Oh God, I remember the fear as if it was yesterday...

Savvy_Sue

dibuzz wrote: »

My eldest did maths and further maths at A level.
He was scribbling on a piece of paper one night and I asked him what he was doing, he replied "quantum algorithms"
I assumed it was homework but no he was just doing it for fun.

I have one a bit like that: he read 'How to lie with statistics' for fun when he was 12 or so, and when we found a book called 'Mathematics made difficult' on holiday he was delighted! The proposition in that book was that all this 'maths made easy' was dumbing it down, it's not meant to be easy!

DS4215 wrote: »

Its over 20 years now, but I can still remember how good it felt to solve Schrodinger's wave equation

:rotfl: I've just googled that but gave up when I read

The Schrödinger equation is one of the most basic formulas of quantum physics.

Here. No wonder I've never heard of it, the boys won't even try and explain the complicated stuff to me.

paulineb_2

I got a C in my O grade maths, a B in my Higher, took me two goes, but eventually it clicked. I quite liked maths and I did 3 years of accounting at uni, but I did find maths hard when I was at secondary school. I had to do one year of it at university and I did pass, but a couple of my friends didnt get their degree because they couldnt pass the 1st year maths exam.

TopQuark

Ah maths, gotta love it! It's soooo useful. I'm a chemist by training (PhD) - not the kind who works in Boots, the kind who does research in chemistry, and maths is fundamental for understanding all of the sciences, especially physics. Now I work amongst a load of theoretical physicists and maths is the bread and butter!

If anyone happens to be Geneva way at the weekend, bring yourselves and your kids on down to the big ole' particle accelerator and see how fun and amazing maths can be

gunsandbanjos

TopQuark wrote: »

Ah maths, gotta love it! It's soooo useful. I'm a chemist by training (PhD) - not the kind who works in Boots, the kind who does research in chemistry, and maths is fundamental for understanding all of the sciences, especially physics. Now I work amongst a load of theoretical physicists and maths is the bread and butter!

If anyone happens to be Geneva way at the weekend, bring yourselves and your kids on down to the big ole' particle accelerator and see how fun and amazing maths can be

I'd love to go to Geneva! Need to take my daughter too:D

tiger_eyes

TopQuark wrote: »

Ah maths, gotta love it! It's soooo useful. I'm a chemist by training (PhD) - not the kind who works in Boots, the kind who does research in chemistry, and maths is fundamental for understanding all of the sciences, especially physics. Now I work amongst a load of theoretical physicists and maths is the bread and butter!

If anyone happens to be Geneva way at the weekend, bring yourselves and your kids on down to the big ole' particle accelerator and see how fun and amazing maths can be

Buddy of mine just graduated with his MSci in Chemistry and is looking to get a PhD. Maybe you'd be able to understand his ravings about mass spec ... mass spectrono ... mass spectrosc ... I give up.

gunsandbanjos

tiger_eyes wrote: »

Buddy of mine just graduated with his MSci in Chemistry and is looking to get a PhD. Maybe you'd be able to understand his ravings about mass spec ... mass spectrono ... mass spectrosc ... I give up.

I've got a friend doing a PhD in Chemistry too, she's crazy clever!

TopQuark

tiger_eyes wrote: »

Buddy of mine just graduated with his MSci in Chemistry and is looking to get a PhD. Maybe you'd be able to understand his ravings about mass spec ... mass spectrono ... mass spectrosc ... I give up.

Mass spectrometry. A very useful analytical technique!

Johnmcl7

The Monty Hall Paradox is one of my favourite maths problems, the maths behind it is pretty simple but I like it as initially it just doesn't make sense.

Imagine a game show with three doors behind one of which is the prize and nothing behind the other two, you must choose a door in the hope of getting a prize. Before your door is opened, the game show host opens one of the other doors which is empty - it is always an empty door he opens as he knows what is behind each door. You now get the choice to stay with your original choice or switch to the other, still closed door. Should you switch to give yourself a better chance of winning the prize or should you stick with your original choice?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24045598

John

Gingernutty

tiger_eyes wrote: »

Buddy of mine just graduated with his MSci in Chemistry and is looking to get a PhD. Maybe you'd be able to understand his ravings about mass spec ... mass spectrono ... mass spectrosc ... I give up.

TopQuark wrote: »

Mass spectrometry. A very useful analytical technique!

GC-MS :- gas chromatography mass spectrometry. I used to do that, once upon a time. A useful tool indeed.

I miss those days......:o

Toto

I literally have no idea what you lot are talking about. I'm absolutely sure we did nothing like this sort of maths when I was at school, I remember adding and subtracting and long division. I remember some thing about triangles and slices of pies but really that's about it.

I wasn't much good at languages either, apart from English, but then I had a head start in that one as I'd been speaking it from infancy.

I was pretty good at music though and made a decent living from being a session musician for 20 odd years until a career change a few years back.

My poor kid is screwed, who stresses about music homework? It's all I have covered!