*twitch*

[fiarra]

Ahhh... What a day. I had to take my psych test this morning on 3 hours of sleep because I stayed up until 4 studying and then managed to actually get myself out of bed at 7:15 this morning to eat some Fruit Loops. I think it went pretty well though. Out of the 65 questions, there 23-24 that I really didn't know. Plus, he said that in the 30-40 correct range was A's and B's this time around. So I think I may be fine on this one. Lucky for me that I'm more interested in abnormal psychology than anything else and that the interest motivated me to actually study for this exam.

This was directly followed by math in which we had a quiz on the Taylor series. Too bad I still have no clue how to do a Taylor series expansion or any of that. The way the book explains it makes no sense and the day it was explained in class was one of my doze off every 3 seconds days. *sighs* I need to find another way to try and learn it by myself. Maybe somewhere online...

Philosophy lecture today has gone and made me twitchy. This weeks article is "A Defense of Abortion" by Thomson. Such a touchy subject to be bringing up in a class like that. I'm so very conflicted on this issue and sitting in class listening to the philosophical arguments for it is kinda hard. Just by virtue of the fact that my brain goes into hyper-conflicted mode. Nonetheless, it is an extrememly interesting topic and I'm actually looking forward to the next time we meet so I can hear more about it.

Men's final is tonight!! I'm so psyched now. All the excitement on campus is contagious. I can't help but be psyched. Gonna go to Gampel with Susana tonight to watch the game on the big screen there. Should be fun. And yes, I will have my camera with me...

Comments

GO UCONN!!!

[xbangittyx.livejournal.com]

Have fun!!!
I can help with the camera....
1)read the manual
2)push buttons randomly
3)hope you take decent pictures and can figure out how to get them off of the camera

Heheh. I can seriously help with the camera, but I think ur smart enuff to figure it out by taking a good look at the symbols and buttons and cross referencing with the manual. I'll be here if ya need me tho. ^^

[grendelkhan.livejournal.com]

I remember reading Peter Singer in my PHIL 104 class. Yes, infanticide can be morally justified. Sometimes. Depending on the other beliefs you have. There are few things as terrifying as a consistent system of ethics, for it inevitably seems to lead to bad, bad corner cases.

But, hey, arguing ethics for things we don't care about is hardly interesting, is it?

As for Taylor series... what you're probably dealing with in actuality are Maclaurin series, a special case of Taylor series; those centered about zero. It's just a way of making a polynomial approximation to any function that you can differentiate an arbitrary number of times.

For instance, take f(x)=sin(x); f(0)=0. f'(x)=cos(x); f'(0) = 1. f''(x)=-sin(x); f''(0)=0. f'''(x)=-cos(x); f'''(0)=-1. And from thence on it repeats; the function and its derivatives at zero are (0,1,0,-1,0,1,0,-1,...).

Now we can easily substitute it into the Maclaurin formula f(x)=f(0) + f'(0)x + f''(0)x²/2! + f'''(0)x³/3! + ... as follows: since all the even-numbered derivatives are zero, we can drop them to get f(x)=f'(0)x + f'''(0)x³/3! + ... which we can substitute those alternating 1s and -1s into to get f(x)=x - x³/3! + x⁵/5! ... = sin(x).

If you're still confused, drop by my office hours. I'm in E2 room 320 from 10 AM to 3 PM. (Though I'll likely not be there if you stop in before 11; I'm a lazy bastard.) MathWorld.com has some resources about Taylor and Maclaurin series, but they're for reference, not instruction---learning things from MathWorld isn't very easy. There's a page at WikiPedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclaurin_series) as well. Your mileage may vary; best o' luck to you.

[grendelkhan.livejournal.com]

Ah, that is, I'm in E2 320 on Mondays and Wednesdays. Should have made a note of that.

[starsparkle333.livejournal.com]

Oooo thanks for the info. I may have to take you up on the offer if I haven't figured it out by next week what with an impending test and all... Thanks again!! ^^

[quindraco.livejournal.com]

I *knew* you'd leave a comment. :-P Can't resist a math question.

Carolina, just memorise the formula. Trust me. Trying to understand Calculus is a fool's errand. I took Real Analysis, which is supposed to really explain Calculus, and I got a B+ and I still have no idea how this stuff works. Memorise and regurgitate is your friend.

[starsparkle333.livejournal.com]

Haha... memorize and regurgitate is my usual method in this class. Unfortuantely, even with the memorized formula, doing any problems with a Taylor series has left me staring at the paper wondering why it can't solve itself and be done with it. Oh well... so long as I get it figured out by the exam...