## Wednesday, July 23, 2008

### How people react when they discover you are strudying math?

The main reason I am writing this post is because of an interesting post I recently read. Beans at Me Or My Maths recently wrote about the different reactions he got from people who heard that he studies math. To sum it up, the reactions he gets are of the type "you are crazy". He is not the only blogger from the UK who says he gets this type of reaction, so apparently it is a rather usual thing in that part of the world....

As you probably understood from the last part of the previous paragraph, such reaction is not common in Israel. I remember very clearly how when I had to study math for 4 hours straight in school (with one half hour brake) some other pupils said that they cannot believe that I do this, but there reaction was surprised but not negative. Perhaps they were just glad that they don't have to do this. Also, when asked about this I answered were simply "I enjoy studying math". I guess after this they preferred not to talk to me... Not much of a loss. I am not cynical, it is simply that my interests were very different from theirs.

Unlike Beans I don't do my homework in trains, and I don't speak with random people about my math, but from time to time I share my enthusiasm for math with someone who has no clue of what I am talking about. By sharing enthusiasm I mean that I start talking and I don't really care if I am understood. However, they usually don't faint or run away. They either remain polite or just ignore what I say. Writing this blog helps to control such bursts of enthusiasm, but sometimes I feel the desire to speak with someone....

The above doesn't mean that Israelis love math. However, it might mean that they really don't care. Most of the people here study as little math as possible in school, and then even if they go to college they are likely to never hear about it again. Also, just today I talked with someone who said that he can hardly wait until the end of the semester - unless he will fail in something, he will not have to study any math next year. But even he didn't say anything negative about math, or about those who study it.

Now, to the more mathematical part of the post. I have been thinking about a certain integral in the past few days, but I am still unable to show that it converges (or not). I am probably missing something simple here, this shouldn't be a hard problem:

$\int (sin(x^2))^3$$dx$

The limits are zero and plus infinity. If you have the solution you are welcomed to post it, if no solutions will be posted before I will solve this thing, I will write the solution here (unless I will forget about this). Good luck...