Sample MS221 - Exam

Had a first browse through the sample MS221 exam today. It is a lot of work for only three hours. Twelve questions which test knowledge of what was in the course. With these twelve questions you can score up to 60% of the total points. Four difficult questions remain for the other 40%. Of the four difficult questions only two will be marked. ( You have to do all four of them because you don't know which will be marked. )

I would say that anything is possible with regards to this exam. I could fail but I could just as well get a high score. It all depends on proper training from now till the exam. I am sure that a lot of exam training will pay off.

But first I have to finish MS221 - TMA04.

How I spent some spare study time

I have most of the work done on MS221 / TMA04 but since I haven't received the results of TMA03 yet, I wait before sending the TMA in. So, I can spend my study time freely. I am currently studying ( elementary ) Number Theory. I made some real progress during the weekend and today.

I completely understand and am thus able to prove, ( now and in the future, I am sure ) the formula for the Sigma number-theoric function. The sum of the dividers of a natural number. For example:

12 = 2^2 * 3
sigma(12)
= 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 12
= ( 1 + 2 + 4 ) + ( 3 + 6 + 12 )
= ( 1 + 2 + 4 ) * ( 1 + 3 )
= 7 * 4
= ( 2^3 - 1 ) / ( 2 - 1 ) * ( 3^2 - 1 ) / ( 3 - 1 )
= 28.
Furthermore, I am beginning to ger a practical understanding of Möbius inversion.

And I firmly consolidated knowlegde of and skills regarding
- Properties of integer division
- Euclidean algorithm for finding the GCD
- Linear diophantine equations
- Congruences
- etc.

How am I doing relatively ?

I mean how do my study results compare to other students? Do I actually care??! I read about people receiving TMA results of 99, 100 and so on. Than my average of 90 sofar seams low, very low as a matter of fact. On the other hand those who 'blog' 'brag' including me, I suppose. I wouldn't shout it around if I passed on 41/100, although it has exactly the same value to the overall degree result. - If a lot of students are scoring in the 80-100 range then the TMA's are just too simple imho. Since the student can make the assignments at home that means they can be quite challenging.

Studying mathematics with SuperMemo

If you look carefully how the texts are layed out in the study books you see that they did everything which is possible to make studying as efficient as possible. There is no need to make a summary, think of examples for theorems, find and do exercises, etc. Everything is in the book at the time you need it. And for a course like MS221 everything is nicely presented in a Course Handbook which includes a dictionary for technical terms.

I used to do a lot of self-studying so a I used a lot of study time on tasks which aren't necessary when you do an OU course. I nevertheless got used to allocating time to study-improvement on a regular basis. If I could only use SuperMemo then studying becomes a process which automatically produces a lot of statistical data about the studying process itself. But producing learning materials for SuperMemo can be time-consuming in itself. That fact kept me from using SM thus far. But with the other tools I currently have like Mathematica, TeXnicCenter and so on I must be able to organize my way of studying, doing exercises etc. so that it will be fairly easy to document my work as a SM item/answer pair.

It is worth another try...

MST121 overall course result

See your MST121 course website 
Overall course result

PassOverall continuous assessment score (OCAS) : 89
Overall assessment score (OAS) : 89

Substitution applied at : 87.7

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Gödel, Escher, Bach

Gödel, Escher, Bach is the first book I read after many years on non-reading / studying, besides trying to stay on top of the ever faster changing world of IT and systems development. I read GEB in English which is a foreign language for me, so it was hard for more than one reason. But reading it felt like an adventure and it fueled my dream of studying mathematics.

And now MIT made a series of six video lectures about the book. Haven't seen it yet but I expect them to be interesting. Gödel's incompleteness theorem is a topic in the course Number Theory and Logic which is part of my course plan.
 

OU Courses for 2010

I'll very likely go for M208 ( Level-2 60 points ) combined with MT365 ( Level 3 30 points ). M208 is pure mathematics: Analysis, Linear Algebra and Group Theory. MT365 is discrete mathematics: graphs, networks and designs.

After MST121 and MS221, both M208 and MST209 are good options to do next. They can be done both but in that case you have to do one TMA per two weeks. That is a lot. Too much I can handle. Unfortunately.

Graphs, networks and design

As far as algorithms is concerned I think MT365 "Graphs, networks and design" comes close. It's a course I could do next year. Combined with M208, pure mathematics. I am not sure if I do a course starting in october. It would be a non-math course and I am not sure if I have the strong motivation needed to succeed an Open University course.

Formal grammars and languages

I haven't been able to find an Open University course covering formal grammars and languages. Come to think of it there isn't a course about algorithms ( Don Knuth ! ) either. I find this a bit strange.

Math writing recognition in Mathematica and Windows 7

Screenshots here.

Have been waiting for this a long time. Already have the tablet PC with Vista on which handwriting recognition works perfect. So all I need now is Windows 7. That's at least a valid and worthwile reason to upgrade to Windows 7.

MS221 - TMA03 Completed

MS221 - TMA03 completed and ready to be shipped to T. I My prediction for this one is 82 / 100. We'll see. It takes at least five weeks before a result may come back. The cut-off date is August 5.
TMA03 questions
1. Derivatives
2. Graph sketching
3. Indefinite integrals
4. Area and volume calculations
5. Taylor series
6. ( more ) Taylor series

PI is female.

A formula for PI is
PI / 4 = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 +1/9 - 1/11 + ....

I played a bit with this formula and it took me approx. 4000 terms to get the first four decimals stable. Beautiful but not practical.

I would say that PI is female.