If you have yet to notice, I like math. The only reason, I believe, that people don't like math is because someone once told them something like this: "You can't do math", "Math is hard", "You will never need math", or an adult/parent telling a child "I can't do math". That is the worst thing to do to a young mind. Let them discover for themselves. If you do have a hard time with math, take the time to learn. It really isn't that hard. The thing that scares me is that many students I have encountered that are studying to become elementary school teachers do not like math. In fact, many that I know abhore math, even simple division scares them. How then can they teach our children to like math? Will the children not feel their uneasyness and fear?

Math describes, or can describe, everything. It is the universal language that is understood by any who wish to understand. To achieve anything in this life you must understand at least the fundamentals of math. from those fundamentals you can find more and even discover for your self many wonderful things.

For instance, if you know a little algebra and wish to write down the equation of motion a point on a wheel makes as it travels on a bicycle (or on whatever you wish it to be). Well, try it. If you get far enough, you define a sinusoidal function and you have the birth of trigonometry.

Now since you know algebra, you can find square roots of things, like -1. Try it. It is really undefined, but it can be your friend. As your friend, it needs a name. What if we name him "i" and since you can't really see your friend lets call him imaginary. Now you have an imaginary friend. Lucky you!

This process goes on until you discover for yourself all kinds of interesting ways to describe things. Like how to describe something that is constantly changing with respect to something else. Wonderful things.





Math Helpful Links

The following are some links I have found helpful in my pursuit of math. They are either identities that are helpful if you don't know how to find them in a text book or are explanations of wonderous things. By the way, books are wonderful things. If you have not read a book recently, get away from the keyboard and put your hands around a good book and let your mind open up to the thoughts and ideas inside. There is not much better than reading and learning for yourself.

Matrix Identities
Trigonometric Identities
S.O.S. Math
Awesome Math Reference
Graphing calculator simulator





Math People

Some of my favorite past mathematicians are:

These men knew how to learn and how to discover.





Mathematical Conjecture

I have done some math in my time. I would like to extend Fermat's Last Theorem. This last theorem was proven some years ago by Andrew Wiles. Fermat said that for x and y being integers there are integer number solutions z to the equation below and that for all powers greater than 2 there are no integer solutions.

x^2 + y^2 = z^2

Look at my conjecture as either HTML or as a PDF document. Please view the pdf version as it looks much better, format wise. I used latex2html to get the html version and it is just not quite the same.



Complex numbers

I have also program a lot and noticed that there were no complex number classes for which common operators were overloaded. Before you had to use some function that was named specifically to that class. I wanted to be able to add numbers whether they were complex or not simply using the + operator. So I wrote my own complex class so that was possible. You may use this if you wish. It is here.