Let it all hang out

Nothing good to report. Spent the morning doing the assignment with Bex [rather than study for the QUAN test]. The lecture suddenly landed us with "Jordan Canonical Forms", which Chris apparently gave us a handout on, although I never saw such a handout. It must be in the linear algebra notes that he put online a few weeks ago. I ignored them because I assumed that everything I need for this course was taught in MATH 207 - but apparently MATH 207 has changed a good deal since Chris used to teach it. This isn't the first time he's assumed that we 207 veterans know things which we actually do not know.

The tutorial enlarged on the Jordan stuff a bit, and Chris mentioned that we weren't to worry too much about the detail of it; but as I want to understand everything, for pleasure more than any other reason, I find it necessary to worry about the detail. I'll do so over the weekend.

So now I need to read that handout, and I need to get some energy, which would probably be facilitated by getting enough sleep for once. At the end of today's lecture Chris spent ten minutes talking about the real-world implications of some of the DEs we were studying. Without the constant stimulation of writing to keep my brain online, I only stayed awake for the first minute or so, which is a bit sad. The real world can be interesting... sometimes.