25/366 it's complicated

i hated math when i was in school. not because it was "hard" but because i hated anything that required rote repetition, nor did i enjoy manipulating numbers for the sake of manipulating numbers without an application. i generally grasped the concepts right away and found sheets of practice problems to be torture. i was the flip side of most of my class, who were happy to do sheets of dittos but quailed at word problems, which were my favorite.

once we got to use variables (algebra) and then calculators (trigonometry) i was much happier. most favorite was geometry where the work was in figuring out how to get to the answer, not so much the numerical result. i was in a college-level Calculus class as a HS senior but found the teacher's style incomprehensible; it was the one course i dropped in my entire academic history. (i didn't need it to graduate, it just would have been nice for placement. frex, i literally tested myself out of the distribution courses for college English and History.) i only took Statistics in college; i passed but it was my worst grade ever.*

this week's unit in my Python class involves basic math operations. which is how i learned that somehow i never fully absorbed PEMDAS. one of the examples in the class reading was this:

number = 1 + 2 * 3 / 4.0

now, that's something where you would use parentheses for clarity in real life, but it was meant to show how Python follows a built-in set of rules. i honestly had to go on StackOverflow to get an improved lesson in something that i should have had engraved on my brain in primary school. were there other basic concepts that i didn't take in because i dreaded the math portion of the day? or maybe just things i fully erased in order to store more trivia? i guess i'm going to find out.


*there's another story to be told here about how between my total inexperience with needing to ask for help on anything academic and being culturally unaware of how to use office hours, i didn't take advantage of the resources available to do better. also, still hated math.

digression that sort of belongs here: in spite of years of piano lessons, voice lessons, and a solid performance record, i can't truly read music. i used to ace written theory tests, i can totally tell which notes to play and relative pitches to sing, but i can't sight read based on time signatures. if i haven't heard a recording or performance of the piece i can't produce it correctly. but i guess i've always been good enough at compensating that no one really got how illiterate i am, including me. i didn't truly understand until i read someone else's account of their experience.

26/366 sockitecture

i've been poking at New Pathways for Sock Knitters, which is all about the idea that you can put the gusset increases anywhere you like as long as the increases are proportioned in a specific way.

it includes multiple toe structures, and a bunch of wonky tables and formulas where you knit a gauge swatch and measure your foot and that produces a set of numbers that you plug into the pattern. the only thing that i don't really like is that there aren't heel options, just slipstitch top down or toe up.

i did a tiny practice sock, and then about half of another and figured out that i could probably just do a Fleegle heel and it would be fine. it was. i've gotten through the heel turn of a full-size "riverbed" sock (gusset increases start centered on the sole of the foot).

i'm using a Crazy Zauberball that came from philotera's stash purge. i had to edit a bit to get huge bands of black out of the sequence (funny how everything matching is a hazard of random plying). progress pic in the previous post.