Unfinished Spaces

21.11.2012

Today I went to see the movie called "Unfinished Spaces" which was about the creation of National Arts School in Cuba soon after the Revolution had taken place (1961). The reason I went to see it was because I am very interested in Cuban Revolution, especially in its romantic hero Che, and also because I have been there and I got a feeling what this country's spirit was like. The film tells the story of how the idea for this school came about- Fidel and Che were "casually" playing golf in some elite club with huge territory and thought how amazing it would be to create the best school of modern art in the world right in Havana; how best architects were hired and what each of them contributed, how it was almost completed, when suddenly the political course "slightly" changed (due to the fact that Cubans were getting closer and closer to the Soviets who had totally different view of construction, ie prefabrication) and, unfortunately, not in favour of the project. Democracy sounded very nice in words but when it came to the real life "it was not considered right that freedom was practised in the school" and so the project stopped. The architects faced the choice- either comply with the rules and give up the creativity or leave the country. Many of them left and one of them even came to give a talk after the film. What he made me realise is that Revolution did stir people's enthusiasm and filled them with passion in the start but as time passed and people met the reality it opened their eyes - "freedom later became rule". As for the school, there were several attempts to restore it but it still remains pretty much in ruins.

Matrix. Reloaded.

18.11.2012

Hey hey!

Today I learnt a new skill- performing operations with matrices. Unfortunately, from my experience of being a business student it practically means saying goodbye to Maths and losing such valuable analytical mindset! Fortunately, I could choose optional units for my final year and so I decided to challenge myself with a module called Financial Markets - Equity with pre-requisites explicitely saying "Only students who have an aptitude for calculus, matrix-algebra and basic econometrics are advised to take this unit" which clearly I am not the case for the simplest reason being that we have not done matrices and econometrics at school!

So, not only does this course challenge me each week in terms of complex financial material but it also makes me refresh basic calculations skills which vanished due to the lack of practice. Also, I have long known of matrices and they seemed such an advance Maths to me that I never even wondered how they work (and partly because they were not relevant to me at the time). But as soon as I started reading about them, I got so interested and immediately started practising them (practice is key!).

Discovery of the Day
Area: Maths

In particular, multiplying matrices:





Source: http://www.mathprofi.ru/deistviya_s_matricami.html (website in Russian)

This is just an illustrative example.

That is all for now, I am off to study for the test which is in 1 week's time! But what I know for sure is that if any matrices-related question pops up, I will be well-equipped to tackle it! :)

Bye-bye!

 

Introductory post

17.11.12

Hey!

My name is Andrea and my interests are challenge, knowledge and self-development.

The idea of this blog is that each day or so I am going to post a new interesting fact that I came across that day (this can be anything really!)- so as to broaden my knowledge and awareness of the world and keep my brain stimulated every day! Also, I would like to see this blog as a knowledge-share portal whereas you are very welcome to write about your small discoveries (or big if you like) or anything that you find genuinely fascinating!

Discovery of the Day
Area: image and music

George Michael back in 1984 ("Careless Whisper"). It is amazing how strongly I was fixed on the present-day image that I did not even consider the possibility of it being different at some other point in time. No wonder it came to me as a surprise! Thanks to technologies it was possible to extract the past and enjoy it for a couple of minutes!

 

Very short introductory post today. Let us see what another day brings us :)

Bye!