Math Competitions

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Have you ever heard of the math team? Well, it isn’t as hyped up as sports teams, but it is fun like the sports. Some people might be thinking, “Who in the world would like math enough to go to competitions dedicated to it?” Well, I’m not going to argue against anyone who doesn’t like math that much, because I don’t think I would win and I can’t spare any straw men, I’m at a shortage from all the ones I had to remove from my essay. So, I will go into detail with the competitions. Anyone who does not feel comfortable advancing beyond this point may press the exit button on the top of their browser to leave.

If anyone’s still reading, great!

Now, as a competition that requires a lot of concentration and you don’t find out much about the score, the only people really watching are the test administrators. Regardless, there are four parts of each competition: Target, Team, Sprint, and Relay. I don’t remember the exact order, but I think this is correct. For those of you in Math Counts, you should recognize some of these names.

First: The Target Round.
This round is, I’m pretty sure, the first. For those of you that participated in Math Counts, the Target Round is a bit different. In this round, you have 8 problems total. However, you do not get to do them all at once. You do these problems in 4 groups of 2, getting a little while to do each two problems. Unlike Math Counts, you can’t use your calculator, so the problems are a little easier.

Next: Sprint Round
You can use a calculator on this one, but the problems are harder. This was like the Math Counts version, but you couldn’t use your calculator then. This time, you had an amount of time to complete 30 problems.

Third: Team Round

I’m pretty sure that the competitions go in this order. But, anyway, the Team Round is unchanged from Math Counts. You can go with a group of either 3, small schools, or 6, large schools. Anyway, you have a while to try and complete problems. Anyone can work on the problems in any order they want, but it’s better if you organize it.

Final: Relay Round (My Favorite)

This particular contest is probably not familiar to those from Math Counts. This is because it wasn’t in it. In this round, there are 5 problems and 3 people per group. The first person gets a problem and solves it; they then pass their answer to the next person. The second person inserts the answer they receive into their problem and passes their answer to the third person. The third person does the same, but submits their answer as the official answer; their answer is the only one that counts. I personally prefer second position because it’s easier to blame the first or third person for messing up.

Something and Nothing

Before you read any further into this post, you should probably read this post by Mikey J in the Morning titled “Nothing.”

In the post mentioned above, Mikey J was able to blog about nothing, not just rambling, because that would be something. Instead, he was able to blog about the concept of nothing. In addition, he was blogging about something when he was blogging about nothing. A concept, even if that concept is nothing, is still something. Nothing seems to only work as a concept because while nothing is supposed to be nothing, it, in a way, is definitely something. If you tried to define the words something and nothing without using a dictionary, you might have trouble thinking of something to say about nothing.

You have already seen a blog post about nothing, so, there should also be a post about something. Something, as defined by the MacMillian Dictionary for Students, means “certain thing not specified or known.” This reinforces the fact that something is something and the fact that nothing is something too. Nothing is a word, and because a word is something, that makes nothing something. Well, I got on the track of nothing again, so it is about something, how nothing is something. Not how I intended it… Oh, well.

Back to the topic of nothing, nothing has multiple definitions in the same dictionary where I got the meaning of something, the first definition was “no thing; not anything.” Not much to say about that one. The second definition is “no part or share.” I don’t have anything to say about that either. The third definition is “obscurity or insignificance.” This definition isn’t really nothing, the thing that you could call it is seemingly nothing, which is still something, whether or not it seems like nothing. The fourth definition is “that which is of no value of significance.” That is still something. The fifth definition is basically “absence of existence.” Absence is still something, but it is also nothing. The final definition however is zero. Zero is nothing, yet like the others, it is also something.

It may be hard to believe that someone would be wandering around pondering what to write about nothing for two hours, but it happened. If you think this is confusing, I know it is, so please don’t complain.

Procrastination in Practice

As you may have noticed, I wrote an entry on Procrastination just before Thanksgiving Break. And, in addition, that was my last post, except for the one talking about my blog's break. During this, I did take a break, but I was not planning to. I did not use the new and controversial Times New Invisible font, it didn't exist at all. Amazing how easy it is to stop doing something when your grade no longer depends on it. Because of this, I have completely given up on my Halloween post, there's no hope for it now and I will give up on one series and move on in another. In addition, I will go on to talking about birds.

Okay, I have been evading the actual topic of procrastination for a while, but I'm going to have troubles talking about it because I am not only procrastinating on better posts, but I am procrasting on an extra credit oppurtunity as well... So, this is it for this post, regardless of how horrible and rushed it seems, but I plan on adding better ones later.

Procrastination

My multi-draft essay for AP Lang’s topic is procrastination. This will not be a reiteration of my essay nor will it be added to my essay. Now that that’s out of the way…

We all have to deal with school projects, projects that you do a lot of research for ahead of time, but don’t do the write up a little bit before the due date. The author study would be an example of this.

On these projects, you get cocky. You feel that you know everything about it and write everything up, but you do a poor job. You don’t find out how poorly you did until you ask someone to help you with last minute revisions.

As soon as they are done reading it, they call it a piece of crap and you have to work much longer on it than you originally thought you would need to. Eventually, it’s late, you’re tired and you wish you had finished it earlier. In addition, you have some additional homework to do as well…

If this incident or any other similar to it teaches you a lesson, which it probably would, it would be that you shouldn’t get cocky about homework. It will probably take longer than you think.

Instead of giving your group members meaningful final edits to their multi-draft essays, you give them shoddy corrections and instead of the blog post you were planning on doing, you have to churn up a bad one about procrastination instead of doing one you really want to.

Wait, you think this post is about me? Um…. whatever made you think that?
I need to go right now. Bye!

Colloquialisms

Those of you who have read my past posts, you probably think I am going to complain about slang. The title is "colloquialisms", not slang. I am okay with colloquialisms, Slang is okay, just use correct grammar, unless if you are drawing attention to bad grammar as a joke. Instead, I will talk about origins of colloquialisms. For those of you who are complaining, read the posts with the "Random" tag at your own risk.

Anyway, colloquialisms are "expressions not used in formal speech, writing or paralinguistics." Some of you may wonder how this is different from slang. I have found a response by linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "slang refers to informal (and often transient) lexical items used by a specific social group, for instance teenagers, soldiers, prisoners, or thieves. Slang is not considered the same as colloquial (speech), which is informal, relaxed speech used on occasion by any speaker; this might include contractions such as you’re, as well as colloquialisms. A colloquialism is a lexical item used in informal speech; whilst the broadest sense of the term ‘colloquialism’ might include slangism, its narrow sense does not. Slangisms are often used in colloquial speech but not all colloquialisms are slangisms. One method of distinguishing between a slangism and a colloquialism is to ask whether most native speakers know the word (and use it); if they do, it is a colloquialism. However, the problem is that this is not a discrete, quantized system but a continuum. Although the majority of slangisms are ephemeral and often supplanted by new ones, some gain non-slang colloquial status (e.g. English silly – cf. German selig ‘blessed’, Middle High German sælde ‘bliss, luck’ and Zelda, a Jewish female first name) and even formal status (e.g. English mob)."
There's your answer. Anyway, Colloquialisms form when somebody says a phrase, other people like it and start peppering their language with it. Depending on whether it is used by a certain group or most speakers, it is considered either colloquial or slang.

Unfortunately, that is all for this post. I know I used a lot of words to express a two sentence idea and will probably do more in my more meaningful posts, but I couldn't think of a better topic. I will try and do better next time.

P.S. An example of using this to make fun of grammar is the phrase, "Ich bin ein Berliner." You may know this quote, but it is grammatically incorrect for the intended message. If you know enough German, you understand why one word completely messes it up.

Fear of the Dark

If you search for "Fear of the Dark" on Google, you will find a song by the group "Iron Maiden." Type in "Nyctophobia" instead and you will find two wikipedia pages. First is "Nyctophobia" the other is "Fear of the dark," not the song, the actual fear. Some might be asking what the difference is. If you haven't followed the links, don't bother, I will tell you the difference.

The main difference is that when people use the word "phobia," it is pathological, while fear of the dark is natural. Phobias are a common way to describe general fears, but clinically, this is not so. According to the Wikipedia entry: The different possible conventional symptoms many of the phobias have in correlation include “dyspnea (“air hunger”), palpitation (rapid beating of the heart), chest pain or discomfort, choking or smothering sensations, dizziness or vertigo, feelings of unreality, paresthesia (tingling in the hands and feet), hot or cold flashes, sweating, faintness, trembling or shaking, and a fear of dying, going crazy, or doing something uncontrollable.” You may have the fear, but it probably isn't classified as a phobia.





Anyway, back to the fear. This is not fear of absence of light, but about imagination, about fears of what could happe in the dark. It is completely natural and chances are that you have had it at one point, so don't try and fool yourself into thinking otherwise. In addition, some may not want to believe it, but you still have this fear to some degree. Some may be thinking that they have outgrown this stage in their life, but you haven't. While it may be true you don't take special precautions to invade the imagined monsters that wish to devour you, I ask you this: Have you ever been in the woods or the inner city at night and had absolutely no fear that something was going to happen to you? If the answer is yes, then you are afraid of the dark in one way, if the answer is no, you have either been to neither of the aforementioned places, which I doubt, you are in denial, or you have completely eliminated your fear of the dark.

If you actually have eliminated your fear of the dark, don't be happy for having done it. While fear is not something you should be proud of, it is necessary. Fear is just an emotional reaction to a potential threat. When you are afraid, your senses pick up more around you, making you more aware of changing conditions. It's a basic survival instinct. Some of you may not understand what this has to do with fear of the dark, I'll tell you. You agree that our vision is good for seeing shapes and recognizing figures, but is not the best for detecting general movement. You agree that the less light there is, the harder it is to see. You agree that if vision is obscured enough, you don't know what could be in that obscured area. This is where imagination kicks in. If you receive stimuli in cases like this, your mind imagines what it could be, and if you are afraid, you often assume the worst. If you assume the worst when there is an actual situation, doing that would help you deal with any situation.

While it is not likely that what your imagination could contrive is what you just heard while walking at night, a little vigilance never hurt anyone if something bad did happen.