Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

On the second day of the seventh week of classes, in my Mathematical Methods One class, I continued with the subject of systems of equations in two variables of one degree.

I gave some examples for the specific case when the variables are both in the denominator. It’s still an equation of one degree, but if the least common denominator method is used to remove the fraction and try to place it in standard form, they get a term where the variables are multiplied, and thus it becomes an equation of degree two.

So the alternative is to use two new variables, where each one is assigned as being equal to the reciprocal of one of the previous variables. Then the variables are in the numerators. They just have to remember that afterwards, after solving the values of the two new variables, they have to revert to the old variables, which should be their final answers.

From there we proceeded to word problems in two variables. I only was able to give two examples though, before the students started crying mental overload.

The first was about a telegram company that charged a flat rate for the first ten words and an additional cost for each additional word. From two sets of words and payments given, they were supposed to get the two prices.

The second example was just like the simple investment problems that we had before, but the difficulty was that the variables were in fraction form, with one in the numerator and the other in the denominator. It took a bit of manipulation, including separating variables with addition operation in the numerator, and several transpositions, before we could get an equation in standard form.

We were eventually able to solve the problem, and check it from the original parameters if our answer was correct, but I made a mental note to myself not to include anything like that in the exam.

I just gave them three items for their exercise (later downgraded to two) and when they couldn’t solve the word problem either (similar in solution to the investment one) then I gave it to them as their assignment.

In the Science Fiction Literature class was the first report by one of the groups, whose short story selection was one by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., about repressive future societies (as opposed to just repressive societies, which may be current, and therefore not considered science fiction). Their film choices for viewing are “G.A.T.T.A.C.A.” and “Minority Report” although “Logan’s Run”, which is already in the library, would have been appropriate also.

At this point it’s game over for session 638. Class dismissed.