Physics and Maths, Studied this Week.

The last 2 weeks have been taken up primarily with completing TMA04 and CMA42, for MST121.  Now that I have completed this course, I am very satisfied with how it has all gone and I am looking forward to starting M208 (Pure Maths), in January.

In preparation for that course, and to make good use of the time between now and January (Only 18 study weeks left), I have put together a study plan, which I have already started yesterday.

The plan consists of the following work each day:

3 pages of slow, detailed study and completion of the exercises in 'A First Course in Mathematical Analysis' Brannan.

1hr of repeated maths exercises of all maths that I have done to date, right from handling polynomials, through to calculus.

2 pages of detailed study and completion of exercise in 'Geometry' Brannan.

2 pages of detailed study and completion of exercises in 'Calculus 3rd Ed.' Spivak.

I know that 7 pages per day of textbook study, might not sound a lot, but I am really going for critical analysis and understanding the concepts, rather than a whistle-stop tour.  Also, I find that reading maths textbooks, is an art that needs to be learned, before building up to any significant volume.  I hope that this approach between module presentations with the OU, will stand me in good stead for future postgraduate work.

Also, each week, I will do some themed topic study on various sections of maths and physics, depending on what takes my fancy.  For example, last night, I dipped my toe in the partial differential waters and did a small exercise on that topic.

I am just missing the groups books for MS221, which I had hoped to use to gently introduce my brain to the subject in a scholarly way.  I'm not sure whether to buy those books or whether there is an alternative good intro textbook, that I could pick up instead.

I plan to also re-read Gödel's Proof, re-read the Hitch-hikers Guide trilogy of four books (had a weird dream last night about the three breasted whores from Eroticon 6, But I won't go into that here ;-).  Finally, I'll be carrying on with the Feynman Lecture series.

This is going to be a wonderfully exciting period of enlightenment.