I like exams. I will revise for them.

I very quickly read Counterknowledge (the book, not the blog). I kept thinking about Baudrillard and his simulations - probably to do with hysteria and mass media stuff. The book is acerbic. I think I like it, although I haven’t really considered it in great detail. It’s very angry. As in most cases, a balance (here of “credulous thinking” and assumption of good faith) is probably necessary.

I’m going to do the Turing Omnibus exercises in more detail and then read Algorithmics, and if I have time (…), The Pleasures of Counting.

Must be ready!

Pax

AS level exams soon. I am really, really going to have to revise. I don’t know any chemistry. Maths is okay but in my case (I’m not particularly intelligent), understanding without practise* means nothing. Some parts are very easy. Some are tricky. Computing will be the easiest if I can pin down Module 2 (it’s full of hand-wavy definitions and irritating database terminology) to the algorithmic process I have going for Module 1 (which has worked pretty well so far). Physics is again okay but as everyone who sits near me frequently reminds me with looks of disgust and horrified comments (I can’t tell if they’re simulating them to belittle me - they don’t really use insults which I suppose is designed to give the impression that they’re trying to help me and therefore suppress my urge to request forgiveness). Essentially, I can’t intuitively understand basic physical concepts. Things that people just “know” seem to evade me. The pressure in a hydraulic system is uniform? It’s obvious NOW. Braking distance proportional to the square of initial velocity? Obvious once I’ve gone home very confused and derived that by rearranging v² = u² + 2as.

The social climate offends me. Apart from computing, in which either Mr Rokison xor [sic] Erroll crushes any sort of retardation, there is almost no social punishment (or it’s unreasonably deferred) for the usual transgressions (showing off, being annoying, cheating etc.).

What makes me slightly worried is that almost everyone from this school will probably “succeed” in later life. Not really something to rely on, but, you know, a reasonable hypothesis.

What am I going to do? Revise hard, get good A levels and gloss over some terrible problem in my understanding? Yes, probably. I suspect people will be loath to tell me how stupid I am in order to make themselves seem like better people. It’s quite difficult to get people to recognise just how terrible they are when this … terrible …ness … is the accepted norm. What to do?

Life is awesome.

*Brit. variant

Pax

Method 1

Method 2

If we consider that the largest square that has to be looked up in method 1 is ((a+b)/2)² and in method 2, a² (if a is the larger of the two), it’s clear that method 1 will require a smaller square table but more operations per run, so there’s some tradeoff involved there.

I’m making an assumption here as I don’t know about general cases for binary subtraction but I think that addition or subtraction of 2 n-digit numbers is O(n·k) while multiplication is definitely O(n²).

Considering binary numbers, 11111111·10101010 will take n² + 2n - 1 operations (New Turing Omnibus p168).

Substituting into method 2:

If each lookup is one operation (and there is a fixed number of lookups and subtractions for the general case) and subtraction is O(n·k), and division by 10 (i.e. by 2) is also O(n·k) (another assumption - I suppose that since we’re dealing with a fixed denominator unlike the multiplication case where it seemed logical for it to be O(n²)) then I think the function increases as n·k.

But it requires a square table. A LARGE ONE. However, this may be okay because you can reuse the squares in many calculations so perhaps in the long run it somehow balances out the initial deficit?

Or maybe the table can be populated as you go so there’s no initial deficit but a general inefficiency which soon disappears as the table values start getting filled in?

I really don’t know though.

It’s a nice thought.

Hmm?

Pax

I’m quite glad that I’m going to have a chance to talk to a real psychologist about this now. I noticed some years ago that my self esteem (should it be hyphenated?) seemed to be influenced by the outside world but also comprised some other more random elements. It wasn’t really reflected in my mood - I would always feel kind of confrontational and angry as I’d never really felt I’d totally excelled in any respect and would thus feel like I had a fight to pick with everyone. The thing was, I would sometimes feel like I was a rubbish, untalented person and want to one-up the arrogant and unfairly successful people I met and would sometimes feel immensely proud of myself and want to maintain some phantom “good reputation” that I never really had. I was never in the middle - it was a little extreme. I think this is what made me work so hard.

My surviving grandparents are now both declining rapidly, my maternal grandmother’s death remains an interesting event and my general angst about the world is at an all time high, but I now feel stable and, really, quite good. Windmill Lodge told me I had a period of depression between September and sometime in January, which seems to make sense. It feels so much better now - to be able to categorise it and seal it off is a tremendous relief.

It’s a surreal situation - consistently failing to perform well in Mr Motion’s tests and generally failing at Dr Zetie’s top set exercises should really be killing me but actually, I find myself beginning to change in a more fundamental way than any of these surface fluctuations that have plagued me for so long.

Computer Science with AI at Imperial - where my dad went for Mechanical Engineering - looks awesome, but then again everyone I’ve talked to wants me to apply for Cambridge. It’s a nice thought but I wonder what the course is really like. I’m fascinated by problems of optimisation, logic and semantics… but I also like programming. Erroll Wood (probably the only person in our computing class who comes close to really understanding computing as a discipline - James and Vivan program well but I don’t really know what their views on actual computer science are) has expressed concern over the level of practical stuff in the Cambridge course… meh, open days will resolve these quibbles (hopefully).

On that note, Mr Brewis, Dominic Yeo and Mr Motion all gave me blank looks when I mentioned the Simplex algorithm. I mentioned it to Mr Brewis when we were discussing optimising the equilibrium in the Haber Process, Dominic Yeo for fun and Mr Motion to see if he could properly explain it to us (we’re doing matrices right now, so it might’ve been possible).

I feel like I’m the only one in the whole school apart from Dr Zetie who takes any sort of computer science seriously! Vivan confused the bogosort with the bucket sort as Will played with Mr Fry’s sorting demo app in computing. For a few hopeful minutes I really thought he know what the bucket sort was but I soon realised that NO-ONE CARES ABOUT ANY REAL COMPUTER SCIENCE. ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS SHOWING OFF HOW THEY CAN CHEAT AT GAMES AND PROGRAM STUFF IN VB, ONE OF THE WORST LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSE.

It doesn’t matter how much you know about iPods or how authoritative you can sound while quoting Wikipedia! AUGH! Don’t mistake this for a rant, however, as I’m not really complaining about a sudden retardation - more like getting emotional while stating the forgotten situation in all its stupidity.

Oh, I’m also very optimistic about the Public Schools this year. I somehow did well last year and I feel like I’m becoming a much better fencer anyway. Yeah. Optimistic.

I’m reading Brainwashing. Its cover is so tacky that I almost didn’t buy it but I’m so glad I did. It’s RIDICULOUSLY good. It is now among my top books (Simulacra and Simulation, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour, Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman? et al [ask Facebook]). Afterwards I need to read The Theory of the Leisure Class. I think The New Turing Omnibus, which is a little textbooky but incidentally contains Conway’s Game of Life as well as Simplex and a load of other pretty great stuff, will probably be up there once I understand it fully. I’m plodding through it. Like a retard on muscle relaxants. Seriously.

Mr Smith alerted me to the correct pronunciation of Proust (”proost”, for phonetically [is this the right word?] retarded people such as myself). I had mentioned it because of (you won’t see this coming) Lain (his madeleines in In Search of Lost Time were used as a metaphor for involuntary memory).

I’ll finish this with a conspicuous ego-boost. I feel immensely happy when I see someone I know giving someone else the finger or calling them fat or even a chode. Elliot and I, in our social ineptness, broke down barriers and behaved oddly until people began to realise that arbitrarily criticising us or trying to be funny to our detriment didn’t work as well as it should and adopted our crap. Even Michael B, someone very, very critical of odd behaviour - someone who would often mock me for trying to be funny in a perceived-to-be-OTT way - was recently seen giving the one finger salute across the atrium.

Poor Mr Rokison still mutters “You’re all so weird/strange” every time he puts his head down in a desperate attempt to renew his self esteem (aha, we’ve come full circle) in front of a class that is no longer captivated by his paradoxical energy or random lapses into making repeated Pingu sounds. It’s refreshing that he mercilessly mocks Will (I’m sure Will finds it funny or he’d assert himself and throw Ollie - sorry, Rokison… sorry, Mr Rokison - to the ground or something). This isn’t a joke, by the way - I’m growing tired of his attitude. Condescension - especially at such a similar age to us - do not help his position at all. I suspect the way this ends will be hilarious.

Imagine turning down a place at Cambridge. My parents and siblings were horrified. That gives me hope - it means they thought I had a real chance of getting a place there.

Pax