Get This Man a Doctor

I just got done watching a video from Slashdot. The title of the article was Crank Doesn’t Understand Division. Oh wait, it might of had a more deceptive Slashdotesque title, but I don’t really want to give it pagerank-credence by linking directly to it.

Anyways, it links to a video of some dude claiming to have solved the “two thousand year old problem” (verbally. really.) of . His innovative idea is that is an algebraically consistent number, and he labels it , pronounced “nullity”. Oh, and is also a number, and it’s infinity.

Now, there’s nothing crazy about claiming that infinity is a number, or that there are positive numbers that are smaller than every positive real number. But then he goes to the board and starts writing out an equation that treats and just like fractions.

Okay, let . That is, is the multiplicative inverse of 0. Then by definition, it must multiply with 0 to obtain 1. In the video, Herr Doctor Professor claims that multiplying the numerator and denominator of fractions holds with infinity and nullity. So,

So the magical “nullity” number in the video is actually equal to one. Hmm….

On the first day of abstract algebra, you have to prove that you can’t divide by zero without either redefining multiplication or proving a contradiction. If there was a multiplicative inverse of zero, say , then we would have,

Which is generally not a good result.

To see an examination of infinitesimally small and infinitely large numbers that isn’t crazy, read about surreal or hyperreal numbers.

Yesterday I drove up to the University of Washington to visit their Mathematics department. I’ve spent a summer in Seattle and I have a few friends there, so it might be the kind of place I’d like to stay for five years.

I got a chance to speak to the Director of Graduate Studies, which went pretty well if uneventful. I made two pretty terrible blunders, though. First, I admitted that I was a little rusty, having been out of school for two years. He told me that I “could apply to a Masters instead,” which kind of hurt. The other was asking if it was uncommon to take a leave of absence (the answer is very much so). Next time I talk to a department, I’ll try not to sound like I don’t know what I’m doing.

Maybe I need to approach these meetings with questions like, “What can you offer me, the future Fields Medalist, to get me to come here?” Yeah, people love it when you say that.

Today I finally found my third recommender, who was also my thesis advisor. She was at my school for a two year professorship, and unfortunately did not get a tenure track position. She left, and hasn’t taught anywhere else since.

Now, finding her wouldn’t be so hard, except for the fact that I live in New York and she was rumored to live in Portland. For the past month, I have done the following things to get a hold of her:

1. Sent an email to the head of her old department,
2. Sent an email to three other professors in her old department,
3. Sent an email to her former dissertation advisor,
4. Sent an email to her old school email (bounced),
5. When all those failed, got her current address and sent her a letter priority mail (waited two weeks, then),
6. Sent an email to her husband (after deciding that I was willing to risk a restraining order for grad school),
7. Sent an email to the head of her husband’s former department (who was quite helpful, I might add), and finally,
8. Started panicking.

All of these things failed (except 8). Now, I do not need a recommendation from my advisor, but one of my former professors told me it would be a “liability” to not have one. Also, I had run out of professors who could say generally good things about me, and those that could say generally good things would also say some specifically bad things. Too risky.

I came to Portland for Thanksgiving, and also because my mom and stepdad are moving to Florida. This will probably be the last time I have a reason to be in Portland. So at the very least, I had to try going to her house (like I said, willing to risk a restraining order). Maybe they moved, maybe she didn’t want to talk to me, maybe they were on vacation. I don’t know, I just had to try.

After ringing the bell and getting no answer, I decided I would write their neighbor a little note asking that if they knew where the current or past resident was could they please drop me a line as soon as possible because I’m a little crazy and I’ll probably show up again tomorrow if they aren’t prompt about it.

When I saw her walking down the street, I let out the most awkward “Heeeeeyy….” ever. Mathematicians aren’t so much with the people skills, so our initial greetings had a lot of loooong. Syyyyyyllables.

But she invited me in, and we actually had a nice long chat about grad school and what she was up to. It was actually really good to talk to her, and I had forgot how generally kind she is. I’m kind of disappointed now that we didn’t keep in touch.

I didn’t really prod about why all my previous attempts to contact her failed, but she agreed to write a recommendation, which is so gloriously awesome that I’m going to pass out now.

At some point in the past five years, I decided that I was going to become a professor. For every minute of the next five+ years, I’m probably going to regret that decision. Oops.

Someone recently told me that I have an “addictive personality”. If that’s the case, then hopefully I will faithfully keep this site updated as I try to squeeze my way through grad school. I’m not actually going to school anywhere yet, you see, that’s the beauty of it. I’m starting a blog early. This site is going to chronicle the wild swing of emotions that is applying to grad school. And if I actually get in somewhere, well, you’ll never hear from me again.

Sometimes, though, I reserve the right to complain about my team or my current line of work.