I seem to have a learning order problem. Even when I was young, I remember my dad repeating himself hoarse, telling me that I mustn’t jump about when doing mathematics (not physically… just my steps).

Now that I am older, I discovered that not only my order of doing math jumps about at random, my order of learning and understanding things too, jumps about at random.

Case in point, at my advanced ‘metric theory class last week, I was the matrix retard. This week, I was the matrix genius in class. Why? Last week, we dealt with stuff like rank and basic operation of matrices (there are such things as pre- and post-multiplication of matrices!!). This week, we dealt with stuff like finding minimas. I was clueless last week. I was struggling with basic matrices when everyone went ahead doing their tutorial questions, I had to stop my tutor everytime she walked past me. This week, I was the only person who knew how to differentiate a matrix properly.

Wait, that doesn’t make sense, you say. How can that happen? Well, I learnt to differentiate a matrix long ago, in a game theory class, when we had to do funky stuff like minimax theorem. As it turns out the matrices learnt in game theory had no such things as (X’X)^-1X or stuff like idempotent matrices, or I didn’t encounter them.

But anyway, I guess this sums up my learning style. I jump into the deep end, and then find my way to the shallow end, and proeed to drown there. Another example is eigenvectors. I learnt about eigenvectors some 3-4 years before I learnt them formally (and using eigenvectors to determine price in Pressyo is used 1 year before I formally learnt them). And while I could do the more crazy stuff with eigenvectors, I struggled with basic things.

This has got to stop.. really. Maybe I should be less bored with the shallow pool.

Tell me what do you think

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