“Hi Dad.”<\/p>\n
“Ben!”<\/p>\n
“Are you busy?”<\/p>\n
“No. I’m at a conference, but we just took a break.”<\/p>\n
“Should I call back later?”<\/p>\n
“No, no. Now is fine. What’s up?”<\/p>\n
“Well,” he said, “I have some calculus questions.”<\/p>\n
I thought to myself, well it this really is<\/strong><\/em> a call I needed to take! He explained how they’re doing optimization problems, and he proceeded to explain some problems he was working on. <\/p>\n The first problem: find the size of a cylinder inscribed in a sphere that has maximum volume. We talked the problem definition thru and I had him draw a diagram illustrating the relevant quantities, and within a few minutes, he was telling me how to solve it.<\/p>\n Then he described his second problem: finding a maximal volume cone. We talked again about the problem definition and discussed another diagram, and again he was telling me how to solve it in a few minutes. <\/p>\n Finally he described his last problem. This one, I confess, I didn’t master. I needed a pencil and paper and a few minutes to look at the problem and think. In the meantime, we discussed the problem definition, and I had him draw a picture. And as I talked my way in circles, he began to solve it.<\/p>\n And that was it.<\/p>\n “Thanks Dad. Are you having a good time at your conference?”<\/p>\n “Yeah,” I said in a fairly noncommittal tone, omitting that I really wanted to see that paper that was going on then.<\/p>\n “That’s good.”<\/p>\n “What have you been doing?” I asked.<\/p>\n “Studying in the library.”<\/p>\n Music to my ears.<\/p>\n And so that was the end of our conversation. We said goodbyes and I-love-yous, and I went back into Salon-1. As I closed the door behind me, the speaker said said, “And in conclusion…” I chuckled to myself. <\/p>\n That’s ok. I would catch his paper when he gave it again the next day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Hi Dad.” “Ben!” “Are you busy?” “No. I’m at a conference, but we just took a break.” “Should I call back later?” “No, no. Now is fine. What’s up?” “Well,” he said, “I have some calculus questions.” I thought to myself, well it this really is a call I needed to take! He explained how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}