One Of These Days, I Need To Start Studying Again. Like Sure, High School Is Over And I Don't Have An

One of these days, I need to start studying again. Like sure, high school is over and I don't have an obligation to study anymore but I want to but I can't because I wake up and get distracted and an hour and 50 episodes of a random show later, it's already 3 am.

happy to say that it's been 2-weeks-times-2.5 and i still haven't abandoned this blog!

hi im bag

offers my soul to mathblr and studyblr

i want to do math and need to pretend like i have an audience in order to keep up with anything so uh yeah hiiii little people in my phone/computer

the goal this summer is to review undergrad algebra and self study galois theory. also im starting a phd in pure math starting this fall, so if i dont brush up on this then i may be fucked

no i dont have a study plan

i hope i dont abandon this blog in like two weeks

you'd think that the group formed by the permutations of n elements would be called the permutation group on n elements. wrong. thats actually the symmetric group on n letters.

Don't allow anyone to make you feel stupid because you are trying to improve. There is nothing wrong with trying to read a book about self help. Trying a new bedtime routine. Learning how to build new habits is great. Learning how to do your makeup better. It's easy to feel stupid the first time you try to speak positively to yourself or doing some self care for the first time in forever, but actually, those things are a huge win. That's how change happens. You are on the right track. This is awesome, KEEP GOING.

*spends all of my time alone* perfect! but why am i crazy

wasting away to the numbers

It's a good thing I studied some math today. Otherwise today would've just been Balatro from sunrise to sundown.

I need to put these numbers away and do something real, something physical.

But the allure of it all!

The allure of getting absurdly high scores in the illegal poker hands of Balatro,

the implications of "group codes" and how they represent this concept of Modern Algebra…

I hate that I've started entertaining myself with a five-dollar Discrete Math and Modern Algebra textbook from Half-Price Books.

How far have I fallen to descend past degeneracy and into insanity?

Numbers…

Those quantitative specters haunt me when I lie down for bed now.

I have to exhaust myself doing math or playing card games until I'm too tired to do literally anything else.

…

I won't be surprised if I wake up tomorrow morning in the shape of a seven.

…

And how did I get so attached to math in the first place, all those years ago?

I was thrashing about, trying to grab hold of any small fragment of reality…

and all I caught was something that's very good at describing the way reality works.

All these years later, I'm at the edge of math,

at the base of a mountain before I reach a plateau of iterations of the fundamentals.

Magmas. Groups. Rings. Tokens. Languages.

And it all bleeds out into the rest of the world.

Letters are tokens in the language of the alphabet just as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, as well as +, -, *, /, =, are tokens of typical math.

And typically you get to say stuff like 1 + 1 = 2.

But in the world of Modern Algebra, my friend,

we reinvent the wheel to fly through the sky.

0 + 0 = 0, 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 0 = 1, that all makes sense.

But 1 + 1 = 0, oh, my friend, welcome to addition modulo two.

If this is far too outlandish and wacky for you, turn back now.

It only gets worse from here.

The worst part is that this crap is at the heart of math.

It's so simple and abstract.

I love it.

In fact, I think I'll…

lie down right here

in all the numbers

and make myself right at home.

Like the immutable, starry heavens above,

the absurdity and outlandishness of math

comforts me

because it doesn't make sense

why

it makes sense.