"The Lady Tasting Tea" Post 1

When I first saw the book that I'd be reading for the next Perspectives unit, I was skeptical to say the least. I wasn't quite sure at first what someone drinking tea had to do with being a mathematician. And, I've never even heard of a book written about math other than a textbook. After reading three chapters, I have many thoughts on the book already.

The book started out explaining the situation of the lady that tasted tea which I was glad of because I didn't want to have to wonder about that till way later in the book when it could've come up. Most books don't have anything about the title until the end of the book. Anyway, there was a lady in Britain a long time ago that was hanging out with a bunch of scientists at a tea party one day when she brought up that the tea tasted different if it was poured into the milk or if the milk was poured into the tea. My first thought was, "Why does it even matter?? Just drink the tea, lady!" I continued reading and found out that an experiment was set up with this tea situation and very detailed mathematical formulas were used to find the probability distribution of the problem. Scientists argued over whether the distribution was accurate enough blah blah blah. The normal scientist drama.

Salsburg, the author of The Lady Tasting Tea includes many names of scientists from long ago. It's very confusing to try to keep track of them all.

Another thing that bothered me initially about the book is the picture on the cover:

It seems very random. Is it a picture of the lady that tasted tea and started controversy for many years? Is it a famous mathematician or scientist? I hope I find out eventually.

Although I have several concerns for this book, they seem small because I find David Salsburg to have quite an interesting outlook on people's view of statistics. I'm looking forward to reading about the real world applications that he promised in the preface would be forthcoming farther into the book.

The Birth of The Math Bean

After rejecting the veterinarian idea, I started to consider different careers that I might enjoy. I pondered the subjects in school that really interest me and make sense to me for the most part. I’ve always looked forward to going to math class each day because my favorite part about math is that there is only one answer. The feeling I get when I reach that final answer after much work is grand. It’s a feeling of great accomplishment.
The bad aspect about math and me is that at first when I am trying to understand a new math concept, I get frustrated because I usually can’t figure it out right away. After much practice, though, I know the concept quite well. If one practices the wrong way, it will continue to be wrong. Practice makes permanent. Also, I feel that I am not advanced enough in the math area to go on and study it in college for a future career. Many of my fellow schoolmates are way farther along in math than I am like AP calculus and such. That kind of drains my spirits because I am “behind” but I have a theory.
My theory is about AP courses and math in general. I feel that college courses are meant to be taken in college for the most part, not high school. I personally think that one must get the basics down of a particular subject (especially math) to be able to understand the entirety of further learning. In addition, to back up my theory, I once talked to the head math professor (Dr. Lynn Olson) at the college I am planning on going to and he said that pre-calculus (which is the course I’m taking now) is perfectly fine for entering college as a math major.
I was pretty sure that I wanted to pursue a career in mathematics in the future but just to make sure, I went to the Cedar Valley Science Symposium at Wartburg College in January 2010. There, I took part in a workshop on Graph Theory with Dr. Lynn Olson. The class very interesting and like all other math, I didn’t catch on right away but it eventually made sense. Dr. Olson definitely made mathematics entertaining. Unlike the year before with I went to the symposium, this time I felt surer about my decision.
So, now I am planning on going to Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa to study mathematics and to hopefully become a mathematician someday. When I tell people that I want to study math, the first thing they ask is if I want to be a math teacher. No. At this point, I don’t want to teach it. I would rather apply math concepts to the real world.
In the end, I decided that I can always volunteer doing something that helps animals like at the human society. Doing something related to math is harder to volunteer with and I find the particular subject to be rather intriguing. I want to be The Math Bean.

Awesome comic...

In the beginning...

Long, long ago, I started dreaming of being a veterinarian. When I was a child, I often talked about wanting to help animals in a significant way. I've always had a love for manatees, so, I grew into the idea that I would live in Florida and help large, aquatic animals that got injured from boats. Then, I came to realize that Florida was very far away from the ones I love here in Iowa and came back to the idea of being a veterinarian. A couple summers ago, I went to a vet camp at the Iowa State Fair where I learned all about the life of a veterinarian. It was very interesting but maybe that was just because I got to see a girl faint from looking at a diseased horse heart... Actually it was a really good experience. I got to take a lamb's temperature from its rear-end hole which i oddly didn't find too disgusting. Anyways, at the camp, I was also told how many years it took to become a veterinarian... Since I was the oldest kid in the group, I was given a whole lot of information on Iowa State University's vet program. It was very helpful and I really enjoyed the camp and continued to greatly consider the idea of becoming a vet one day. It later sunk in that it would take many more years of schooling than I was willing to pursue for this dream of mine. That is when I decided that maybe a veterinary technician was the way to go...

So what's this have to do with wanting to be a mathematician exactly? Don't worry, I'm getting there. My future dreams have a long story behind them.

So after I considered the idea of being a vet tech, I went to a job shadow for it at a All Pets Veterinary Clinic on Edgewood Road. On the way to the job shadow, I was considering what the outcome of the visit would do to my future goals. Would it scare me out of the job? Or would it show me how passionate I really was about my long thought-out childhood vision? Well, after watching a dog get its testicle cut out and two cats get declawed, I decided that vet tech wasn't the way to go either. I came to this conclusion from the simple fact that I almost passed out twice from the smell... And maybe the sight. The donuts in the waiting room sure were tasty though.

So, there I was back at square one again. What would I do next?