HELLO! My name is Patrick M., one of the instructors at Mathnasium of Garner. I just wanted to share somewhat about myself and what is happening in my life as of now! Recently, I just got accepted to work as a Math Teacher at Cleveland High School, which is an exciting step into a teaching career. One of my favorite parts so far has been decorating and personalizing my room (soon, there is going to be an invasion of plants in my classroom). Speaking of plants, I love to garden and right now there are several cucumbers and pumpkins trying to make it in before the fall frost rolls around. However, two roosters keep coming and eating my pumpkins...for now.
One of my favorite math topics is Abstract Algebra, and a big unsolved problem in the math world called the Hodge Conjecture requires an understanding of Abstract Algebra to try and solve. Abstract algebra is interesting to me, because it’s taking the idea of a number system (along with the operations that define it), and abstracting that concept with the purpose of gaining a deeper understanding of number systems and solving some really tough algebra problems. This can be useful, because there are whole sets of numbers out there that haven’t even been discovered yet! If these sets of numbers have operations that “act” similar to that of the ones studied in abstract algebra, an understanding of these “new” numbers can be gathered quickly. Then new applications may be found using these “new” numbers. It’s wondrous to think that there are more types of numbers (maybe innumerably many) that haven’t been discovered than there are types of numbers that have been discovered. One of my favorite quotes is by a man named Chuck Smith, “the more knowledge a person has about their field of study, the more that person realizes how little they really know about that field of study.” There are so many ideas and concepts in math that haven’t been discovered yet, and it’s exciting to think about because who knows when the next big discovery could be?
