Physics and Maths, Studied this Week.

Another week and I have spent the last period, solely concentrating on honing some basic maths skills, through lots of practise questions.  I have had a complete week off from MST121, before I spend another few days completing TMA04 and effectively finishing the course.

A few days ago, I had the good fortune to visit the Open University campus in Milton Keynes.  I spent the morning in the library which is an impressive building.  They have the course material for every course that they run, on display.  I therefore spent the morning leafing through the course books of every single maths course that they currently run.

It left me with the feeling that all of these maths courses look well presented and very do-able.  Even though I have only just completed MST121, I was able to see how all of the level 3 courses, followed on nicely from either M208 or MST209 and all of the content was detailed, yet I definitely feel confident, that I could cope with most of it.

Whilst there, I also managed to get in the background whilst they were filming a course DVD on some sociology module.  Not sure which one it was for, but I'm glad I had on my Sunday best, that day!

I then went to Oxford and spent the day going around the Colleges, Museums and drinking coffee.  I left there with an amazing boost of my keenness to study.  It is such an inspiring place and you can't help but feel affected by the backdrop.

Total Study time this week:  16hrs.

Maths Skills practise
Drawing graphs
Functions and graphs
Simultaneous equations in two or three variables
Simplifying polynomials
Inequalities


Other Maths reading
Geometry - Brannan
Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon Singh

ps: The Singh book is thoroughly entertaining and well worth a read.  It follows the story of the disastrous solution provided by Wiles and then his subsequent 'year of hell', trying to put things right.  It's a maths book that you can read with a bottle of wine, without worrying that you'll lose the ability to follow it, after the first glass; as it concentrates on the human story behind the incident.