TP or NP? Trial ballon goes up

[Keith Davis]

Same thing. I was a straight A student until I got to High School Math.
Probably didn't help that I was constantly hiding a book behind the kid in
front of me and reading during class...

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>wrote:

> I wonder if there is a formula to explain why it is that I failed basic
> algebra 1 twice, once in h.s., and once in college, yet performed at the
> top of the class in every other subject I studied?
>
> Arguments that mathematics is just another language for talking in a sort
> of shorthand about observations made in the real world doesn't make it any
> more accessible. French, Spanish, and Greek have the same qualification,
> but they are relatively easy to pick up. Algebra just makes no sense. I
> stand with Laurie Anderson on the principle that x=x, not y base 8 times z
> to the minus fourth power. Efforts to crystallize experience, which is
> fluid and non-repeating, are purely mystical and have little real meaning.
> The results of "progress" based on changing reality into something else
> have been, well, catastrophic, to euphemize the result.
>
> Yes, I feel quite justified writhing that last sentence out of a computer
> keyboard and broadcasting it online.
>
> As for P, well, both Kit and Yashmeen leave behind potentially brilliant
> careers in math to pursue lives of experience.
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> In all honesty I'm surprised I made it through Algebra 2...  I often
>> feel, for lack of a better Mathematical Knowledge perhaps, that Pynchon
>> uses Mathematics and Physics (& metaphysics among others) as a Trope.
>> Those of us who look inward, whether reading deeply Formulas or Poetry,
>> run the very real risk of Abstraction... remember Slothrop's terrible fate,
>> not allowed to die but be scattered... I think this sort of abstraction, I
>> think of Mason's Melancholy, is certainly a lively topic among the Great
>> Writers & Thinkers, all who walk along very tangible Precipice, whether
>> Gnostic or  Mathematical....?
>> Still working through AtD, I had the same problem with M&D, I've read the
>> first 3/4s of it several times but simply don't want it to end, Pynchon is
>> such a delight to read.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Ready for your next dose of ROFL at a plister? Feel an itch to flame and
>>> ridicule for downright
>>> absurd arguments drawn from my Back to AtD reading, that great, great
>>> book?
>>>  Me, you talkin' about me? yes, I am.....
>>>
>>> As I've too-oft stated, I believe a great book comments on life
>>> ultimately and life opens out in unexpected ways because
>>> of such books, the great authors. The associations are almost endlessly
>>> rich---see Shakespeare if Pynchon isn't him. But
>>>
>>> Below is a NYTimes essay that is getting lots of comment, lots of
>>> controversy, lots of the equivalent of flaming by many,many.
>>> Seems that, in itself, it is a good plist conversation topic.
>>>
>>> BUT, my outlier comic--to most of you, I bet---annotative skit is to
>>> say: as a kind of oblique, real world footnote --an associative annotation
>>> so to speak--
>>>  this guy's argument against algebra and higher level math (except if
>>> interested or needed for other intellectual pursuits) but FOR
>>>  the necessity of MORE math (statistics, measurement--see Wa Po on
>>> Quantitative movement---)
>>>  dovetails with my reading of a theme in AtD: mathematics beyond what we
>>> use in everyday living abstracts us from this pendant world and is useless
>>>  (or in P's vision, too often leads to actual harm). Abstraction
>>> from the physical, tangible world is BAD SHIT in AtD, I say, and is a
>>> through-theme from the personal life of the characters to the abstract
>>> notions
>>> that lead to war.
>>>
>>> C'mon lurkers and those who haven't yet commented on my 'radical' [read
>>> Stupid?] notions. Let me have it.
>>>
>>>
>>> In the Opinion Pages Andrew Hacker writes, “Making mathematics mandatory
>>> prevents us from discovering and developing young talent.
>>> Is Algebra Necessary?
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/
>>> As American students wrestle with algebra, geometry and calculus often
>>> losing that contest the requirement of higher mathematics comes into
>>> question.” — —
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
> the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
> reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
> groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
> urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>



-- 
www.innergroovemusic.com
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