The Magical Matrices Tour

Well, my life as a dork is rolling along. Most days I get up around 6 and try to get on campus and hit the gym from 7-8:30. From the gym, I proceed to the Maxwell School and my office until problem sessions at 10. Between 10 and 12, I pick both my own brain and the brains of my classmates, as we try to hash through homework problems. At 12, I head back upstairs for lunch and usually just take a break from math for a bit. Then at 1, it is back downstairs for class. First, Statistics followed by Math for Economists. When we are let out at 4:30, I usually head back upstairs and do some more work or play around on the net… usually a combination of both, and then head home around 7. This pattern pretty much repeats Monday through Friday, but sometimes, like this past Tuesday, other things happen. Some of my classmates and I hit up happy hour to celebrate Jason’s birthday, but with $3.00 pitchers happy hour turned into very happy hours and we didn’t leave until almost 9:30.

I think this is the first time that the only commitment I ever had was school. No sports practice, no meetings, nothing but school. I think it’s starting to get to me. Last night, as I lay nestled all snug in my bed, I had visions of matrices dancing in my head.

Dancing matrices? Well, they weren't really dancing, but I was like a professional solving them and taking inverses. But, that was my sleep! The time of the day when I am not supposed to be thinking of martices! I needed a way to get them out of my head, so I got to thinking about class.A Dr. H said the other day, “MG, PG, and Mi are magical matrices. You can quote me on that!” Well, Dr. H, I quoted you, but I am also going to take it a step further. Here goes… The Magical Matrices Tour adapted from The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour”:

Row up, row up for the matrices tour.
Column up, column up for the matrices tour.
Transpose and that’s an invertation, transpose for the matrices tour.
Zeros in row and columns for cofactor expansion, zeros for the matrices tour.
The magical matrices tour is waiting to take you away,
Waiting to take you away.

Anyways, no need to keep going. I hope that you have realized that matrices can be magical, and I don’t think even John, Paul, George, or Ringo could disagree with that!