A lite summary

Well, I thought I'd give a sort of boring but necessary update on what I've been doing for the past 4 weeks.

I'm interested in the design of mathematical arguments. By "design", I mean a constructive process, where one uses the specifications of a mathematical problem together with a general methodology of problem solving in order to build a solution to that problem. A lovely such methodology was developed over the last fifty years or so by Edsger Dijkstra, Wim Feijen, Netty van Gasteren, as well as many of their colleagues.

This year I am working in that methodology with Wim Feijen, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In particular, I'm applying it to a field of mathematics called graph theory, and researching how to teach it to grade school and secondary school students.

So, on 1 September 2005, I arrived at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, and trained over to Eindhoven, where I'm currently living. I was met at the train station by Wim Feijen, and Edsger Dijkstra's widow, Ria Dijkstra. They took me to my "dorm", and then to the next street over, Kruisstraat, where I bought all sorts of terrific food.

That was a Friday; the next Monday I went to the university, got set up with an office, and went straight to work. In the beginning, I was working on various problems from all areas of mathematics, just as exercise. This was mainly due to the influence of colleague Tom Verhoeff, who loves puzzles. But in the last week or two, I've been really focussed on graph theory, and have made some tremendous progress. Things should pick up even more when my Indian colleague Apurva Mehta arrives.

For a time --that is, for one day-- I tried to sit in on a class taught by colleague Rob Hoogerwoord. But the damn thing meets at 8:45 in the morning. Come on! So I'm reading the course notes, and a monograph written by Rob about the subject.

In social news, I'm mostly fraternizing with my suitemates, Jeppe from Denmark, and Bob from the Netherlands. I play soccer on Sundays, will be playing frisbee soon, and have befriended a fellow Northwestern grad in Amsterdam, named Saskia. Ah yes, and I live right across the street from a music school; I traded them my accompanying abilities for practicing time on their grand pianos.

Life is pretty much perfect.

Those of you who want to follow along with pictures, check out here.

Oh, and today I officially became a citizen of Eindhoven. Congratulate me. With a blowjob.

+j