Monday - When All You Have Left is Funny...

Remember that fateful Sunday a few years ago when I got my key stuck in the door at my sister and brother-in-law's house and came face to face with the realization that I had no self-definition if I could no longer consider myself smart? Well, since then I've decided that all I have left is funny. I use this to cope with my inability to grasp linear algebra. After working with Jonathan on it for six hours Saturday I tried to do my assignment today. It didn't go so well, which can be seen in my answer for problem #12. The question "Carefully write a proof for the following statement. The linear trnsformation T: U --> V is one-to-one if, and only if, ker T = {0}." Yeah... I didn't understand either, so my response was:

"Once upon a time, there was a girl named Alisha. One day she sat down to do her chapter 5 assignment in linear algebra. After reading the first 3 questions she realized she didn't have a good understanding of the material, however, the assignment had been started and it would be against the ethics code to go back to he book for help. Therefore, she just tried her best.

"On number 12, all she could remember was her math genius friend Jonathan saying something like, "the kernel plus the range equals the domain." "So, if the kernel is zero," she thought, "then the range is equal to the domain." If your range and domain are the same, it should be an easy step to say the transformation is one-to-one. Why? Well, because you don't remove anything from it. If you took a piece away, it would become a ratio that's less than 1-to-1." Alisha didn't know how to explain it in fancy math words, so she decided to stop thinking and eat ice cream.

"The End. :-)"

In the student comments/questions for the instructor section on the cover page I wrote a long rant about the book and concluded with, "Hope you enjoy the story for #12. I'm taking the platform that if I can no longer define myself as smart, I'm gonna go with funny!"

All I have to say is that if there is no solutions guide available to a book, the author should never say things like "An extensive explanation will not be given because it is obvious that..." or "It's easy to verify that..." Grrrr....

I really feel bad for my poor little 5th graders because I project a lot of my frustration on them over this obnoxious class. That's OK... it will all be over soon, and my next class will not involve such high level math.