Pleasantly surprised

As expected, my MATH3201 Dynamical Systems and Chaos course is challenging, seriously interesting, rigorous and philosophically inspiring. Unexpectedly, the young lecturer for this course communicates with exceptional confidence, ability and did not have a fucked up, friendless childhood. High fives to Maths kids who have enough energy and balance to also have great social lives, and who know it. People, no matter what they are, convey your passions intelligently and with humour, and others cannot help but respect and admire you.

I'll now ignore this advice and rant passionlessly about why I've always loved Maths, right from the days when I attempted to introduce Pythagoras' theorem to my schoolmates (They still call me!).

I have been captivated by Cantor's maddening inquiries on Infinity which produced his monumental work on set theory, yet to appear in any syllabus of mine. In an Ivory tower, I have suffered by understanding Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. I have shared Lorentz' excitement at discovering the sensitivity to initial conditions of his computerised weather models. I can become energised by de Moivre's postulates about imaginary numbers and yet I know exactly how to treat and how to touch a girl.
I have never been an escapist. Hmph, my old nemesis Religion again. Sorry to relegate you people to the ranks of Harry Potter readers. Somebody was going to do it soon anyway

I still marvel at Von Neumann's childhood antics, the young Friedrich Gauss' outsmarting his Maths teacher and then assuming her role, and Fischer's noted stubbornness and promiscuity. The various forms of probability have not escaped my attention, irrationals fascinate and metaphysical questions about randomness intrigue me. Don't even get me started on higher order logical loops, and the great paradoxes and antimonies.

Maths is collectively hallucinated, and yet fits in with reality, and is necessary for critical thinking and sophisitcated argument on things ranging from biodiversity to politics to morality to architecture. The incremental logical skills it provides can even facilitate self awareness. We should all have been thinking about superstition when we were taught about induction.
Mathematicians may be poor at other things, but they carry society on their backs

"Cannibals don't eat clowns as they taste funny"