My New Life!

Much has happened since I last posted. To summarize, after accepting the job offer from Catholic University, I spent the summer preparing my thesis, and now I am living in DC. My defense went well – my adviser did ask the most difficult questions – and it’s taking some time to get adjusted to DC. It nice here, but I haven’t had too much opportunity to explore. The most touristy thing I’ve done so far is to visit the White House and the Natural History Museum. I plan to do more.

I’m Still Alive

Yes, I’m still part of this world. I haven’t been posting because I’ve been working on my thesis and recently, I’ve been preparing for a race this Saturday. I’m still doing the rowing thing and somehow my coach thinks I’m good enough to be in a boat during a race. If we’re rowing against people as unskilled as I am right now, then we have a chance. However, since this is not very likely, I’ve been practicing with my “crew” rather frequently to increasing the chance of us not being dead last. I’ll be rowing 2 races: a men’s four and a men’s eight. The hardest thing will be for me to get up early on Saturday; the race in the men’s four starts at 9:30am, and I have to be on the water by 9am.

My thesis is going well, though a bit slower than I would like. It will consist of two major chapters. The first will be on my paper of integer points in backwards orbits, and the second will be on my recent result on polynomials orbits modulo p. Hopefully, I will have a rough draft in a week or so. I need to have everything done by June 24th for submission, and I’ve have until sometime in August to make any corrections to the final copy. I am planning defending August 12th, but I that will depend on the availability of my committee members.

Eqypt Day 1 & 2

We flew into Cairo and were supposed spend the first day relaxing and recovering from the rather long flight. Instead, we asked a taxi driver – who turned out to be very friendly – to take us downtown for food and shopping. He took us to get Koshari, a popular fast-food in Egypt, and afterward we went to a few shopping and souvenir places. My sister bought a bunch of scarves, my mom bought some scented oils that is used to make expensive perfumes, and I bought a few papyri.

The next day, we flew south to Aswan and before going to our Nile cruise boat, we visited the Aswan High Dam. This is an impressive modern dam, with some seemingly dull history compared to everything else in Egypt. I realize that this “technological marvel” is a source of Egyptian pride (and most of their electricity), but to a foreigner, it is quite boring. Thank goodness our visit was brief. After the dam, we drove to a small port and then took a boat to see Philae Temple. This temple, which dates to around 250 B.C., was initially located on the island of Philae, but because of the rising water caused by the Aswan Dam, it was relocated to the nearby island of Agilkai. There is some defacement of the hieroglyphs on the temple walls and the prevailing theory is that this was done by early Christians who thought it were pagan symbols. (This sort of defacement is common on many of the temples in Egypt.) This was my first glimpse of ancient Egypt, and though still impressive, things were about to get much better. Throughout, I always wondered how magnificent these ruins were after construction.

After Philae Temple, we arrive at the Nile cruise boat for lunch and a relaxing ride to Kom Ombo Temple. Unfortunately, there was a delay leaving due to a late arrival of supplies – some of which included toilet paper – so we arrived at Kom Ombo temple later that evening. There seem to be some argument between the guards and our tour guide Hassan. They finally agreed to let us walk around the temple for about 20 minutes. Hassan tried his best to rush through some of the interesting facts about this temple. For example, the hieroglyphs on the wall contain one of the first recorded calendars, and show some ancient medical tools which surprisingly resembles modern ones.

Back from Egypt

Egypt was fantastic! After I came back, I got a little sick, probably from being in that germ-infested plane for 10 hours, so I was unable to give an update sooner. My dad bought me a really nice camera and I took a lot of pictures (almost 600). I started a flickr account so that everyone can see them. Unfortunately, the free version of flickr only allows 200 pics at a time. You can see my pictures in the right panel of this blog. Later, when I feel much better and have the time, I will give a more detail update of my trip and what else has been happening with me.

To Egypt

Hello World! There’s been a bit of good news on my end lately. First off, I got a job offer from Catholic University (CUA), and if all goes well, I will finish up this summer and be tossed into the real world. At least it will be in DC. I’m also leaving for Egypt today (at 3pm). My dad bought me a digital camera for me to take pics on my trip, and I’ll post them here when I get back. I’m off and will give a more extensive update when I get back a week from today.

On-Campus Interview at CUA

Well folks, I officially have an on-campus interview at Catholic University of America (CUA) on March 25th. I will spend the day at CUA getting to know the department a little, meeting with a dean and having various interviews, and giving a 50 minute talk (in my research field) in the afternoon. Wish me luck.

Colloquium Talk

So next week is spring break and I don’t have much planned. On Wednesday, I am going to SUNY Geneseo to give a talk to the undergraduates about life as a grad student in math. I must say life is pretty good as a grad student. Even though our stipend doesn’t pay much, it’s still a livable wage, and you’re mostly free of stress (in comparison to ‘real jobs’). After passing the qualifying exams, you start doing research and even though it can be a little frustrating at times, it is still enjoyable and rewarding. I would recommend to anyone seriously studying math as an undergrad to go to grad school. In fact, I would recommend to anyone starting university to seriously consider doing some math. Even though it’s not surprising to mathematicians, the 10 best jobs in this country all involve doing math. A mathematician will not, on average, make as much money annually as, say, a medical doctor. However, when you consider how much they are getting paid per hour of work, it’s probably one of the highest paid profession. A mathematician at a liberal arts college usually works, and gets paid for, 9 out of 12 months per year. For a typical semester of teaching three courses, the total amount of time spend in the classroom is about 8 hours a week (roughly 2.5 hours per course per week). Considering office hours, time it takes to prepare lecture notes (which is next to nothing if the course was previously taught), and grading responsibilities, let’s say this add another 8 hours to the work week. Since mathematicians don’t consider doing research work – because it’s fun to do, and it can be done anywhere, like in a pub – we may conclude the average work week is 16 hours for a mathematician. So, they work 3/4 of a year, and during that time, they work 2/5 of the average work week. This means a mathematician’s salary of $60,000 scaled to the a full time salary, would be about $200,000. Now add in the low level of stress and being your own boss, and compare to any high paying job, like say a neurosurgeon, where they work most of the year, for more than the expected 40 hours a week under higher stress and constant management. To make the argument even more convincing, consider that the median annual salary for a full-time mathematician is $87,000 (according to Bureau of Labor Statistics )

I also decided to give a colloquium talk on April 1st (April Fools Day) at SUNY Geneseo. The talk will be a version of the p-adic talk I gave to the high school students. I plan on doing a slide talk, and when available, I’ll post the slides on this blog for anyone interested in them.

All quiet on the job front

So nothing much have been going on lately. The only bit of good news is the e-mail I received yesterday from Catholic University. They wanted to know of my availability and to inform me that there is a high possibility that I may get an interview. We’ll see how it goes.

Last weekend, I, Suresh and a two other people decided to take Kathryn out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant named Lucano. Kathryn is a lady Suresh met a few years ago at a jazz bar, and they’ve been in touch ever since. I’ve also met her a few times and she is a big movie buff. From what I can remember, she really admires the director Ingmar Bergman. Recently, Kathryn found out that she needed surgery, so Suresh and I though it would be a good idea for a few of us to get dressed up and take her out to dinner. We had a good time at the restaurant, and during our conversations, Kathryn asked me what my all time favorite movie was. I couldn’t think of an answer then, and I probably don’t have a single movie that I consider better than all the others I’ve seen. But Kathryn should be happy to know that The Seventh Seal is definitely up there in my top ten.

Egypt and Catholic Univeristy

I, my mom, sister and brother are going for a week long trip to Egypt in April. I think it will be a lot of fun, and I intend to do a lot of research about Egypt to maximize the experience of the trip. (Knowing me, the day before I leave is when I’ll be frantically reading about places to visit and what to do.)

I got an e-mail yesterday from Catholic University, which is located in DC (this is one of the schools that interviewed me at the Joint Meetings), and I am happy to announce that I am on their short list. I’m not sure if this means I’ll get an on-campus interview, but it certainly does increase my chances. Wish me luck.

I had intentions of going to Bogota, Columbia with my friend and colleague Alejandro, however, it not looking so likely anymore. I was hoping to use my JetBlue free round trip travel reward – I collected enough points for this – but I think their route to Bogota is so new that the flights don’t yet qualify for this. I called an agent and was told to e-mail JetBlue. Hopefully, they’ll get back to me.

p-adic talk

I recently gave a math talk to a group of high school students about something called the p-adic numbers. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. It is a topic that almost no one ever hears of unless he/she intends to study math at the graduate level. I believe the idea is simple enough for even high school students, albeit very smart ones, or undergraduates without a strong math background to understand. Here’s how it goes: We want to draw a picture of all the rational numbers (i.e. fractions), and this is almost always done with some idea of distance in mind that is often based on our physical understanding of the world. We make a dot for an origin, usually called name it ‘0′, and one measurement to the right (a predetermined unit), we place a dot and label it ‘1′. Two units to the left, we place another dot and label it ‘-2′, etc. With enough dots for each fraction, a picture of a line emerges. However, this line is incomplete – it has holes – since some distances from the origin, like the square root of 2, cannot be written as a fraction. (This fact is not at all obvious. The ancient Greeks didn’t really believe in such ‘irrational’ numbers – numbers that cannot be written as a ratio – to the point that the word ‘irrational’ came to mean ‘crazy’). If you fill in the holes you get the ‘number line’, which everyone has seen since grade school. Almost all the math we do afterwards – including all of calculus- depends fundamentally on this picture of the real line.

What will happen if our idea of distance was different? Kurt Hensel discovered that measuring how many times a prime number, say 2, divides another number gives a perfectly good way to measure distance. For example, the more times 2 divides the numerator of a fraction will mean that the fraction is closer to the origin. All this can be spelled out mathematically, and we get the 2-adic distance (or absolute value) and a very different picture of the rational numbers (it is not a line!). Now the picture of the rational numbers under the 2-adic distance, like the case with the usual distance, has holes and we need to complete it (‘completion’ is actually the technical term used). Filling in the holes gives the 2-adic numbers, and it’s picture often looks like some crazy fractal. This new world has some exotic properties which can make it very useful. For example, every point in a circle is it’s center and every triangle is isosceles. Even calculus is oftentimes much easier to do. So now instead of having the ‘real’ world, for every prime p, we get a p-adic world and a more complete picture of our universe (that is, our mathematical universe).

This was pretty much the gist of the introductory talk I gave. I am going to do a follow up talk a week from Monday.