Eye-Glazing 101

Well, I haven’t had any run-ins with the FBI or conflicts with my pizza delivery lately so I haven’t had much to write about. But something new must be posted, so I will have to astound you with my piercing insight, motivate you with my amazing discernment or of course just bore you with my senseless drivel. I will choose the latter, as it will most surely be the easiest and most natural for me. I do have plenty of real world practice in the art of inducing involuntary eye glazing. Speaking of such, I am due to give a fifteen minute presentation tomorrow at a math conference. Now, don’t get me wrong, I get along fine with mathematicians, but I am an engineer not a true, hardcore mathematics person. So I am a bit concerned about this speech.

Let me fill you in. Over here at Tech, all math, science and engineering are part of the same college so we are encouraged to work together on multidisciplinary projects. So I have been working with a math guy and some others on a project that encourages high school juniors and seniors to enroll in math, science or engineering in college. So this guy asks someone from out group to give a talk at an upcoming math conference. Of course, I am duly elected to give this talk (if by elected I mean told to be there at 3:30 with my presentation.) Why don’t I just list a few of the other topics at this conference so that you can get an idea of the audience I am going to speak to. Here are two of the other presentations:

• Solving for the zeros of the function F(q) = 1/1q + 1/ 2q +1/ 3q + …+1/(p-1)q in the finite field Zp = {0,1,2,…,p-1}


• A Structured Erythropoiesis Model with Nonlinear Cell Maturation Velocity and Hormone Decay Rate

I have no interest at all in anything remotely similar to whatever either of those talks is going to be about. But these are the things that these mathematicians enjoy. So I am feeling a bit out of place with my talk about high school students. But none the less, the show must go on. So I am just not even going to bother with talking about any sort of math and I am just going to focus on the fact that the kids are having fun building bridges and that they are genuinely more interested in math, science and engineering than they were before. We really do need to start sparking interest earlier, but that is a story for another day.

I just hope I don’t get nervous and start using the old public speaking strategy of picturing your audience with no clothes on. That would definitely NOT be the best image to have. You try picturing a room full of Albert Einstein’s in their skivvies and see if you don’t bust out laughing.