Yeah, I do like math. You probably guessed from the fact that the top of the page says I am a math major. And today math was really awesome.
So, I'm a junior in engineering and Chinese, but I'm taking the graduate level topology course in math. I'm the youngest in my class by at least three years, possibly more. And today, we were talking about RP^2 in class. After that, we talked about Möbius strips, which sounded a lot like the boundary of RP^2. (I have really good pattern recognition.)
Yet later, the teacher gave us an exercise to think about at home. We were supposed to glue the copies of S^1 (a circle) from a punctured sphere and from a Möbius strip together and think about what kind of space we got. I looked at it for about 30 seconds and then went "OH!" because it's clearly RP^2. And... apparently my classmates don't think it's that obvious. As in, I asked what they thought, and I uniformly got "I don't know- I haven't had a chance to think about it yet." Which amused me, because it took me all of 30 seconds, and then, after asking this question, the teacher went on to explain that RP^2 with an open disk yanked out of it is... topologically the same as a Möbius strip. I took this to be a major hint directed at the class saying what the answer to the problem was, but I am apparently alone in this.
(No, I do not want to make you think autistic people are automatically good at math/science. It doesn't work like that. I, however, am very good at math/science, especially math. I have a history of being the top of math classes that I am the youngest person in, and the homework/exam results I have seen so far and the results of this question are suggesting that I might be doing this again. At least it's college and people don't care as much about this kind of thing anymore, which means I shouldn't get anyone calling me names over it this time...)
So, I'm a junior in engineering and Chinese, but I'm taking the graduate level topology course in math. I'm the youngest in my class by at least three years, possibly more. And today, we were talking about RP^2 in class. After that, we talked about Möbius strips, which sounded a lot like the boundary of RP^2. (I have really good pattern recognition.)
Yet later, the teacher gave us an exercise to think about at home. We were supposed to glue the copies of S^1 (a circle) from a punctured sphere and from a Möbius strip together and think about what kind of space we got. I looked at it for about 30 seconds and then went "OH!" because it's clearly RP^2. And... apparently my classmates don't think it's that obvious. As in, I asked what they thought, and I uniformly got "I don't know- I haven't had a chance to think about it yet." Which amused me, because it took me all of 30 seconds, and then, after asking this question, the teacher went on to explain that RP^2 with an open disk yanked out of it is... topologically the same as a Möbius strip. I took this to be a major hint directed at the class saying what the answer to the problem was, but I am apparently alone in this.
(No, I do not want to make you think autistic people are automatically good at math/science. It doesn't work like that. I, however, am very good at math/science, especially math. I have a history of being the top of math classes that I am the youngest person in, and the homework/exam results I have seen so far and the results of this question are suggesting that I might be doing this again. At least it's college and people don't care as much about this kind of thing anymore, which means I shouldn't get anyone calling me names over it this time...)
Just wanted to say hi....found your blog from twitter.
ReplyDeleteOoh...Mobius strips. I'm taking geometry a year early, as a freshman in high school instead of a sophomore. We spent a full day discussing Mobius strips and dimensions. For example, how Titanic would look in one dimension. (Well, duh--it's a line! I was the only one to get it.) Lots of fun. One of the few enjoyable high school experiences yet this year.
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