Okay, so generally I don't like to go on and on about DS6. Already did that last week smile However, this weekend was a great weekend for us. Played lots of chess, played a lot outside (great weather), played on the computer (Evolver math game), etc.

So bedtime reading for the last couple of nights has been a short essay from Isaac Asimov. If you didn't know--I didn't but happened to marry a lovely wife that has a lot of his books--he wrote lots about various non fiction topics, including math. DS has "discovered" one of mom's books, a collection of essays. We've been reading "The Imaginary that Isn't" about i (square root of -1). Yes, I am a geek and yes those genes did pass into said son. Hey, it's his bedtime. If that's what he wants to read, then we'll read it. [to be clear: the vocabulary is very advanced and I am reading it to him. He reads along silently]

This particular essay goes on for a while before it gets to the "good stuff". Tonight was the night that it got there though. You have to read all of it to get the story, but the short of it is that while in college a philosophy professor challenged Asimov and said that basically mathematicians were "mystics" because they believed in imaginary numbers. He then goes on an on in great length (details omitted) and then describes two dimensional space as a function of the x-axis being your normal number line and the y-axis being the imaginary line. I'm not even through reading that sentence when DS proclaims "I get it!" and then jumps out of bed and draws me a number line and then puts i "on top" and says minus i is on bottom. This was all a set up by the way to show the reader that imaginary numbers can be used to show directions just like a compass if you use that x-y system to be your compass. So he's already jumped to "yeah WEST x WEST = EAST" meaning a negative x negative = positive. The fun part will be tomorrow when we finish up! smile

Let's say... I was impressed/stunned/dumbfounded and glad I have a technical background!

JB