I made it through another week!

So, of course the math has been good.

We started the study of arithmetic and multiplicative functions in number theory. We also did a very cool proof about the probability of seeing a squirrel in a forest, where the forest is the first quadrant of integer (a,b) values, and you're standing at the origin looking out.

Character theory has continued its intenseness. Our next homework involves a lot of questions involving generators and relations, which I'm eager to study.

In combinatorics we're continuing graph theory, which I haven't explored enough of yet to come to a decision.

And in Logic, it is becoming less and less logical and more and more not-fun. I should have listened to my prof about not taking this class..

Functional is good as well, today we talked about dynamical systems, and talked a bit about chaos, in memorium of Lorenz.

I survived! my 8-10 hour day yesterday. Going to bed at 10 PM on wednesday night really helped. The talk on simple groups was pretty good. I hope mathematicians can eventually understand how to create groups from the simple groups. I hope I can one day understand just a few of the weird simple groups that are out there. It still baffles my mind that there are only a finite number of the sparse ones...

The opera was pretty excellent. My seats were great, I was in the 18th row. It was a bit odd since they changed Don G's out after intermissions- it seemed like the first guy was not having great luck with his voice- the orchestra was drowning him out. But Leporello was excellent. This was a action filled piece- from acrobatics on stage, to the crashing of a concrete statue, to eating of food on stage, and the opening of champagne on stage. I finished the translation Wednesday night, and that helped with the understanding. The ending was done quite cleverly as well, and it seems like in a unique fashion.

This time I was actually under the chandelier!

More pretty-ness.

Today was a rather exciting day since there was an ALL-day transit strike. That meant walking to class. Our character theory class was canceled for this reason.

After class, I had a great Schnitzel Mac at McDonalds (it's the special of the week!) and decided to walk to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to see Laszlo Lovasz talk about Convergent Graph Sequences. Our functional Prof had been playing this up, and I was eager to go.


It was a 45 minute walk, but I had plenty of time to kill, so I decided to revisit St. Stephen's Basilica, and this time see the hand of St. Istevan.

This is the hand. They don't let you take flash, and you have to pay 100 ft to get the light turned on. It is pretty unique though- it is a 1,000 year hand of the first king of Hungary. For a better picture, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sztjobb.jpg . I've seen mummies before.... but never just a hand! It was really creepy when the tour guide directed me to the side of the box, and then preceeded to make a fist, which looked exactly same as the fist the hand was making.

Lovasz's talk was excellent. I didn't understand everything that was going on, but the most awesome part was when he kept on referencing Gabor Elek, our functional analysis professor, who was sitting out in the crowd with us. He studies convergent graph sequences as a research topic.

Talks like this make me think, "When I grow up, I want to be a real mathematician!" Out in the crowd there were many of them, including Renyi faculty, and the Renyi head, Peter Pal Palfry, who gave the simple groups talk. I can't wait~