Numbers

So I mentioned in a previous post or two that due to a class I'm currently taking, my reading time would be reduced, but at the same time, that I would be looking for ways to apply what I learn to the world of books and/or publishing.

Obviously, it's no surprise that I love words and reading, etc.

What does surprise people is my fascination with Math. Don't be mislead by that sentence, I'm not saying I'm good at Math, just that I'm fascinated by it. There are even particular hard science fiction books that I've enjoyed because they involve characters interaction with Math (tangent: I did not like Arthur C. Clarke's final novel "The Last Theorem". I thought despite the co-authorship with Frederick Pohl, the novel was poorly written, poorly plotted, and poorly executed. It may have started out as a good idea, but it quickly turned south.) And eventually some of my future posts will involve science fiction novels with math-based themes or plot lines.

But Math, like English, is a language, and it's characters represent abstracts and ideas, just like English, and through the language we can better understand the world around us.

The one lesson we've covered a lot in my Statistical Analysis (Nanodegree) class is standard deviations, how to calculate it, and what it ultimately means.

Basically, if you have data, you can pick a piece of particular datum and calculate where it lies in relation to all the other data in the population you took it from. In other words, you can calculate how many standard deviations this one particular piece of data is from the mean/average. 

I could go much more into the details and how that is discussed, but I suspect many of my regular Cheesy Readers aren't ready for me to suddenly change the regular topics of this blog so quickly.

Maybe as I go, more and more will become fascinated by my path, but maybe others only want to see my final conclusions. Time will tell.

Until Next Time...
Deviantly Yours,
Michael