The Summary

In this semester, I started to write a blog which I have never done before. I have written only a few essays in English in the ESL writing class.  I am a math major student so there maybe not many chances to write something. But the several weeks blogs did help me a lot about my future career and the interest in math. I have knew myself better and I think the choice to change my major from business to math is wise. I did learn a lot of practical knowledge as well as theoretical knowledge in the math field. 

I wrote about the inner beauty of math and I find more when the time passes. Not only the secret inside math is fascinating, but also the way solving problems is interesting. Although many difficult problems need a lot of time to work with, the joy after solving them is boundless. So many scientists in various field had their achievements in math which shows the importance of math. We use math unconsciously in our daily life. I should keep moving on my math way and trying to achieve success.

The Inner Beauty of Math

When I decided to change my major from pre-business to math, my friends and my parents were not very supportive. They know math is a tough major and needs a lot of time to spend on. To me, it is interesting to study math and solve problems. There are so many challenges in the math field. We can't solve all the problems but we can try our best to discover new things. Many great men showed their compliment to math.

Einstein said: " mathematical reason than all other sciences are respected, one reason is because his proposition is absolutely reliable and beyond all dispute, and other sciences are often overthrown by newly discovered facts risk. .... Mathematics is a high reputation, another reason is that natural science realization theorems of mathematics, given some degree of reliability of natural science. " 

In China, famous mathematician Hua Luogeng said: " the universe is big, the micro particles, chemical rocket fast, clever, the earth change, biological mystery, daily numerous, nowhere without mathematics. "

Math is widely used in our daily life but we usually don't pay more attention. As long as we know the method to learn math, we will find the inner beauty of math and love it.

The Education In the Third World Countries

I have a dream of being a math teacher in the future so I cares about the status of education status in everywhere.There is a fact that as of 2012, 31 million primary-school pupils worldwide dropped out of school. An additional 32 million repeated a grade.In big and developed countries, the education is very advanced. People are highly educated. But the education in the third world countries is pretty backward.  
There are lots of factors cause this issue. A lack of funding of the education may cause the poor families not able to afford the tuition fee for their children.Not only the money problem, in many places, the lack of teachers or having untrained teachers is a bigger problem. Most teachers do not want to go to a poor place to teach so although there are some children, there is no efficient way for they to study. In addition, poor places may have few classrooms and learning materials. The problem of external facilities is hard to deal with.
So the education should not be develop fast only in the rich countries, people need to pay more attention to the education in the third world countries in order to make people their educated and happy.

The Math In The Animals

People can count different things and we know animals share a lot in common.So I want to discover whether animals have the ability to count. As the saying goes : Dogs are man's best friends. So I did the research on dogs first. There is an experiment to test whether dogs can count. The scientists use two bowls which they are put by different amount of food. They choose 27 dogs as experimental subjects in order to make the test can be more convincing. The result is that most of the 27 dogs choose the bowl with more food. So we can say that dogs have the ability to count.

Not only dogs, there are numerous animals smarter than dogs. Chimpanzees, which share most things in common with humans, can do the count and they can do a lot of things harder than count. Robin birds can also do the same thing. They have the ability to discern between small numbers, such as three and four and can train themselves to count all the way up to twelve. It is so nice to know the funny facts about the animals can learn math by their own way and we can train them to learn more.

Looking forward to the study in Oakland

Finally, I got the transfer acceptance to the main campus in Oakland. I could transfer to the main campus last year with a pre-business major which only required 30 credits last year. I did not choose the business major at first, but in China there is an invisible rule that most parents choose majors for kids. I changed major in my second semester exactly when I found that I did not interest in business at all. In the business classes I had learned, there was too much theoretical knowledge.To learn some more practical knowledge I changed my major to general mathematics.

After finishing 17 credits this semester, I can finally transfer to the main campus. I like the environment here but I think there are more opportunities in a bigger city. I like all the teachers here and my math teacher Professor Thompson is my favourite teacher. He taught me many different ways to learn math and encouraged me when I face difficulties. I love math and I think I made a good choice about changing the major. Although the choice made my transfer delayed one year, I learned more mathematical knowledge than before and I met so many nice teachers. I hope I could have more fun in the main campus and further my study.

The History of Mathematics and Famous Mathematicians

I am interested in all kinds of knowledge in the math field.This week, I did some research on the history of mathematics.  I found out that there was a funny fact that in the ancient era, there was almost no the title of "mathematicians", more of the researchers were only called scientists or engineers. Famous scientists known all over the world like Albert Einstein,Isaac Newton,Niels Bohr and many others can be searched by "Famous Mathematics" nowadays. Although they invented or discovered a lot of things, they still have contribution to the math field.

As I mentioned before, my adviser who is also my math teacher Thompson's favorite mathematician is Leonhard Euler.  He was not only a mathematician but also a  physicist,astronomer, logician and engineer. To my adviser, he is a mathematician but maybe in others' eyes, he can be someone else. The math history has many categories: prehistoric mathematics, Egypt mathematics, Chinese mathematics，Greek mathematics, Indian mathematics, Islamic mathematics, Medieval European mathematics and so on. That is a big work to learn all of the history. I have read few of them but I think I will know the history better when I attend more math classes.

The Mental Arithmetic

This week I watched a Chinese show that was called "Super Brain". The original show is from Germany which is called "Superhirn". The show is to find the most talented people particularly in brain. I was attracted by two children and a women challenged the speed and accuracy of mental arithmetic.

I am interested in math a lot so I try to do the questions shown on the screen. The six-digit numbers were shown only 1 second and then jumped to the next one. I could not even remember those numbers. After watching the show, I decided to search mental arithmetic and hoped to find something interesting. There is a website called windhoff.net/mental_arithmetic. People can practice mental calculation there. I tried several times but I had to use a lot of time to calculate big numbers.

I think there must be some more efficient and more accurate ways to solve the problems so I use the internet and there are many tutorials about training mental arithmetic. Most of the ways are about changing the order, add or minus from the original numbers and so on. It is impossible for us to calculate the addition of subtraction so fast without practicing. The prodigies in the show said he was trained so if we want to get that height, we should make sure that we have time to practice harder and harder.