Introduction to Mathematics

On the last lesson we had an introduction to the though subject which is mathematics. We discovered patterns, learned why people started using mathematics in first place and how mathematics is just like music. 

I think you can call mathematic "art" as you have to discover hidden meanings behind few weird symbols and uncommon formulas that are nearly impossible to understand for an average mortal human being just like me. 

Except for reading the text about the history of mathematics we spent the most of our time discussing whether mathematics can be called beautiful. There was this question "Can we say that mathematics is beautiful if we do not understand it?". Well, to me the answer is yes. I will start from simple examples while explaining my point of view.

For me most of the things occurring in this word are hard to understand. I can tell you that the movie is beautiful but I do not understand how TV works. How can I fit small people inside the plastic box? I know it sound ridiculous and I probably show my lack of intelligence right now, but have you ever thought about it? The answer is most likely: no. But hey, TV is different than mathematics because we can experience it with our senses and the content we are provided with is in some point understandable. Well, mathematics is also understandable. It is like a painting. You see something, you know some parts but individual parts of the equation does not make any sense.

When I showed this to my sister she made big eyes and told me she does not understand anything. When I asked her to tell me if she knows any of the symbols she easily recognized the sign of equality, subtraction and that we have to divide 1 by something. The same goes for paintings. If you look at Vincent van Gogh’s portrait of madame Roulin rocking on the chair you can tell “This is a beautiful painting, I can see a friendly looking lady sitting on the chair and the colors are nice”. But did you know that the painting is also called “Lullaby” an it was started before painter’s mental breakdown and finished after leaving the asylum?

So why the equation above can be ugly to some people? For the same reason the picture above can be ugly. Ugliness and beauty are hard to define because they depend on your personal beliefs. I don’t understand very constructed mathematical theorems and equations but they greatness amazes me and I find them beautiful.

Which does not mean I enjoy math. I don’t really understand it even when I how to do it. I still think that some parts are unnecessary and we should learn more useful skills than calculating delta but what can you do.

The end of history

09/05/2016

Today was the end of history. Well, not literally "the end" because the history will not end as long as...I don't really know what was I supposed to write. The point was that today was the last lesson of TOK in history. 

"Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will"

That is one of the quotes we were to discuss on today's lesson. I liked this one the most because it was (in my opinion) the most truthful of them all. I mean, people are born it different societies and families with different traditions and issues but it is up to us how we "play" our lives. No one has the same cards (opportunities) but when you are brought up it a similar environment chances are cards you have to play are the same. With that being said, when you are complaining that your classmate has better grades or is having better time or is "cooler" than you have to stop dwelling in self pity because we were all born naked and ugly and probably crying and screaming. We all went to school and it was only up to us what approach we will take from the beginning and the same goes for the other two; we are constantly working on our character and unless you are too lazy to do anything, you can be everything you want to be. Obviously you won't be as fit/social/hard working as somebody else but that is what is amazing in our life. We have the power to be whoever we want to be and even though we are starting with the almost identical set of cards as somebody else  you can grow up to be a totally different person. I think it is pretty amazing. 

Enough of my thoughts, let's get into some important definitions. After reading sad, alternative version of "Billy Elliot" where instead of following his dreams boy and up as a beer loving 35 year old corpses "squelched into the shape of a pancake". Not very optimistic or even not optimistic at all but we tried to determine what were the causes of Billy's tragic end and as we spoke we discussed two terms.

Accidentalism-the idea that everything is a result of random events we are not able to control. 

For example Billy wasn't accepted to ballet school because one of the judges was earlier that day swimming in the river where a mosquito bit her and while Billy was presenting himself instead of watching she decided to scratch her arm and she missed the important part.

Determinism-everything is a result of something that occurred before.

Billy died because the driver was lacking sleep because his baby was crying all night, because it was hungry, because it's parents could buy him food because shopkeeper decided to finnish his work earlier yesterday. Therefore the shop owner killed Billy.

pact

14/03/2016

PATC is not some serious, legally bonding document (as it is easy to think) but a very helpful method when it comes to finding sources for our favorite activity, obtaining knowledge. 

Purpose-Why the source is produced?

Author-Do we know anything about the author of the source we are using?

Context-Are there any other sources that would back up this one?

Tone-Are we reading dry facts or emotional opinions?

To be honest, PACT is not some new, magical invention that was discovered like washing machine, but something that was exiting for a long amount of time before it was named. According to my observations most teenagers are skeptical so they unconsciously use PACT when reading newspapers or articles online. I think that PACT should be mentioned in every school curriculum not only IB and it should be done in middle school, when kids are crating their personalities individually and not with their home habits. I would help with so much aspects of growing up because as I already said PACT is universal and can be used not only for historical sources but also for medical online sites. 

history oh history

29/02/2016

What subject starts with "H" and has been dreaded by me since I was 10? History!

 At the beginning of this school year I marched confidently into the glorious hall of our schools looking at all this poor people who were about to spent entire year learning about long and for most parts boring events and failures of dead men and here was I. The happiest person it this school. Well, at least that is what I thought until I discovered thrilling and exiting parts of IB that I was warned about but somehow I missed all of the warnings. Anyway, I managed to deal with the difficulties of an average IB student and then... History happened. To me more precise tok lessons involving History. I will run through the subject of history briefly since I can't pay attention to it. Here we go.

On that lesson I realized how bias is our history. During WWII the amount of propaganda existing all over the world made it hard to tell what really happened during some events. For example, photographs were manipulated in a way that if some figure occurring on one photograph was not beneficial to the whole event it was erased and people who were not present there and just known the event from the photograph can still live to this day in lie. Al off the tok lessons made me think about how easy it is to manipulate other people and I think I started develop trust issues when it comes to the things I learn at school. Also I know now that the problem with changing someone’s mind when the idea is heavily rooted in that person's mind is not only my problem, but the widely occurring issue. And this is why war happens and why society gets divided and racism and basically a lot bad things in history happened because people couldn't cooperate.

reasoning

Reasoning is the way we put together fact and events in our brain and make them work together as a logical whole. Logical is a very important part of this definition. Why? We will get to this.

First of all, there are this important terms that we must know and remember. Induction and 

Deduction. They sound almost the same to me but as I now know, they aren't. Induction is assuming some fact basing on the greater group to which these fact apply. For example: 98% of children likes sweets therefore the kid I just met will probably enjoy chocolate he is about to buy. Deduction is in my opinion a little bit like a mathematic equation. If A equals B and B equals C then A equals C as well.  Obviously, the results of our inductive and deductive reasoning will not be right because exceptions are almost always existing. The statement - every dog I know has a tail so your dog also have a tail- can be incorrect. This particular dog could be a victim of an accident and in result he has no tail. Deduction and induction may lead to prejudice as we approach new problems with experience from the past. "Every blue eyed person I met was a murderer so she must be as well!"

It all starts to be confusing as we dive into it. But here is why I said LOGIC is important. We can't just blindly connect the dots and believe that the picture is correct. We must follow the numbers next to these dots and that way we will end up with a nicely drawn picture. Also it is important not to connect dots with squares because it will create nonsense and false ideas. "Potato has skin, I have skin, therefore I am a potato.". It makes no sense because we connected squares with dots. Speaking more clearly; we connected facts that have nothing to do with each other and we got an answer which is complete absurd. 

emotions emotions emotions

08/02/2016

How to use emotions? 

Fear and disgust are both are responsible for keeping us away from my potential danger. For example; while you walking through the woods after sunset and you hear some suspicious noise, your heart starts to beat faster, you might feel cold, your muscles get tense and you became more alert. That is called fear. Your adrenal glands produce adrenaline which is responsible for fight-or-flight response. In moment of fear you can either run away or fight and both of these solutions are more likely to keep you safe than just walking through these woods without any concern about possible danger. The same goes for disgust. When you pick up your favorite dish and you see some white or green fur you won't eat it. Your brain knows that this "fur" is mould and there is possibility that after consuming that used-to-be delicious slice of pizza you can end up dead. Or at least at the hospital bed. 

Disgust prevents human from taking harmful actions but the problem is that disgust and fear are the easiest emotions to manipulate. You learn them through the association and that feature has been used repeatedly in history. During WWII German Nazi decided that the best way for spreading hatred towards Jews is to start from the youngest age. It resulted in crating anti-Semitic children book when they described how and why Jews are disgusting. Of course, the word "disgusting" was never used. It was the smart move because people were not aware of the fact that the emotions they felt were created by other people and not because of biological factors.

What is interesting, disgust is not only manipulated through vivid descriptions or  nasty images where you are shown and presented clearly what is your threat. Some researches were carried out and the proven that liberal people are harder to disgust than conservative. That explains why sometimes the political views are extreme. If used in correct way during voting, our senses would manipulate the voters o choose certain political party. Thankfully it is illegal, because I can't imagine the world where my own immune system and natural instincts that are meant to keep me safe, would be used to manipulate my thoughts. Or maybe they already are and I just can't see it? 

Lesson no9

11/01/2016

We can name 6 basic emotion:

·         Joy (or happiness)

·         Sadness

·         Anger

·         Disgust

·         Fear

·         Surprise

It’s kind of weird to me that only one emotion is on a positive side. But I could understand people disagreeing with me. I mean, some of us like to fear something so they watch horror movies or maybe another person would like to be angry. I don’t judge but basically it is commonly stated that only feeling joy make us feel positive. Anyway, that wasn’t the point of the lesson. We watched short Disney move about emotions and how Hitler used fear, sadness and anger to manipulate others. And about how we should use reason and emotion at the same time. I think that even though some people say it is impossible to say “emotions over reason” or “reason over emotions” If I had to stick with only one to the rest of my life I would probably chose reason. I never came across any mention in a pop culture of a case where protagonist lived without reason so I think I’m not the only one who is on “team reason”.