what the chain rule tells us is the the
change in f when x changes is equal to the change in f when u changes
multiplied by the change in u when x changes. In short, how does f
change when x changes, well we know how much is changes when u changes
and we know how u changes when x changes, so multiplying them together
we get how much f changes when x changes, or, as a formula
df/dx =df/du du/dx
and here
du/dx =2x
and so
df/dx = -sin u 2x,
and rearranging and putting back in for u
df/dx=-2xsin(x^2+pi)
substituting x=0 to get f'(0) we get f'(0)=0.
I hope this helps, email me again if I haven't really answered your question,
23 Nov 2006
Proofs Sorry to come off like such an unwilling student, but I was wondering just how many of the proofs from first principles we are required to know? I am willing to get them all down, if thats whats expected (and it probably is, which is reasonable, I suppose!), it's just that I have a real problem trying to remember proofs like the product rule, which are really unintuitive!
Really enjoying the course so far, keep up the good work!
Reply I think the proofs I did from first principal are worth knowing, the manipulations involved which may seem counter-intuitive, are actually very useful to practice. Hence, I would expect you to know the derivation of d/dx(x^n), of the product rule and of d/dx sin(x), there would probably be a hint given with the last in an exam. The product rule trick, to add and take away f(x)g(x+h) is easiest to see if you think where you are going, with these proofs we have the advantage of knowing the answer. So, on the top you have f(x+h)g(x+h)-f(x)g(x) and you know the answer involves fg'+gf', so look to see where you have something like that, f'=lim (f(x+h)-f(x))/h and you have f(x+h)g(x+h) so to get some g think multiplying the f(x+h)-f(x) you need for the f' you need to take away a f(x)g(x+h), but if you do that you need to add it aswell and luckily that also gives you what you need for the fg' part. I am hoping to put up a note summerizing these three proofs in the next while.
23 Nov 2006
Vector Boy rules!!!!!!! How come you're so cool and have so many great stories??? (Tell lots more stories please!!!) Course is really fun but where do you get your t-shirts? They're awesome!!!
Reply Thanks for your comments; I have a new t-shirt to premier next week. I hope you like it.
24 Nov 2006
Tutorial Questions
I cant find the answers to the question from the tutorial questions.
I made a stab at the extra questions this week and I'd like to know if I got them right or not.Am I blind or are they not up?
Love the class by the way, the pace is grand and your stories are brilliant! It's good to know that there are other people out there with spelling difficulties like me-I'm even worse than you,I nearly spelt grand without an n there!! Cant wait to see the new t-shirt!
Reply Sorry about that, they should be up now.
4 Dec 2006
heart! WE LUV U HOUGHTON!!! and its ok to tel every1 to SHUT UP once in a while!!
Reply Thanks.
7 December 2006
maths
I just want to appologise for the dumbasses in my class that keep throwing paper airplanes...they're dumbasses. Also your class is the only one I look forward to, thanks for being interesting, it makes a change from lecturers I can't hear, lecturers who don't care and lecturers who don't slide through holes in their desks :)
Reply No need to apologise, I was pretty pleased by the class's reaction when that paper airplane was thrown. I am glad you are enjoying the lectures, I feel it is going well at the moment.
7 December 2006
Happy Christmas How-do. Just circulating this e-mail.to all staff that have graced the TR-071 lectures,
tutorials, labsessions etc. so far this year to wish you all the very best this
Christmas, and a very peaceful, very fruitful New Year.
Reply
Thanks, happy Christmas to you also,
9 December 2006
Sample paper Hi Conor, Just wondering where the I can find the JF maths sample paper that you said would be up on the internet.
Thanks and have a happy christmas.
Reply
Not done yet; I said we would do it around easter! I can do some sample
questions if you feel that would be useful, but it would be sometime next
week before they were done, let me know. All the best
11 January 2007
E.T. was quiet I could rarely remember if the word meaning 'not noisy' is spelt 'quiet' or 'quite'. That was until I decided to think of the little alien that was a movie star, who was of course quiE.T.
Regards,
Mnemonic Man
Reply Thanks for this! Can you also help with principle/principal?
14 January 2007
Mnemonic Man: Friendly principals Of course: in school, your principal is your PAL.
Reply Cool. Now associate and even better, the long word begining with R which means somewhere you go to eat, I can't even spell is well enough for the emacs spell checker to give me the right spelling.
15 January 2007
Dilemma Hi, I have a friend who recently
found herself "in the family way". Just wondering if she might be able
to get any special dispensation as her due date is around the time of
the exams.
Reply Please pass on to your friend my
congratulations and my hope that her situation is not difficult from a
practical point of view. I don't know the answer to your question but
I am sure there is provision made; she should see her tutor who will
be able to answer questions of this sort and point her to any college
services she may find helpful.
16 January 2007
Corrections Last Thursday I noticed you made two mistakes on the board. The quiet, quite thing you pointed out which some one else corrected you on here already, so i won't dwell on that. I also noticed you misspelled the word quickly, spelling it with an 'ey' "quickley" as opposed to the more normal "quickly". PS: In the last comment you asked for the difference between the words principal and principle. 'Principal' is the head of an academic institute, and a principle is a basic point by which someone sets their moral boundries.
Reply So; of course I understand the difference between principal and principle, I just have trouble remembering which is which; Mnemonic man has solved this problem. To be honest, I don't really welcome spelling corrections unless, as is the case with the messages from great Mnemonic man, they are accompanied by mnemonics. I am mildly dyslexic without being embarrassed about it.
19 January 2007
Lectures Hi, despite your lectures being
very entertaining and enjoyable I find that I am spending far too much
time writing down and not listening or learning and thus end up with
loads of sheets of exmples I have to struggle to figure out. Is there
any way you could cut down on the time spent writing, maybe by having
the examples incompletely printed out (so we still have to stay
invovled) but spend more of the lecture going through each step and
the theory behind it. I may be the only person who feels like this or
if you disagree thats fine, ill be able to make it by anyway, thanks
and I hope you remain in 1S1 in following years.
Reply Many
thanks for your email; I will try to pause more to give people time to
take stuff down. It is hard to gauge when you are giving people enough
time and I am sorry I have been misjudging it. All I can say is, I
tend to concentrate on doing examples and writing them down and feel
that if you write down the examples and go through them and follow
them, you should understand the theory. Anyway, I know it is too late
now to do anything about this since we only have two more lectures,
but, the idea is that, if you don't get all of an example down, you
should email me and I will put it on the web, that is how it worked
with my last course, 2E2, but somehow hasn't happened with this
one; noone asked for any, I shoud have put a few up anyway. Do let me know if there is any bit you feel particularily
confused by.
20 January 2007
Mnemonic Man: restaurant Rory eats stewed toads at Ulrika's restaurant and never throws (up)!
Reply You are indeed the master, I can't actually think of anything else I can't spell!20 January 2007
Class
I would just like to say that I am enjoying your lectures and that the pace is very good and the material is delivered in a very comprehensable and competent manner.
On top of that I find your stories liven up the class and keep me entertained.
All in all I find your coarse well delivered, interesting, comprehensible and fun.
Keep it up!
Reply Great, thanks!
11 February 2007
More to life than spelling First of all
thanks so much for giving FAB lectures!! never new maths could be so
FUNdemental!! im actually slightly dyslexic myself so its good to know
that theres more to life than spelling!! DO YOU MISS US?!!! :)
Reply Thanks for your message: of course I miss you but I am
teaching a new mathematical neuroscience course now instead which I am
enjoying. The student feedback was generally quite positive, a good
number of people complained that the course could have been harder. I
will try and make it harder next year, a disadvantage of not directly
teaching any tutorials myself, as I did when I taught engineering
maths methods, is that I was less tuned to the pace of the
class. Several people also commented that honours leaving cert maths
was a prerequisite for taking the course, that isn't true, the class
is more varied than that and included people who did ordinary leaving
cert maths. Anyway; I enjoyed teaching you, I think it went fairly
well and, although it is no good to you, I will try to fix any problem
with the pacing if I teach it again next year.
11 February 2007
Missing you! Hey Conor, We miss you
loads...maths just isnt the same without you..any chance of a surpise
apperance in maths during the year?!
Reply Thanks, no guest
appearance though!
19 April 2007
Sample paper could you please let us know where the sample peper for the course is?
Reply It is on Pete's 1S1 site: www.maths.tcd.ie/~pete/1s1/.
12 May 2007
Proofs Hi, just wondering if in an exam you give leaving cert proofs would you get full marks? Just looking through the notes and the book and I find the way the Leaving Cert theorms are taught are more comprehensive.
Reply Any proof or derivation is fine as long as it is correct.
12 May 2007
Calculators I was wondering if you could tell me what type of calculator is premitted in the exam? What exactly do they mean by 'non-programmable'?
Reply I don't know; I have emailed the exams office and will let you know what they say.
Ok, they have replied and this is what they say: {\sl In response to your query, any calculator that stores information will not be permitted. It has to
be a basic machine that just does the math.}