Thank the Lord. I Passed!

What a blogging hiatus, that has just been.

Four months...  few!

Four months seems an age; but I have remained silent during this time,  for two main reasons.

Firstly, I found myself so deep into studying and really struggling for time to even spend with my family; that I just decided to stop the posts for a while, and concentrate on what is most important.

Secondly, I was having a major melt down / ego readjustment, as It really dawned on me that there were large volumes of material within my two current courses, Number Theory / Mathematical Logic, and Groups / Geometry; that still  left me sweating at night with not even a clue on how to navigate the material.

The simple human condition then took over - as in - it's simply not very pleasant to write about your impending implosion into failure, no matter how reflective your blog is supposed to be.

'Warts and all' can be an extraordinarily challenging blogging ethos, in times of real difficulties.  I feel I have failed that test, this time around.

Fast forward to June - I took my exams in Birmingham.  Two exams in two days.  I stayed in a hotel, in between the exams, and up until the hour before the first exam, I was revising for 10hrs a day for three weeks solid (I took leave from work).

I just couldn't remember the material and produce it quickly enough under exam conditions.  Help!

Anyway, I took the exams and having totted up my points, I had reckoned that I had achieved around the grade 3 area for Number Theory, and Grade 4 area, for Groups.

To my astonishment, I received my results email tonight, logged into my student home page, and promptly fell off my chair, Brie sandwich in hand.

I am pleased to report, that I scored the following results:

Number Theory and Mathematical Logic - 72%   (Grade 2)

Groups and Geometry - 66%   (Grade 2)

As my followers will appreciate; it  is now time for me to attend a public house and imbibe a pint of - what has now become an exam results tradition for me - a pint of Bishops Finger.

Ooh Matron!

Exam Revision - or - The Lack of it...

Hmm,

I really am struggling with the workload on these two courses.  I just feel like I am glossing over the books, in order to answer the TMA's - with no real hope of a deep understanding of the material at hand.

Logic is fairly straightforward, if you don't mind the dryness of having to learn a new language - that of formal logic with all its odd symbols and squiggles!  It's one of those subjects that you can read, understand and then apply without too much thought, though.

Now, Number Theory - that is completely different.

I have noticed that TMA03 (which I am writing at the moment) is seeming easier than the first two.  But I have realized that I have started to pick up on the 'method' of proof for answering these blasted TMA's.  It is more of an art form than a process, and it requires you to see the tricks that the OU employ, to baffle, beat and thrash you , with the NT questions.  As mentioned before, many of the questions don't resemble any of the unit examples.

They are a cruel bunch, those course writers (Derek G, I'm looking at you!)

So, we come to Groups and Geometry.  I thought I was fairly good at groups and awful at geometry.  However, it seems that my tutor thinks it is the other way around!  I have struggled with the algebra involved in the groups units - but I think this is just showing up my low level of algebra knowledge, which I most definitely missed out on, between GCSE and University level.

Anyway - I have now printed off all of the exam papers of past years, and I am slowly practicing exam style questions, in the hope that I can somehow be ready on those looming exam dates this June.

Help!

TMA02 Results

Okay,  I did much better than I had imagined.  I really felt that I had made a meal of the number theory paper; but after a last ditched attempt at two of the questions that I messed up; it all came good in the end.

So, here are the results:

Number Theory and Logic - 97%

Groups and Geometry - 98%.

In what has become a bit of a tradition for me, over the last 4yrs - I am now off down the pub for a celebratory pint of Bishops Finger.

Oohh Matron!

TMA's away, on time!

Just a quicky!

Both TMA's for M381 and M336 have now been completed and chucked in the post.  They arrived on the cut off date, with my tutor, so I await the results...

The Number Theory TMA was a nightmare and I spent far to much time on it.  Having said that, I did finally manage to put together some sort of coherent answer for each question, so I am in a better place than I was two weeks ago.

The Groups and Geometry TMA was typical O.U fare, with four large questions, one on each block of work.  Going to the tutorial really helped, as I had made a couple of mistakes in my TMA, through a 'clanger' of a misunderstanding in the material 'counting with groups'.

I have now stepped up another gear, and in the last week I have completed the unit that uses formal logic language, to construct formulas and tautologies.  I found that very enjoyable, as it is right up my street - all that coding of symbols and working out truth tables, appeals to my twisted brain.  I have also managed to complete, in full, the TMA questions for this unit, already.

If the rest of the logic books are of a similar nature, then I will be very happy, indeed.

I won't talk about Unit GR3, Decomposition of Abelian groups as, well, it's a bit of a car-crash.  I knew I was going to have trouble, when I opened the book and had to go back to the earlier units and my glossary, to remember what the terms, 'word' and 'free group' meant, in the context of Abelian groups.

I am moving through this book at a snails pace, not really understanding it, globally.  All I can do is rote learn the Theorems and some examples, and hope it starts to make sense, by next week.

ps: for those of you on the Groups course, you may have noticed that I am about 2 weeks behind on my schedule, too...

Oh the joys of concatenation, reduction, generators and quotients!