Blog 7

On the last day I spent with Mr. Butler, I sat in on his vector calculus class and met with another one of his former students. The class was centered around the concept of arc length (finding the distance between any two points on a given vector or plane). While there is a fair amount of conceptual information that I do not understand because I haven't taken a high enough level calculus class, it is still fascinating to watch the thought process and reasoning used to solve problems. Later in the afternoon, I met with a man named Alex Cooke. He is one of Mr. Butler's former students who now works and teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He majored in math because he loves the subject. He is now working on using various programming sites to help make computer generated music sound real. All of his work is based around the probability of different patterns, scales, and key progressions in the music and how frequently they appear. One program that he worked on analyzes these patterns and then generates music according to the chord progressions it had identified. He is now working on developing a program that will work in the opposite direction, taking the generated music and dissecting it back into the chords. I think it's amazing that something as different from math as music could have important real world mathematical applications. I enjoyed speaking with Mr. Cooke because he took the subjects that he enjoyed and combined them into a career that he loves. This is exactly what I'm hoping to do with math and business. Mr. Cooke also shared an interesting piece of information about his students, stating that the most successful ones are willing to practice consistently. It is much more beneficial to practice for one hour every day than for ten hours one day during the week. This is something I will attempt to embody for the rest of my life. In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with Mr. Butler and the people I was able to meet.

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