Witchy Woman

As a mathematician, I am a woman who puts her faith in numbers, data, science...you know, reality. However, I also know that there are things around us that can't be quantified, categorized, or defined. I guess you could call me MathMercy, Agnostic Mathematician.

Having told you that, I have a confession. Here goes. In addition to being MathMercy, Agnostic Mathematician, I'm pretty sure that I am also a witch. (Yes, I meant to type Witch, smart ass. Bitch stands for Being In Total Control of Herself...and that's no secret. Bam.) Believe me, I know how super weird and hippy-dippy sounding it is for me to just come out and say that I am a Witch, but it comes from a scientific standpoint: I can't deny empirical evidence. Read on and tell me what you would call it, if not Witch.

So, there is an inexplicable phenomenon that happens to me around this time of year, where I am somehow apparently tapped in to totally random and, thus far, useless cosmic forces. It's like phrases that suddenly show up everywhere, coincidences and feelings of deja vu that are just too persistent to be random. Unfortunately, none of this seemingly super cosmic connected-ness ever proves to be useful information like winning Mega-Millions numbers. On the other hand, I never buy Lotto tickets because the mathematician in me has a hard time seeing lottery tickets as anything other an idiot tax. Stupid math. I probably could have been a Mega-Millionaire by now. Anyway, here are some witchy examples on a scale from Kind of Odd to What the Fuck.

1. Last week, I was at a friend's house when she Googled the name of Natalee Holloway, that poor girl that disappeared in Aruba 10 years ago. Yesterday morning, the first news story I read was about new evidence in the case. Kind of Odd.
2. On Saturday, I ended a Facebook post with "Everything's coming up Mercy". One of my brothers picked up on the Simpsons reference and threw 'Everything's coming up Milhouse' back at me. That doesn't count as witchy, but this might: On Sunday, I tuned in to TCM right as Rosalind Russell broke out into "Everything's Coming Up Roses" in the movie, Gypsy. Three references in a sixteen hour period? Everything's Coming Up Weird. 
3. On the morning of May 5, I was moving a raised bed garden box frame to a different spot in my yard. As I moved the frame, I had this sudden memory of how my ex-husband's stepfather had given that garden box to me exactly two years ago to the day, when I saw him for the last time on Cinco de Mayo weekend. I was feeling a little poignant about that memory when I received an email an hour later. The email was from my ex-husband (totally harmless, just needing some information), from whom I probably hadn't heard for six months or more. Um, This is Getting Spooky now.
4. Earlier tonight, I took a silly little online quiz to see what it thought I was in a past life. Eight questions later, it spits out the result in the picture below and I say What. The. Fuck. and throw my phone down like a hot potato.

http://en.what-character-are-you.com/d/en/1101/index/6321.html

"...sense and intuit almost automatically what is going on within the people and the nature around you" finally gives words to my weird Spring psychic sense that I couldn't explain. It's all about recognizing patterns. I am pretty sure it still works within my mathy raison d'etre, as expressed in my favorite math thriller film, Pi. (Okay, you got me. I can't really think of any other math thriller films off the top of my head. Pi is still my favorite, though.)

1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature. 

So there you have it. The evidence keeps mounting and it all points to MathMercy, Agnostic MathWitch. I don't yet know how to channel my witch energies for good, but I am working on it. I'll be sure to let you know if I hit the jackpot. In the meantime, I'm auditioning potential theme music.

Update (12 hours later): Oh my goodness. It just happened again. A couple weeks ago, a friend returned from Hawaii with a gift of tea from the Hanalei Tea Company. A certain demographic will understand why this box of tea has me singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" on a pretty much daily basis. Recall that I work from home, so TV is just part of my rainy day routine. Also, like every other middle-aged white woman in America, I freaking love Wayne Brady, so I like to watch Let's Make A Deal. Anyway, this dude on LMAD just picked "H for my daughter's middle name, Hanalei". It was probably spelled differently, but when Wayne Brady said "Oh, like in 'Puff the Magic Dragon'?", the dude totally agreed. If that isn't proof that I am being followed by Magic, I don't know what is.

Root Ramblings

Have you ever noticed how many different uses there are for the word, "roots"? Yeah, me neither. Today, though, my mind started wandering, and that's where it landed. How many ways can you think of to use "roots" in a sentence? I'll give you a minute.... cue Jeopardy music...

Once you got started, you may have noticed that root definitions are kind of like roots themselves - branching, intertwining, going a lot deeper than you initially thought. I'm not going to bore you with a list of all the different definitions. I'm just going to bore you with a couple that jump out to me personally. If you want to abandon ship, now would be the time. Still here? Let's start rooting around with roots!

I'm pretty sure that when making a list, only my math teacher friends may have included a math definition. For the rest of you, bear with me; I'll make this as painless as possible. In math, "root" is used in a couple different ways. The root of a number is this radical value (pun fully intended) that when multiplied by itself a certain number of times creates another number: the square of a square root, the cube of a cube root, and so on. The roots of a polynomial (also called "solutions" or "zeros") are the values that make the function evaluate to zero. Visually, you can picture roots as the spots where the graph of a function crosses the x-axis.

Since not all functions cross the x-axis, not all roots are real. In fact, lots of numbers and polynomials have imaginary roots. That means there are a lot of imaginary zeros that are really solutions, even though they aren't real solutions. Confused yet? It might start getting complex (another pun!) here, so I'm just going to let you ponder this: The number of complex (including imaginary) roots is infinitely greater than the infinite amount of real ones.

This whole roots thing started as I was in the umpteenth hour of pulling grass and weeds from my flower beds. The grass had really taken root during the course of a particularly wet winter and spring, so I had plenty of time to ponder grass roots as I tried to eradicate them (quite unsuccessfully, I'm sure). Here's the thing about grass roots: they form incredibly strong networks. Spend a few hours trying to infiltrate the network and you will have a new appreciation for the concept of a "grassroots" organization. The roots may not run terribly deep, but they spread and interweave in a way that makes every individual blade a vital, seemingly invincible part of the entire system. (GeekMercy here for you less garden-y and more Star Trek-y folks: I imagine grass roots are something like the Borg collective.)

http://www.ck12.org/book/CK-12-Biology-Concepts/r26/section/9.14/

Taproots are much more solitary creatures than grass roots, and probably even more frustrating. If you have ever tried to remove a dandelion root from your lawn or garden, you know taproots. Taproots are super deep and strong, and virtually impossible to remove completely. I am pretty sure that every dandelion and starchy rumex root that I've left mangled in the soil sprouts three new plants, purely out of spite. Taproots can bite me.

Is there anyone that you keep in your life simply because you have a long history (i.e. deep roots) together? It might be a childhood friend or a significant other, but it's someone with whom you no longer share anything other than tradition. That person is your taproot. You know that the garden of your life would be a lot less messy without that person, but experience has proven that it's a lot harder to get rid of them than you thought. You can't just cut them off because they keep coming back. I think if you really want to get rid of that person, you have to treat them like a taproot. Get your hands dirty and dig really deep to sever the root, making sure to get all the little secondary roots too. It's hard. I mean really really hard. After digging for a while, you start to think that it would just be easier to tolerate the dandelion. It is familiar and not so bad really, so you decide to just leave it alone. Next thing you know, you are overrun with dandelions. Not me. I'm on an emotional taproot eradication campaign, clearing the weeds out again so the lovely things that I've planted have room to grow.

I could go on with more examples of roots. I'm pretty satisfied with my metaphor, though, so I'm going to stop while I'm ahead. Besides, I just spotted a rogue dandelion in my hosta that must be dispatched. Until next time, happy weeding!

Real-World Problems

One of my jobs, the one for which I am certified and the one that is my calling, is Math Teacher. When I was offered a full-time position as a professional Data Jockey, I accepted for the salary (after doing the math, it was virtually impossible to say "no'), but I kept a part-time position as an online math teacher so I could still feel like I was performing my math mitzvah. Teacher discounts at office supply stores, craft stores (Michaels!), and J. Crew are just an added perk. Teachers: Here's a list of all the other teacher discounts that you didn't know existed: http://www.giftcardgranny.com/blog/the-complete-list-of-66-teacher-discounts/.

This year, I switched my Algebra 2 and Geometry classes to a Common Core curriculum. Much of the CC content is the same as our previous curriculum, but one major improvement is the quality of the written assignments. Our old curriculum had a single written assignment at the end of each unit, consisting of 20 five-point problems that were basically just straight computation tasks. The new CC problems, though, are far more interesting and teach valuable life lessons. Here are a few of my favorites: How to locate keys accidentally dropped off leaning towers in Pisa, Montreal, or Abu Dhabi; securing a sponsor and entering a sailboat race in San Francisco or Australia; how to make a 3-D printer profitable; calculating the largest TV that you can buy based on your car's trunk size; and being a crime scene investigator. Regarding that last one: No worries. The cow wasn't injured and the driver who swerved to miss her on Highway 2 passed a field sobriety test. Even if you aren't a math geek, you have to admit that these Real-World Problems are kind of fun, right? Right? At the very least, you must agree that they are more interesting and teach more relevant skills than "calculate the volume of a sphere with a circumference of 50π."

Written tasks can be a great way for students to demonstrate a plethora of skills and conceptual understanding...provided that the problems are well-written, engaging, and complex enough to justify a student's written explanation. I know my math teacher friends can attest to how difficult it is to actually create a good problem, so here are a couple of my own to help you out. Feel free to adapt and use them in your own classrooms/lives. Have fun!


1) MathMercy's firewood guy called her out of the blue to ask her out on a date. (Perhaps he felt guilty for delivering the firewood that she was carrying when she tripped and landed on her face back in December.) MathMercy remembered that he was a nice guy and she didn't have anything else going on that afternoon, so she agreed to coffee and a chat in the park. During their conversation, Firewood Guy mentioned that he came from a very tall family, and that at 6 feet 8 inches tall, he wasn't even the tallest. MathMercy comes from considerably shorter stock, and just happens to be the shortest in her short family, at only 5 feet 2 inches tall. Although she is used to being the shortest person in a group, she is pretty sure she has never met anyone quite that tall. She wonders what it would be like to always be looking down at people instead of looking up at them. a) How does MathMercy's height compare to Firewood Guy's height? b) How tall is someone who is proportionally shorter than MathMercy? c) MathMercy's neck is getting sore from looking up all the time, and she realizes that if she places a mirror in just the right spot between herself and Firewood Guy, they can hold a conversation by looking down at each other's reflection in the mirror. If the mirror is 5 feet 2 inches away from Firewood Guy, what must be the distance from the mirror to MathMercy? 

2) MathMercy has observed that the more of something she wants, the less she gets, and the less she wants, the more she gets. Identify the type of variation and sketch a graph demonstrating the relation.

I have created a different sort of problem for myself that I am, unfortunately, unable to convert to an equation and solve. Probably shouldn't say anything, but if I don't it will feel like I am harboring some sneaky activity that I shouldn't be messing with. I agreed to let my ex take my dog and me out to the park a couple of times. I thought it would be harmless if I stood my ground and gently but firmly kept it at a purely platonic, non-romantic level. Maybe we can just be friends, right? Wrong. He isn't ready and I'm not equipped to keep shutting him down. It's too much...I don't know...feeling about something I simply don't feel.

Just to complicate (or perhaps simplify?) things: I have been quite honestly telling the ex that I really just like first dates and that I have no desire to date anyone consistently. Then, I end up meeting someone that I am really looking forward to seeing again. Stupid universe! And that's enough about that. 

Reflections, Rockin', and Rollers

Almost three weeks in, 2014 has been a good, productive year so far. I have been blissfully busy with work and play, but I haven't taken any time out to reflect yet. Hold on to your hats, folks. It's Reflection time!

First, a brief word about Reflections. When I was in math teacher school, my fellow future math teachers and I all vowed to make our future math students write Reflections every day. That sounds like a vow to be a dedicated teacher, right? Well...not exactly. You see, we had to Reflect a lot in math teacher school, and I hated Reflecting. Fellow math teachers: you know that twit who whines, "but this is maaath! Why do I have to write in maaath class?" on every story problem or journal entry? That twit is basically me as a math student. Thus, when I vowed to make my future math students write daily Reflections, it was mostly out of spite. I figured that if I had to Reflect to become a teacher, my students should be forced to Reflect twice as much, by golly! Luckily my training and my teaching experience have demonstrated that Reflecting on a lesson actually really helps students make a connection between what they learn and what they know/understand, so it all works out. Even so, let this be a lesson to you, kiddos: Sometimes grown-ups make you do character building stuff just for kicks, and every now and then it just happens to be good for you. (You didn't hear it from me.)

The Reflective Property of an Ellipse

Ok, that's enough of a tangent. Is there a point to all of this reflection? Probably not, but if there is, I'll get around to it soon. (Excuse my bad math humor, but you get a gold star if you can correctly identify all the puns. I have even included a clue. Sorry, math teacher friends. You are automatically disqualified.) 

In a previous post (Pants), I mentioned Moe's Mo'Roc'n Cafe, the club where I spent just about every night of being 21-23 years old. Last week, I attended a Moe reunion party and a couple of the anniversary shows, and I had a fantastic time. I saw some great live music, I got out of the house three times in five days(!), and I saw a bunch of old friends, a couple flames, and even a fling or two that I haven't seen since the club closed in 1997. Think Rock 'N' Roll High School's 20 year reunion, only not nearly so boppy.

It was weird to reconnect with people who only know me as the 23 year old MoeMercy. These are people who never knew the awkward, slightly insecure, drama geek, wallflower TeenMercy or the more cautious, slightly insecure, homebody, wifey MathMercy. These people met me during a period of young adulthood when I was relatively carefree, confident, flirty, independent, opinionated, and sometimes loud and obnoxious. You know what? I like that chick. So, maybe I channel my inner MoeMercy more often...only without all the booze and staying out until 4am every night. MathMercy needs her tea and sleep. 

MOE!

Happily, the Sunday night show at Moe started and ended early (because apparently no one can stay up late on a work/school night anymore). I was on the freeway heading back to my little suburban cottage by 11:30, reflecting on what a great week it had been and how awesome it was that I would still probably be home by midnight. About 15 minutes from home - right by my old house actually - police lights came on behind me. I pulled off onto a dead end street as two police cruisers pulled up behind me. 

I have been pulled over maybe 5 times in the 25 years that I have been licensed to drive (That's right. Idaho gave out licenses to 14 year olds. Terrifying, right?) The few times that I've been pulled over before, I totally panicked and more often than not, burst into tears. Disgusting. This time, though, I was oddly calm as the officer walked to the window and told me my tabs were expired. I told him this was probably going to sound like a line that he hears all the time, but I had just received the truck when my divorce was finalized on 12/16, and had only decided not to sell it a couple weeks ago. I simply hadn't thought about the tabs yet. He asked a few more questions, collected my documents, and walked back to his car.

It seemed like it took waaaay too long for him to check my record. While I waited, I used my smart phone to pull up a copy of the divorce decree to prove my story. He still wasn't back, so I looked up the nearest emissions check station and DMV office and added them to my agenda for the morning. Still waiting, I turned up my iPod-powered stereo: Police and Thieves. Not as bad as I Shot the Sheriff, but not good. I turned the music off  The longer I waited with the lights of TWO police cars broadcasting my shame to the neighbors who were doubtless peeking out their windows, the more I felt like I was going to jail. Let me go on the record here: this was totally irrational. I just couldn't imagine what could be taking so long, and my imagination was left to its own devices. Oh my gosh. I told him I hadn't been drinking, but I did have two beers about three hours ago. Should I tell him when he comes back? No. Then I'll be a liar on top of whatever else he's finding on me. I should probably just practice saying the alphabet backwards. Z - Y - X...What is he finding on me anyway? Did I maybe get caught by a red light cam that I don't know? Can they arrest me for that? Rational thought inserted here: my name is not on the title for this vehicle yet. Will they let me use my debit card to bail myself out or do I actually have to call someone? Who should I call? Mom is an attorney, but could I really handle calling my mother from jail? Shit. There were people smoking (something that is perfectly legal) in here tonight. If I reach for that fabric spray in the back seat, will he think I'm reaching for a gun? I kept one hand on the wheel, grabbed the spray, and got off a couple spritzes just before he finally came back to the window. I braced myself to be asked to exit the vehicle.

"What's a good contact number for you?" The officer wrote my phone number down in his little notepad. He continued, "I feel bad because of your situation..." Is he about to let me go? Oh wow. Please let me go. I really don't want to see what the inside of a jail cell looks like. "...but I do have to give you this ticket" (which was already written out, tucked behind his notepad). He then told me he was NOT advising me what to do, but he STRONGLY recommended that I check the box on the back requesting a mitigation hearing so I could present my story and my proof of registration to the judge. I thanked him and promised to take care of the tabs first thing in the morning. As he drove to the end of the cul-de-sac to turn around, I started to tuck the ticket into my wallet. Wait. My phone number is not written on this ticket. Did that cop really just take my digits? I think he did! If I had been flirty, could I have avoided getting the ticket altogether? He was cute and had really nice blue eyes...I'd date that guy, especially if he wore his uniform. Yeah, I think uniforms are pretty hot. After all, this blog IS called "Confessions..."

My tabs are now current, I have mailed my request for a hearing to the Seattle Municipal Court, and now I'm just waiting for that date. If Officer Blue Eyes does call, I want to make sure there's no legal awkwardness between us. :)