Why the mixed feelings, Emily?

It's this whole thing of "Look! Here are some women (usually five) who were good at math in the last five thousand years!" On the one hand, it's good for people to know that there were some, on the other there's a certain "look at the talking dog" flavor to it. I'd be more impressed if textbooks managed to mention a woman every now and then without making a big deal of it.

Eh. Like I said, mixed feelings. I don't think they're totally shameful things and should be torn down, I'm just... mixed.

"Look! Here are some women (usually five) who were good at math in the last five thousand years!"

Like Black History Month?

Like Black History Month?

Pretty much what I'm saying.

So who here has heard of Sonya Kovalevsky? Not me....

I have! I even had a quote from her as a tagline, a few years ago. (Something like "A mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician." The quote's also been attributed to Weierstrass.)

Sure, all the chick mathematicians have heard of her...

OMG more awesome cookies in my office. I had one cherry-ginger almond yum, and one molasses-clove yum.

I'm driving down to Memphis in a couple of weeks and am already figuring out the best way to go and avoid the DR altogether.

Take 57 at least partway downstate (Tristate to 80, 80 east to 57 south), then you can cut over to Indiana if you want near Danville. That's the way I started out for Nashville a few years back.

Timelies,

I skipped 1200 posts or so, so I'm not sure what's going on beyond greedy receptionists and IDOT being responsible for our lack of flying cars, or something. (ETA: Okay, that first part came off a little too flip. Sorry you're dealing with an apparent asshat and idiot at your doctor's office, Tom.)

So I bought myself an X-Box 360 as a slightly early 30th birthday present. Unfortunately it's acting up (skipping and freezing) so I'm going to take it back to Circuit City. Oddly enough, they didn't offer me a Replacement Plan when I bought it.

Looking on-line it seems CC (and Best Buy) have changed their Replacement Plans to where you can't bring it back to the store anymore, but have to ship it to them and then they send you a gift card for the amount of the purchase. Which seems silly to me and ruins that supposed advantage of buying their plans over getting the extended warranty from the manufacturer.

Has anyone run into this, or do they still take it back if you bring it in to the store? (The current Xbox is still within the 30 day return policy, so I'm not worried. But doing some research on-line, I'm thinking it's a bad idea to not have some form of replacement plan where the 360 is concerned.)

I have a buddy who works at Gamestop and they still let you bring the broken system in, but they only offer a 1 year plan vs. CC and BB's 2 year. I'd rather go with a two year, if possible, all things considered, but if it's a matter of shipping versus just taking it into the store, I'd rather just bring it back to the store.

Anyone have any recommendations?

More geeky math stuff:

Quaternions: upping the dimensions of complex numbers

The basic idea behind quaterions is: we see some amazing things happen when we expand the dimensionality of numbers from 1 (the real numbers) to 2 (the complex numbers). What if we add more dimensions?

It doesn't work for three dimensions But you can create a system of numbers in four dimensions. As with complex numbers, you need a distinct unit for each dimension. In complex, those were 1 and i. For quaternions, you need for units: we'll call them "1", "i", "j", and "k". In quaternion math, the units have the following properties:

1. i² = j² = k² = ijk = -1
2. ij = k, jk = i, and ki=j
3. ji = -k, kj = -i, and ik=-j

No, that last one is not an error. Quaternion multiplication is not commutative: ab &neq; ba. It is associative over multiplication, meaning (ab)c = a(bc). And fortunately, it's both commutative and associative over addition.

Huh.

I'm afraid the first thought that went through my head was "Cash? Are urologists stiffed that often?"

I would think "stiff" and "urology" are about as far apart as a far thing on far day.

Why does my office have the damn a/c turned up to "Ice Station Zero" level today?!? Brrrrrrrr...