Callistonian.net

How do you procrastinate? What do you do when bored? I, apparently, write down paradoxes.

Why is it so girly? Am I a girly girl? Perhaps—anyway, some tend to associate math with boys. I’m not a boy. I wanted to make that clear in case anyone decided to lift this image from my blog… ♥

Click on the picture for a larger version.

Poetic forms like imabic trimeter are barely comprehensible to me. In school, whenever I was interrogated about a poem’s meter, my thoughts were, “Uh? I don’t really know; I hate this.” Luckily, some mathematical things, like the cubed roots of certain numbers, are much easier to figure out. Trust me!

Let’s say you have a number like 157464. It’s cubed root is 54 (157464 is 54 x 54 x 54, which is also know as 54^3). How long does it take to figure out that 157464’s cubed root is 54? Less time than it takes to figure out if a line of poetry is in imabic trimeter or pentameter or what have you. How much cleverer does a girl who can take the cubed root of 157464 in 5 seconds look than the girl who can tell you about a poem’s meter in 5 seconds? Way cleverer, you know.

Honestly, if the number being cubed is two-digits, it can be easily discovered without a calculator. But first you must know a few things.

1. The numbers 1-9 cubed (knowing this is sort of necessary)
   • 1 cubed is 1
   • 2 cubed is 8
   • 3 cubed is 27
   • 4 cubed is 64
   • 5 cubed is 125
   • 6 cubed is 216
   • 7 cubed is 343
   • 8 cubed is 512
   • 9 cubed is 729
2. The last digit of the cube of those numbers (the bold numbers)¹

That’s it. Now, this is how it works—Let’s say you have a number like, oh, 300763. First, ignore its last three digits. Mentally, 300763 should become 300. 300 is greater than 216 (6 cubed) but less than 343 (7 cubed), so the cubed root of 300763 is going to be 60-something. Second, think of 300763’s last number. It’s 3, which is the same number as the last digit of 7 cubed (343), so the cubed root of 300763 is 67.

Another one—21952.

1. 21952 (drop the last 3 digits)
2. 21 is greater than 2 cubed (8) but less than 3 cubed (27), so its cubed root must be 20-something.
3. 21952 ends in a 2. 8 cubed also ends in a 2. Thus, 21952’s cubed root must be 28.

That’s all there is to it. Now it’s time to shock your friends, parents, older siblings, lovers, and enemies. Tell them to grab a calculator and start cubing 2-digit numbers. Watch their mouths hang open in utter amazement as you tell them the numbers they’ve cubed. :D lulz.

Back story: One of the teachers was doing this at work today… I half-learned the trick from him.

¹ The last digits of 1-9 cubed are easiest to remember if they (1-9) are pictured on a line. The numbers on the end 1 & 9 are themselves. The next few numbers (2, 3, 8, 7) are 10 minus themselves, while the ones in the middle (4, 5, 6) are also themselves.
² There’s more on the subject here.

I have this thing with mathematics. Let’s call it a love/mild-dislike relationship. I love it; it mildly dislikes me. When I say I love math, I’m not joking. Look at my icon on Snark (courtesy of noldo_icons). It’s on the left. Sadly, two years ago, I got into a huge fight with darling mathematics. I wanted it to be fun and practical. But it insisted on being monotonous and abstract. It hated me. So I told it to go to hell and changed my major. I made the ultimate jump: I went from engineering to history. The break-up was messy and painful. It took me some time to get over. Every once in a while, I dropped by an engineering course I wasn’t enrolled in, but it was for the best. History pwns all. End of story.

The bad thing about all of this is that people assume I have a problem with math, because I’m a girl and because I majored in history. I don’t have a problem with math. I miss math; I love math. I’m just getting rusty. I don’t think that I know how to take surface integrals anymore, and this makes me sad. Today, I was talking with someone who teaches Diff. Eq. and—OMG—that made me long for math problems… I don’t know. Maybe I’m just going crazy. After GRE and grad. school application(?) HELL, maybe I’ll look at some math and some Dutch (language #5!!!) for fun. I’m studying math for the GRE now (speed multiplication woo!) so perhaps by then I’ll be satiated and not bother with any of it.

I’m a teacher/tutor. I started not too long ago, and I qualified to teach a ton of different things. As of yet, I’ve been busy teaching other stuff. I haven’t had a chance to teach what I really want to teach (ACT Math). I’ve done random math stuff, random reading stuff, ACT Reading, ACT Writing, and ACT English; I’m going to do Science Reasoning sometime soon… I know that I’ll do math eventually, but I can hardly wait. That was the first thing I was really excited about teaching, because I feel a silly need to prove that I have mad math skillz, and because the idea of a history major teaching mathematics is hilarious to me… :D

I want to teach Math. :X

i’m an intellectual in training. everything inspires me. everything arouses my curiosity. reading, writing, designing, photography, living, etc. are my hobbies.

i was never the kid in class who said, “why do i need to learn this? i’m never going to use it.” that isn’t my way of thinking. i like to know as much as i possibly can about (almost) everything just because…

i mean, why not?

it’s difficult, though. because when you like tons of things - fatigue becomes this obnoxious monster. there’s just not enough time and with sleep and rest being a necessity - there’s really not enough time. so, ideally a girl must prioritize but… i, generally, try to do as little of that as possibly. i don’t like cutting back.

my goal is to figure out how to make each day as productive as possible without painfully outlining every activity and killing spontaneity. if you have any tips send them my way.

(insert transition)

when you write 5, how do you do it? one stroke or two? i was penalized by a game for crafting a quick clean 5 - from the top right to the bottom left. the game thought 9.

game: 9×5
me:45!
game: 49 is wrong.
game: 9-4
me: 5!
game: 9 is wrong.

my friends told me that i was writing incorrectly. “your stroke order is wrong.” my response, “no it’s not! this is how americans write 5!!! the game is against me!” i thought that it would be easy - that i could do the math section on the nintendo ds without any problems whatsoever and that i could do it hella fast but… my handwriting screwed me over.