Posted by martin on
Thursday, 18 May 2006 at 09:26
Two weeks today until exams; the past papers seem to be reasonably doable - at least when you are used to olympiad problems that take hours each. We are still getting some lectures as well, of which the most interesting and hardest are on topology; I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about this and learning it by discovery. (Very briefly, topology is the study of continuous maps: you start off with some space or surface, then map each point from that space to a point in some other space; the map is continuous if points that started off close together end up close together.)
There have been three TCMS concerts in the past couple of weeks, including a special one in the Wren Library instead of our normal venue of the chapel. That meant lots of moving of chairs from the chapel store to the library. It’s a nice building but a slightly odd concert venue; actually both the Wren Library and the chapel are very long and thin, which seems to me a strange shape for a chapel.
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Martin
Tags exams, tcms, trinity, tripos
Posted by martin on
Monday, 24 April 2006 at 17:02
Last term I got out of the habit of posting; sorry about that. You will consequently have missed that I have become Membership Secretary for the Trinity College Music Society and Bookshop Manager for the Archimedeans (University maths society). The first is not a terribly difficult task, which means maintaining the members database and making membership cards for new members, and also stewarding at a few concerts per term. We had a committee meeting this afternoon, held on the Fellows’ Bowling Green thanks to the sunny weather (although it is not yet very warm).
A major event this term will be exams. I have four exams at the start of June. We are expected to work pretty hard before that, doing a year’s worth of past papers each week, with two supervisions a week to go through them. There are also four weeks of lectures, but these are not examined until next year and you can choose not to go to some of them until next year. In any case, we will get no supervisions on them this term.
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Martin
Tags archimedeans, tcms, tripos
Posted by martin on
Saturday, 28 January 2006 at 13:08
There has not really been much happening so far this term. My first supervisions (except ones left over from last term) are not until Wednesday of next week. However I do have three on that Wednesday so I now have to start working hard - most of the supervisors wanted to supervise on Wednesdays. I am doing a second-year course, Groups, Rings and Modules, for which my supervisions are also on Wednesdays but on the other week (all the supervisions are once a fortnight).
On Wednesday, we returned from lectures to find several fire engines parked in front of Great Gate and porters directing you to use other entrances to the college. There were many more porters around Great Court directing people away from Great Gate. Someone was told that a suspicious package had been found. It emerged that when the mail was being sorted, acid had leaked from a letter and burned a porter’s hand. The Cambridge Student reports that a man is now in custody.
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Martin
Tags trinity, tripos
Posted by martin on
Thursday, 19 January 2006 at 08:26
Well I’m now back in Cambridge. Lectures start again today, and I have my first supervision (left over from last term). Between leaving Belfast on Wednesday and getting to Cambridge on Saturday, I spent several days staying with my aunt in Hove (near Brighton). During this time I rode up and down the south coast by railway, and visited Stonehenge, Salisbury, Chichester, Bosham, Portsmouth, Brighton and Fishbourne.
A few photos are at http://www.martinorr.name/2006/South
On Monday I went to visit our IOI guide, Beata. She and her friend Marzena are working in a cafe in Bracknell. They are both enjoying living in England and clearly it is financially worth coming here: the minimum wage is five times what it is in Poland, rent costs four times as much, food up to twice as much and other things are of comparable price. Marcin, a friend in college with Polish parents, reckons that the difference in prices is greater than that but that it would still be possible to save considerably more in the UK than in Poland.
Full Term started on Tuesday with a college test on last term’s work. I came top out of the people who did the test, although one of the three Maths Directors of Studies did not get his students to take the test; and by an alphabetical coincidence that includes five of the seven former IMO team members (four UK, one Ireland, one Greece and one Vietnam) in the year.
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Martin
Tags england, holiday, ioi, tripos
Posted by martin on
Monday, 24 October 2005 at 08:32
On Saturday night we had our Matriculation Dinner. This is a very elaborate (and very nice) dinner in the college Hall, attended by all the freshers as well as the Master and Fellows of the college (who are seated among the students). The catering department failed to put me on the seating plan, but they put me in the seat of someone who didn’t turn up and I greatly enjoyed the dinner.
On Friday I started my German class. We had a two-hour class so covered a lot of the basic phrases. I have also been to lectures in Anatomy and Anthropology this week. In two of the three Maths courses, we have reached the end of what I already knew and are starting on new stuff. I have two supervisions on Tuesday so I have had quite a lot of work this weekend (in so far as there is a weekend with lectures on Saturdays - Sunday is the only day which is really different from any other).
Just for you to see where I am living, I have taken a few photos of the college.
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Martin
Tags cambridge, languages, lectures, trinity, tripos
Posted by martin on
Monday, 10 October 2005 at 16:11
Lectures started on Thursday. We have lectures 10-12 every day (including Saturday) and all in the same place, so it’s very easy to keep track. It’s somewhat odd not having any specific plan in the afternoons. We do have two 1-hour supervisions (with a research student) each week. My first is tomorrow and I have just gone across to the Centre for Mathematical Sciences to hand the work in for it. The CMS is an amazing new building in West Cambridge in seven layered pavilions and with a garden on the roof.
My courses this term are Algebra and Geometry, Numbers and Sets, and Differential Equations. So far there has been very little I have not done before.
I have also been to a Cambridge Union debate (“This House would rather warm up the planet than cool down the economy”), at which I tried to speak but only six speakers from the floor are accepted, and to squashes for the College and University Maths societies and the Russian Society. I also had lunch at my Tutor’s on Sunday which is over two miles away - a long way in Cambridge.
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Martin
Tags cambridge, cms, lectures, tripos