I have reached the end of the text for M208, so that's quite a milestone reached, and I won't have to tackle any new material from now on. I started working on M208 back in mid February 2011 and so it has taken me a year and three months to read through what should really take eight months, so I have been going at roughly half speed. I haven't done the further exercises yet, but I have read and worked through nearly every proof and, believe me, that was quite a chore. On the last book I gave up with reading the very last optional proof as I just couldn't be bothered!
I enjoyed AB4 on Power Series. It was a nice amble through Taylor polynomials, Taylor's Theorem, Taylor Series and manipulating power series. Nothing too difficult and all fairly straightforward, so it maybe a topic to choose in the exam.
So what now? Well, there is TMA06 and 07 to do. That will be my first priority. Then I will be keeping things ticking over for a while by doing the further exercises. I plan to do these at random, so that I have to practise working from different parts of the course at the same time. I will also just try and work from the Handbook and see how I get on. I suspect that at this stage I will be adding a few extra notes to this where I think there isn't enough information to get me going on a question. Then sometime around late August I will start turning my attention to past exam papers and practise getting questions answered quickly and honing those skills ready for the exam in October.
I have already started think about what I might do next and this probably won't involve the OU for now. I intend to start another blog about my own explorations into prime numbers. I have also thought that I might begin trying to understand some chapters from 'An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers' by Hardy and Wright. Then another avenue for me is, perhaps, to get to grips with Special Relativity which I felt I never really did when I was a physics undergraduate. The thing is there are so many choices of things to do that I will probably not know where to start! I still have all my undergraduate text books and it is tempting to delve into Quantum Mechanics again, or Electromagnetism, or perhaps finally sit down to 'Gravitation' by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler!
Well done you deserve a pint, when I've finished slogging through the derivation of the Friedmann equations from General relativity (ETA end of May) we should meet up again.
ReplyDeleteAs for your future studies you could always do the OU courses in those subjects. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to motivate yourself if you don't have a TMA deadline to meet.
Anyway be interesting to hear of your progress
Best wishes Chris (Who is not Marvin the Android)
Thanks Chris. Yes meeting up for a pint at the end of May sounds good to me. I hope you manage to complete your derivations.
DeleteYes, I suppose I could still do some of the OU courses by buying the books and reading them. I think if there was something specific I wanted to learn then I could do that. I don't rule out the possibility of doing some more at some stage, but I have had enough for the moment.
Just tinkering around with TMA06 at the moment (the bit on differentiation). Have a good weekend. Duncan.