Morning meeting (Ines) – D28

Today, Ines “directed” the morning meeting. She showed us an RSA Animate video about work motivation. The idea of the author, Dan Pink, was interesting, although his reasoning was not good at all. He confused what many economists do and believe, especially Austrian economists. The author says that economist only see the profit function as a monetary one instead of a set of preferences, which is entirely false if you are referring to true economists. Nevertheless, it was good to see other perspective. 

Gabbi's looks today

Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land – D27

To finish our day, Bert shared us this 1959 Donald Duck cartoon. It related a lot to Euclid and of course, math in general. It’s a very nice video that explains how math is in everything we do and shows some of the history of this discovery getting back to the Greeks, with Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. It also explains the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden number, φ. After watching this cartoon, we had a dialogue about it. One of the most important things I got from the video is the capacity of explaining very difficult and complex concepts in very simple and straightforward cartoons.  

Watch the video by clicking --> HERE <--

Individual work, debriefing, and Emerson – D27

After the morning meeting, we had individual work. I decided to read Taming the Infinite, since for the past days I have had trouble trying to focus on documenting. I managed to read two chapters and got up to date with that book, which was cool because I’m a little behind with both documentation and readings, hoping to get to date by this week. Although it was a productive time, I later saw that all the MPC’ers were debriefing the morning meeting, which I had no idea we would do it at that time because I didn’t heard anybody say that. I got in the circle and of course, apologized for my innocent mistake. After the debriefing, we read some more of Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, and had a dialogue about it. I have to admit that this time I really liked it because the last two times we discussed this essay, I was falling asleep (I know, shame on me!). This time I was able to make connections and really understand what Emerson is saying to us. I enjoyed it a lot!

Painting: morning meeting with Mabe – D27

This morning meeting was directed by Mabe. I want to say that she masterly directed it, but I can’t because she confused the rules a little. Nevertheless, it has been the best morning meeting so far. The activity consisted that each of us should choose a paint color, aquarelle or olio, and one at a time paint something in a canvas she brought. As a group, we decided to draw a face expressing joy. It was a great activity, which I enjoyed a lot. Although I liked the painting more in the middle of the activity than in the end, the lesson learned from it was very enriching. It was also, in some aspect, frustrating because some people screwed the painting by drawing childish things like tongues and drawing over someone else’s work, actually not making the painting express joy but something else. I then realized that the painting is not the worth thing to learn from this activity, but how people react and behave to different situations they encountered. All of this was discussed by debriefing a couple of hours later.

*Watch the video of Mabe's activity on my Youtube channel, it's really cool!

Euclid and Debriefing – D26

So, after lunch we practiced the first three propositions with our groups. With Marce and Lore, we decided to work individually to try to solve and deeply learn each proposition for later demonstration. When we finished doing this, we had our traditional debriefing. As far I can remember, there is nothing important to mention about this.

Morning meeting (Pablito) and individual work – D26

For the morning meeting, Pablito showed us a very interesting and touching video about Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest Holocaust survivor. Her passion for music is impressive, but even more impressive is her willingness to live, in every day of her life. Just enjoying every moment, having no heart feelings or hate for anyone, not even the Germans. Pablito also showed us a page, in which we can find a large number of classic music authors.

Emotional moment watching Alice's video

Here are the video of Alice Herz and the page for classic music.

After the morning meeting we had individual work. To be honest, I didn’t use it as I should, since I procrastinated a lot during this time.

Progressing on Programming! – D25

Remember Euler’s programming problem? Well, during programming class with Kyle we took off were we left, so I got together with Marce and Lore to finish Project Euler’s third problem. After having some trouble trying to proceed with our problem, we asked Kyle for some guidance and after his advice and some improvements with our solution, we could answer it finally! It was very rewarding being able to work a solution and understanding it. After this, we presented the results to the class. It was great!

*Here is our problem if you want to try some programming and start solving Euler’s problems!

Problem 3 of Project Euler