## Monday, November 26, 2007

### Reading Math over Thanksgiving

What did I do over Thanksgiving? I read Ernie Croots's excellent exposition of Szemeredi's Regularity Lemma which is here

It is sometimes easier to learn stuff when you are AWAY from your computer. Less distractions. BUT if you need to look something up, its harder. BUT this may force you to think harder. BUT maybe you need to look something up and can't derive it yourself BUT, BUT, BUT... However, it worked this time.

I also came up with a trivial math problem based on real life. I got into an elevator that had 23 floors and was going to the 4th floor. Two people got in and BOTH pushed buttons that were LESS than the 4th floor and diff from each other. I later thought `Gee, you would think being on the 4th floor you wouldn't stop twice to get there. What is the probability of that happening?' I had the answer in about 1 minute. Much easier than understanding Szemeredi's Regularity lemma. ~

#### 4 comments:

1. It's a nice simple math problem, but in real life, the first few floors are probably visited much more often than ones above them.

2. Don't people use stairs anymore?

3. The probability is always one. It follows from a corollary to Murphy's Law: if its a pain in the ass, its bound to happen.

4. @anon2: depends on the country, not in the states probably...