Obsessions

My recent obsession for various skills, I think is improving my overall performance as a ‘HUMAN’.

When I was young, and in High School, a teacher said something in Bengali…

“Je joto kom boyoshe nesha kore, Se toto paka Nesharu hoi”

It literally means, the more young one gets addicted to something, becomes more expert addicts. I don’t remember in what context he said that, but I recall this words very often these days, when someone says that they need more time and knowledge to do something and they cannot do it right then. The more we get obsessed with something, the more perfect we become. And perfection is necessary! And the early we do, the easier it is for us. Stuffs might appear difficult or impossible, but we can pull it off if is not drastically advanced. Like when I learned how to program a computer with BASIC, I knew I had a lot of power, but I couldn’t even form the simplest algorithms. I was in sixth grade at that time. Eventually I learned more programming languages, and learned to use more libraries. I am no super-duper programmer, and I am still trying to get into a open-source project, but I am starting to realize the abstract nature of programming, which I prefer to call, “The Zen of Programming”. These days, as a electronics engineering student, I sometimes try to hurry to some topic. I do find it difficult, but I believe I will eventually pull it off. It reminds me of the days, when I played Enigma and Pink Floyd in cassette player, and slept with the BASIC FOR SCHOOLS book under my pillow. Electronics is pretty new to me, and I am somewhat new to electronics. And the philosophy of the discipline is very much different than what I learned few years back as a kid.

Since recently I am trying to perfect my hand for drawing human figures and mechanical designs, improving my mathematical skills to for computationally advanced stuff, trying to get my photography skills to a significant state, dreaming of becoming a Good Adventurer and Mountaineer, getting a good skill for designing electromechanical and electronic stuff, and expanding my knowledge to as much as I can and getting a clear understanding of SCIENCE.

This is FUN!

Tensor Addiction

Ya, I am addicted to Tensors. Before I try to describe that addiction, I would like to say what Tensors are.

An nth-rank tensor in m-dimensional space is a mathematical object that has n indices m^n components and obeys certain transformation rules. You get it? Well, you may not, or you may, but you are free to try to feel the tensors, you may try to think of this abstract mathematical object, you may try to touch it with your mind.

I try to do those, and there is my addiction. When I start to to think about Tensors, I go completely drugged. It feels good to think about those abstract relations. Linear algebra is one of those mathematical topics which requires real human mind. I believe everybody has a mind, this post is an invitation for that kind of thinking, you don’t need to be mathematically trained to get addicted, just Google up some tensor articles, read them and get addicted (unlike any addiction, tensor addiction is safe, but a bit time consuming, it will have you sitting quietly on your chair).

To me higher mathematics is just learning the notations, and learning how to use the and where to use them, because it is the instinct of our mind to do mathematics. We need notations to express them, just like poetry. But you don’t really have to write down notations after notation on pages to do mathematics, that is just an aid to memory and a processing ground.

I pointed out tensors because I think it is a good place to start the addiction, and I think there are other topics at the heart of mathematics which are addictive i.e. category theory, complexity classes, symmetries etc. I didn’t move to Category Theory yet, when I do, I will inform my beloved readers.

And, lastly, get addicted to science!

I didn’t really describe that addiction of tensors I told I will. Well, the truth is; I cannot describe that, feel it yourself, and don’t try to make a complete meaning out of this post, because this post itself is abstract.