Data Science Wizardry Blog by Attila Vajda

Getting around to writing a blog post

Things I notice.

for some reason #

I find it difficult to be publishing a blog post.

one idea

I am writing a blog, I am studying mathematics, I am a learner. This is a process book.

I forgot how to insert an image.

journal snippet

Energised. I'm energised by mindfulness! Among other things, I wish I could get around publishing these blog posts. Alright

This is something I learnt:

\usepackage{tikzpicture}

"Sing the things that you like, and the things that you don't like!"

\begin{tikzpicture} \end{tikzpicture}

I enjoy reading Sea and Sardinia by D.H. Lawrence. Wow, now that I think of it, it's a bit like traveling. Perhaps this is what Henry Miller meant by being no need to move from one's spot. "Stay put, and watch the world go round." He wrote something to the effect that by conversing with people and reading about places he could imagine cities and places in the world, just as well, or better, then if he traveled there. What I just noticed that I have now memories of being in Sicily, and waiting at the station of Messina! That's so cool. And why, my memories of places I visited are fragmented anyway.

Talking about fragments, I noticed that when trying to recall stuff, as in simple recall - I find it difficult to do so, and often I focus on something I learnt and it will not appear in my mind. My mind is a blank, and I used to blame myself, I learn all these things, hundreds of things, everyday, and I can't remember anything! But now I what I notice is that I do recall things, and there are fragments, little faint snippets of things, so I thought I could embrace these fragments, and reward, celebrate them, "here is a fragment of something I learned", "I can see a book, I can see it's front cover", "a greek letter", "a connective", "a chord, what is the sound of a diminished chord?", "finding augmented on the guitar, transposing the patter", and so on and so forth, seeing how many of these fragments I can recall, and maybe I can even arrange them in a graph in my mind. Oh my mind wants to do gratitude practice, what I am grateful for, cool, I recall something of that nature.

An small idea of, upcycling notes I jotted #

journal snippet

Here I wondered if there was a connection, of the natural numbers, and this pattern. Is the circle infinity, the final natural number? lol

I don't know what else to write here, so I will leave it at that.

I remember lying with closed eyes and this pattern appeared to me, and I was happy to make a note. This is a bit like trying to note one's dreams. "Oh I had a dream where it all made sense, but when I woke up I couldn't remember, I wish I wrote it down."

Somehow connecting with the previous idea, I have an idea related to mental health recovery and intrusive thoughts, which helps me in my own recovery. Oh yes (I remember), that I noticed some time ago is that my intrusive thoughts are never about algebra, or about some cool new insight into a mathematical problem, well, or some known knowledge about something mathematical I am learning. And so this realisation also shows me that the things I am trying to learn are in textbooks, and not in crazy ideas.

A pattern I just noticed #

Thinking about how to write about mental health recovery, and mathematics in the same blog post, I consulted computer agent, and it mentioned that parts of the text can be transitioned. Why, it is like fade in, fade out, in music, or film! And it is like composition in mathematics, where you can compose two things if one has the same endpoint as the other's starting point. If cod f = dom g then their composite is g ∘ f, in other words g after f.

So if one paragraph ends with an idea and the next paragraph starts with the same idea, the two paragraphs form a composite. AND I notice this might mean the initial, or topical idea of the first paragraph now commutes to the concluding idea of the second!

It would be cool to write and create value through this blog #

It would be awesome, to be able to study mathematics in this environment. Through writing blog pages.

Something I was trying to understand, and how I approached it. I noticed that when I first took an exam in mathematics, I was very stressed, and found it difficult to recall things I knew. It was a written exam, and I was sort of paralysed with fear, nevertheless it was interesting to start working with that state of affairs and to move despite not remembering almost anything. So I just started using what I had, and wrote things on the blank piece of paper, whatever came to my mind, I remembered drawing figures is an important part of mathematical problem solving, but "I can't possibly draw anything meaningful", well I can draw something and if I fail, I can try again, or go away and learn improve at drawing things. Which I did, and I wrote stuff, but stuff occurred to me in English and this exam was in Hungarian, I wrote in English anyway. "You can't write questions, you can't write this, you can't write that, the examinor who will read it expects you to write this, and that", so I noticed earlier already that this was contrived, and this is not how I am learning my mathematics or work on stuff in my journals, so why do I try to do something contrived... and I realised the exam paper can be a paper in my journal, and that's what I should improve at. Not at satisfying others, or imagined expectations that make me anxious, but at being able to play, explore, "Play, imagine, investigate!", that's what examiners should examine me doing, and help me with that.

So I practiced this for the first 6 hours of writing exams, and by the end of the 6th hour I felt a sense of calm. We were sitting in a big classroom, it was in the winter semester, when it becomes dark around 4pm already. People were leaving, and it was a tranquil place. A linear algebra exam, it reminded me of days at school, and uni, everyone working away at some task, with the sounds of the city in the background. Maybe this is deep work.

ideas: to add: 3pages, what im trying "what have you tried?"