All entries for Friday 06 October 2006

The week that was … Week 1 – Term 1

After all that time, preparing, revising, resitting and preparing again it’s fair to say that week one has been pretty good, and worth the effort. The modules I’ve picked seem pretty good (except Topics In Math Bio but I’ll explain that later) and look like they could, not only be interesting, but possibly be enjoyable.

History of Maths lectures fly by and never seem to last an hour, the course sounds interesting and the lectures are pretty fun. What interests me most is the content. The way we look at maths not from an analytical point of view, trying to poke and pinch it until it does what we want or to prove something is either true or false, but looking at a piece of maths as an acheivement, a milestone in human progression. The way mathematicians were, much like explorers of their day, sailing without a compass. They had no idea if heading off in one direction would give them what they were looking for lead them off in totally new directions.

Fluid Mechanics for Mechanical Engineer’s looks interesting but for different reasons, it’s more to do with the application of maths than most maths courses (this one is an engineering course) so we’ve spent this first week deriving stuff and then using it. Feels more like A-Level Physics than what I’ve been used to which is actually a very good thing. I’m enjoying it at any rate.

Intro to Topology is a course I didn’t think I’d be keeping up to be honest after stuffing up Metric Spaces but so far so good. One to keep in mind I think especially after the disaster of Topics in Math Bio.

Topics in Math Bio, taught by Dirk Drasdo, is shit. I’ve been to one lecture and all I learned is that poor Mr. Drasdo cannot lecture. He rattled through some slides which he’d prepared which made no sense, accompanied by his quiet, rolling german accent made it almost impossible to hear him let alone understand him and although I wanted to do this course may be put off.

I’m sure Dirk is brilliant at what he does and knows exactly what he’s talking about but like alot of staff at Warwick lack the communication skills to get the point across to any more than 2 or 3 people so really struggle to lecture large groups.

Away from my course Cricket looks like it could be a blast and with a house warming this weekend thinks are looking good. Oh yeah, everyone’s invited if by some chance you already know where and when it is.

: 06 Oct 2006 17:11 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem