Last night I went to a movie put on by the BSM program. It was a documentary called "N is a Number" following the life of Pal Erdös, a Hungarian mathematician viewed as a god by the mathematics community, and completely unknown by everyone else. The movie was fascinating! Erdös lived an incredible life, and I'm very disappointed that the world doesn't know more about him. He has done for Mathematics what Newton has done for Physics, however, the general populace doesn't recognize this. I suppose the idea of Newton "discovering" gravity, a force which we all can feel every day, is a lot more palatable to the normal person than Erdös's conjecture of the additive number theory on arithmetic progressions in divergent series. Nonetheless, here is a link to a very good biography of Pal (or Paul) Erdös from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős. Wikipedia is not a good source for purely credible information, but in a case like this, it's a very useful insight. Also, here is a link for the movie that we watched. I think the Gustavus Math Department should add it to their collection, as it is very very good. http://www.zalafilms.com/films/nisanumber.html.

My classes are simply amazing. I just love Number Theory. It is one of those classes where the answer is always right there, it just takes a flash of light to see it. Sometimes that flash comes after 2 days of work, sometimes after 1 hour. It's an abstract subject, but not nearly as dry as algebra. My teacher actually had lunch with the aforementioned Paul Erdös and he solved one of Erdös's unsolvable problems. I'm in awe.

Combinatorics is really really good. There are two classes offered, Combinatorics A and Combinatorics B. The "A" class moves faster, but I (like the majority of the Combinatorics students) chose to be in the "B" class. I have every ability to be in the faster class, but the fact remains that I can't understand a word of the other professor's English. Oh well, I can't complain as I am in Hungary. My Combinatorics class is really really interesting. However, yesterday we proved the binomial theorem in about 8 different ways. When the professor said, "And now we will prove it using the Taylor Series," I just about vomited. It was interesting, yes, but after the previous 7 proofs displaying the accuracy of the Binomial Theorem, I was simply not interested in the Calculus way of proving it.

Elementary Problem solving is soooo cool. It reminds me a lot of a super J-term class I took called Mathematical Gems. The point of the class is to cultivate logic and train the students to see the less obvious ways of solving obsure math problems. However, they do this by showing us scores of random, absolutely fascinating problems. Remember the trick you learned in 6th grade: if you add up all the digits in the number and that sum is divisible by 9, the number is divisible by 9 (the same with 3). I always thought that was just a bit of a party trick, but nothing more. I have used it countless times in Elementary Problem Solving, and even a couple times in Number Theory. It's amazing what such a trivial shortcut can tell you about the nature of numbers.

The History of Math (or whatever it's called) is mildly boring considering how it's 2.5 hours of straight lecture, but the information is amazing. He really molds the class to the student's interests. The other day he asked if anyone was interested in physics (since studying mathematical history forcesa deviation into physics) and I rather shyly raised my hand, as an interest in physics around mathematicians is often a reason for persecution. He asked me what I was interested in, and I said Astronomy (because I love astronomy more than anything.) He looked at me and said, "Ahh, astronomy. Very good. Today we talk about astronomy. Good?" He is absolutely brilliant, having three Ph.D's and an extra Hungarian title that means he's one of the best scholars. Ask him anything and he'll know the answer.

I went to Intermediate Hungarian Language. I don't like this language at all, but the class will be really really easy, and who knows, maybe I'll learn something along the way.

I decided against topology. I really enjoyed it (sort of) but the teacher didn't work for me, and I had to face the facts, I just don't have the mathematical background for it without a concrete course in Real Analysis.

I went to a store a lot like Walmart that is an English chain. It was wonderful. I found Peanut Butter and flour tortillas. There was one brand of peanut butter, and it took up about a square foot on the shelf. The next aisle over was completely dedicated to cheeses of all different sorts. They really do things differently over here. I love Eastern Europe, but it's tiring needing to go to a million different shops for everything. At this store, they sold shampoo, school supplies, food, books, cameras, silverware.... the works.

Sorry that this was long. I'm just giving an update! Happy Friday!