论文部分内容阅读
It has been my drug, my 1)meditation, my weapon and my best friend. It fed and dressed me, led to travel, men, 2)lavish parties and even Cuban cigars. It has placed my name on a movie screen, put my work in museums, and allowed me to manipulate cells deep inside the human brain. It is called Math.
In Russia, where I was a child in the 80’s, math was respected and celebrated as a tool for progress and technological advancement. It was presented to school children as a toy with tricky wrapping that one had to 3)outwit to open. We were challenged and encouraged to tackle it. Indeed, math has become the toy of my life and my key to the world, leading me across continents, opening doors to exciting projects and people, and even assisting in the realm of romance.
I was in high school, when I applied math to my love life for the first time. I fell in love, and 4)barricaded in the heavy, still vacuum of my room, was desperately counting clock ticks, waiting for“the call” from the only person whose existence mattered.
It suddenly occurred to me that insecure, self-pitying anticipation could be turned into a confidence-boosting calculation of the probability of his call. What are the chances of his call, given the rumors of another girlfriend he may have had? How does the likelihood of him being interested diminish with each passing day without a call? The results did not look promising. My attention, however, was 5)diverted from the lost “love of my life” to a world of quiet concentration where I was queen, which significantly shrank his importance. Mathematically directing myself away from loveless depression, I tuned in to the world again and realized there would be many more romantic adventures to enjoy.
Immigrating to Israel, I discovered that math, more so than my religion, connected me to the young people in my new country. We spoke and read different languages, we lived through different histories, had very different worries, but we all studied math with 6)Hindu-Arabic numerals and learned the same rules of logic. I met my future husband in a graduate math class. At the time we did not speak a common dialect but shared the language of math. Life was easy.
A rainbow of trendy vocations presented themselves once I attained my math degree. The first came with delicious benefits. I was creating a product database at a chocolate factory. They had an “all you can eat at work” policy...
The coolest job of all was in movie special effects. The setting was like a dream: on the ocean side of Los Angeles, a quiet nightclub atmosphere, in an abandoned military 7)hangar, lit by a web of Christmas lights and 8)lava lamps, surrounded by a life-size Princess Leah statue and old Star Wars spaceships, accompanied by a pet parrot.
We, computer graphic p r o g r a m m e r s a n d animators, were making Hollywood history and immortalizing characters on the big screen.
With math I have helped move Godzilla through the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, and created a Monet-style animation of rap singer Puff Daddy, while experimenting with painting-by-numbers. Inspired by a brilliant talk at a 9)SIGGRAPH conference, I tried to digitally erase the cat’s whiskers for the movie Stuart Little. Some experiments worked and some did not, but the math behind them was thrilling, adventurous and playful.
I earned my Green Card by 10)meticulously planning a hi-jack attempt on Air Force One. It was returning from a summit in Moscow and carrying Harrison Ford as President of the United States. Our team of animators and engineers helped all the explosions look realistic, simulated Air Force One refueling in the air, and made everyone believe that the President had escaped from the plane in a computer-generated pod we created for him, which was dropped through computer-generated doors at the bottom of the plane. I even had a chance to meet the President, I mean Harrison Ford, at the Sony stage, along with other actors who were practicing jumping from a plane in front of a giant air blower. We celebrated the movie opening with an 11)extravagant Hollywood party that included Cuban cigars.
After 9/11 I thought I could help defend my third homeland, the U.S., from terrorism by teaching computers to recognize suspicious behavior. I abandoned the idea when I realized that my system would have detected me as one of the false-positives, when after a 15 hour trans-atlantic flight with two little kids, sleep-deprived and afraid of admitting to smuggling an apple in my bag, I would be nervously avoiding the gaze of security men.
Instead, I joined forces against an even broader 12)insidious enemy—cancer. In radio surgery, we use 13)nifty math 14)algorithms to target 15)malignant tumors with the precision of a single hair, radiating and killing the cancer cells while minimizing the damage to surrounding tissue.
Now, 16)ensconced in the mature days of parenthood, I am 17)titillated by incorporating mathematics in our daily family routines. When figuring out the meaning of a double-negation note from school: “Please mark yes or no below if your child will not attend school on Friday.”When convincing myself to buy $250 winter boots because their 18)cost-per-wear appears reasonably small: $250 / (100 cold days x 3 years ) = less than$1 per wear. When advising my son when to jump from the swing in order to enjoy the longest flight into the sand. Or, when finding an 19)optimal home location that will minimize our family’s combined commuting times. I am trying to pass on my 20)infatuation with math in the same manner that one passes tradition and language through generations. My 5-year old daughter runs around playing super girl and sings,“I can be anything I want to be.” I believe that the love of math may be the real super power that I can share with her, that will bring magic to her life’s journey.
它一直是我的灵药、我的冥想、我的武器和我最好的朋友。它给予我衣食,将我引向旅行、男人、奢华的盛宴,甚至古巴雪茄。它让我的名字登上电影银幕,将我的作品送入博物馆,让我能操控人脑深处的细胞。它的名字便是——数学。
上世纪八十年代,在俄罗斯,当我还是个孩童时,数学作为一种追求进步和技术发展的工具备受尊重和赞美。其作为一种包装巧妙的玩具呈现给学童,你必须以智取胜才能打开。我们以此为挑战,受到鼓励征服难题。实际上,数学已经成为了我人生的玩具和开启世界的钥匙,它引领我跨越大洲,打开大门,通向激动人心的项目和人群,甚至在爱情领域也有所帮助。
当我第一次将数学应用于自己的恋爱生活时,正是高中时期。我坠入了爱河,却被困于沉重寂静的闺房中,绝望地数着时间的分秒,等候着那唯一具备存在意义之人的“召唤”。
我突然想到,这种缺乏安全感、自怜自艾的期待也能转变成一种提升自信心的“对方来电几率”运算。鉴于他还可能有过其他女友的传闻,他来电的机会有多少呢?每过一天没有打来电话,他对我感兴趣的可能性会减小多少?计算结果不甚乐观。但是,我的注意力却被从失去“一生挚爱”转移到了一个宁静而专注的世界,在那里我就是女王,这让他的重要性大大减退。我用算术将自己带离了失恋的沮丧,而后再次投入数学世界之中,并意识到自己将来还会享受到更多的浪漫旅程。
移民到以色列后,我发现比起我的宗教信仰,数学更能让我与新国度的年轻人产生共鸣。我们说着读着不同的语言,我们的历史背景不尽相同,有着不同的忧虑,但我们都靠阿拉伯数字来学习数学,懂得相同的逻辑规则。我在一个研究生数学班里遇到了我后来的丈夫。那时,我们说着不同的方言,却分享着相同的数学语言。生活很简单。
当我获得数学学位后,五彩缤纷的时髦职业便呈现在我面前。首先到来的是大饱口福的机会。我在一家巧克力工厂创建产品数据库,当时,他们的规矩是——“工作时,巧克力随便吃”……
我干过的工作中最酷的是电影特效。场景就像梦境一样:在洛杉矶市的海边,一派宁静的夜店气氛,在一个废弃的军用飞机库里,星罗密布着圣诞节彩灯和熔岩灯,周围放置的是一尊真人大小的莉亚公主雕像和几艘《星球大战》电影中的旧太空船,还有一只宠物鹦鹉作伴。我们这些电脑图形程序师和动画师正在创造着好莱坞的历史,并让大银幕上的角色们永垂青史。
通过数学,我曾帮助哥斯拉穿过布鲁克林大桥的缆线,并以数字绘画为实验,为说唱歌手“吹牛老爹”创作出莫奈画风的动画形象。受到“计算机绘图专业组”会议上一场精彩演讲的启发,我尝试利用数码技术擦去电影《精灵鼠小弟》中猫咪的胡须。有些实验成功了,有些却没有,但其背后的数学却总是激动人心,具冒险性且好玩有趣。
我通过在电影《空军一号》里精心设计的一场图谋绑架戏为自己换来了绿卡。戏中“空军一号”正从一次于莫斯科召开的峰会后返航,机上载着由哈里森·福特扮演的美国总统。我们的动画师和工程师团队辅助让所有的爆炸镜头显得真实,模拟空军一号飞机在空中加油,并让每个人都相信,总统已从一个我们为他用电脑生成的逃生舱逃离了飞机,该逃生舱通过飞机底部由电脑生成的舱门抛出。我甚至得到了在索尼公司面见“总统”的机会,我说的是哈里森·福特,同时还看到其他正在一个巨大的鼓风机前演习跳出飞机的演员们。我们以一场奢华的好莱坞派对来庆贺该电影的首映,派对上还有古巴雪茄。
“9·11”恐怖袭击事件后,我认为自己能够通过教会电脑识别可疑行为来帮助我的第三故乡——美国,防御恐怖分子。然而我意识到,在经过15个小时的跨大西洋飞行,我带着两个孩子,睡眠不足且担心承认用背包私运了一个苹果时,我会紧张地回避安保人员的目光,这时我的系统应该已经查探我为威胁之一了。于是,我放弃了之前的想法。
相反,我加入“军队”去对抗另一个更广泛且阴险的敌人——癌症。在放射外科,我们使用一流的数学运算模块去攻击恶性肿瘤,精准度能精确到一根头发丝,辐射并杀死癌细胞,并对周围组织的伤害降至最低。
如今,沉浸于稳定的亲子生活中,我对将数学融入我们日常家庭生活中这一做法尤感兴趣:弄明白一张学校发来的带着双重否定的便条:“如果你的孩子周五不来上学,请在下方标记是或不是”;说服自己购买250美元的冬靴,因为靴子的每次着装成本看起来相当小:250美元 /(100 个冷天×3 年)=每次着装少于1美元;建议我儿子跳远时该在摆臂的什么时候起跳可以跳得最远;或者是,找一个最佳居住地以便将我们全家所有人的交通时间降至最低。
我正努力将自己对于数学的热爱传承下去,就像一个人将其传统和语言代代相传一样。我五岁的女儿跑来跑去扮演着女超人,唱道:“我想做怎样的人就能做到。”我相信,对于数学的热爱也许将会是我能分享给她的真正超能力,这种能力将为她的人生旅途带来魔力。
In Russia, where I was a child in the 80’s, math was respected and celebrated as a tool for progress and technological advancement. It was presented to school children as a toy with tricky wrapping that one had to 3)outwit to open. We were challenged and encouraged to tackle it. Indeed, math has become the toy of my life and my key to the world, leading me across continents, opening doors to exciting projects and people, and even assisting in the realm of romance.
I was in high school, when I applied math to my love life for the first time. I fell in love, and 4)barricaded in the heavy, still vacuum of my room, was desperately counting clock ticks, waiting for“the call” from the only person whose existence mattered.
It suddenly occurred to me that insecure, self-pitying anticipation could be turned into a confidence-boosting calculation of the probability of his call. What are the chances of his call, given the rumors of another girlfriend he may have had? How does the likelihood of him being interested diminish with each passing day without a call? The results did not look promising. My attention, however, was 5)diverted from the lost “love of my life” to a world of quiet concentration where I was queen, which significantly shrank his importance. Mathematically directing myself away from loveless depression, I tuned in to the world again and realized there would be many more romantic adventures to enjoy.
Immigrating to Israel, I discovered that math, more so than my religion, connected me to the young people in my new country. We spoke and read different languages, we lived through different histories, had very different worries, but we all studied math with 6)Hindu-Arabic numerals and learned the same rules of logic. I met my future husband in a graduate math class. At the time we did not speak a common dialect but shared the language of math. Life was easy.
A rainbow of trendy vocations presented themselves once I attained my math degree. The first came with delicious benefits. I was creating a product database at a chocolate factory. They had an “all you can eat at work” policy...
The coolest job of all was in movie special effects. The setting was like a dream: on the ocean side of Los Angeles, a quiet nightclub atmosphere, in an abandoned military 7)hangar, lit by a web of Christmas lights and 8)lava lamps, surrounded by a life-size Princess Leah statue and old Star Wars spaceships, accompanied by a pet parrot.
We, computer graphic p r o g r a m m e r s a n d animators, were making Hollywood history and immortalizing characters on the big screen.
With math I have helped move Godzilla through the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, and created a Monet-style animation of rap singer Puff Daddy, while experimenting with painting-by-numbers. Inspired by a brilliant talk at a 9)SIGGRAPH conference, I tried to digitally erase the cat’s whiskers for the movie Stuart Little. Some experiments worked and some did not, but the math behind them was thrilling, adventurous and playful.
I earned my Green Card by 10)meticulously planning a hi-jack attempt on Air Force One. It was returning from a summit in Moscow and carrying Harrison Ford as President of the United States. Our team of animators and engineers helped all the explosions look realistic, simulated Air Force One refueling in the air, and made everyone believe that the President had escaped from the plane in a computer-generated pod we created for him, which was dropped through computer-generated doors at the bottom of the plane. I even had a chance to meet the President, I mean Harrison Ford, at the Sony stage, along with other actors who were practicing jumping from a plane in front of a giant air blower. We celebrated the movie opening with an 11)extravagant Hollywood party that included Cuban cigars.
After 9/11 I thought I could help defend my third homeland, the U.S., from terrorism by teaching computers to recognize suspicious behavior. I abandoned the idea when I realized that my system would have detected me as one of the false-positives, when after a 15 hour trans-atlantic flight with two little kids, sleep-deprived and afraid of admitting to smuggling an apple in my bag, I would be nervously avoiding the gaze of security men.
Instead, I joined forces against an even broader 12)insidious enemy—cancer. In radio surgery, we use 13)nifty math 14)algorithms to target 15)malignant tumors with the precision of a single hair, radiating and killing the cancer cells while minimizing the damage to surrounding tissue.
Now, 16)ensconced in the mature days of parenthood, I am 17)titillated by incorporating mathematics in our daily family routines. When figuring out the meaning of a double-negation note from school: “Please mark yes or no below if your child will not attend school on Friday.”When convincing myself to buy $250 winter boots because their 18)cost-per-wear appears reasonably small: $250 / (100 cold days x 3 years ) = less than$1 per wear. When advising my son when to jump from the swing in order to enjoy the longest flight into the sand. Or, when finding an 19)optimal home location that will minimize our family’s combined commuting times. I am trying to pass on my 20)infatuation with math in the same manner that one passes tradition and language through generations. My 5-year old daughter runs around playing super girl and sings,“I can be anything I want to be.” I believe that the love of math may be the real super power that I can share with her, that will bring magic to her life’s journey.
它一直是我的灵药、我的冥想、我的武器和我最好的朋友。它给予我衣食,将我引向旅行、男人、奢华的盛宴,甚至古巴雪茄。它让我的名字登上电影银幕,将我的作品送入博物馆,让我能操控人脑深处的细胞。它的名字便是——数学。
上世纪八十年代,在俄罗斯,当我还是个孩童时,数学作为一种追求进步和技术发展的工具备受尊重和赞美。其作为一种包装巧妙的玩具呈现给学童,你必须以智取胜才能打开。我们以此为挑战,受到鼓励征服难题。实际上,数学已经成为了我人生的玩具和开启世界的钥匙,它引领我跨越大洲,打开大门,通向激动人心的项目和人群,甚至在爱情领域也有所帮助。
当我第一次将数学应用于自己的恋爱生活时,正是高中时期。我坠入了爱河,却被困于沉重寂静的闺房中,绝望地数着时间的分秒,等候着那唯一具备存在意义之人的“召唤”。
我突然想到,这种缺乏安全感、自怜自艾的期待也能转变成一种提升自信心的“对方来电几率”运算。鉴于他还可能有过其他女友的传闻,他来电的机会有多少呢?每过一天没有打来电话,他对我感兴趣的可能性会减小多少?计算结果不甚乐观。但是,我的注意力却被从失去“一生挚爱”转移到了一个宁静而专注的世界,在那里我就是女王,这让他的重要性大大减退。我用算术将自己带离了失恋的沮丧,而后再次投入数学世界之中,并意识到自己将来还会享受到更多的浪漫旅程。
移民到以色列后,我发现比起我的宗教信仰,数学更能让我与新国度的年轻人产生共鸣。我们说着读着不同的语言,我们的历史背景不尽相同,有着不同的忧虑,但我们都靠阿拉伯数字来学习数学,懂得相同的逻辑规则。我在一个研究生数学班里遇到了我后来的丈夫。那时,我们说着不同的方言,却分享着相同的数学语言。生活很简单。
当我获得数学学位后,五彩缤纷的时髦职业便呈现在我面前。首先到来的是大饱口福的机会。我在一家巧克力工厂创建产品数据库,当时,他们的规矩是——“工作时,巧克力随便吃”……
我干过的工作中最酷的是电影特效。场景就像梦境一样:在洛杉矶市的海边,一派宁静的夜店气氛,在一个废弃的军用飞机库里,星罗密布着圣诞节彩灯和熔岩灯,周围放置的是一尊真人大小的莉亚公主雕像和几艘《星球大战》电影中的旧太空船,还有一只宠物鹦鹉作伴。我们这些电脑图形程序师和动画师正在创造着好莱坞的历史,并让大银幕上的角色们永垂青史。
通过数学,我曾帮助哥斯拉穿过布鲁克林大桥的缆线,并以数字绘画为实验,为说唱歌手“吹牛老爹”创作出莫奈画风的动画形象。受到“计算机绘图专业组”会议上一场精彩演讲的启发,我尝试利用数码技术擦去电影《精灵鼠小弟》中猫咪的胡须。有些实验成功了,有些却没有,但其背后的数学却总是激动人心,具冒险性且好玩有趣。
我通过在电影《空军一号》里精心设计的一场图谋绑架戏为自己换来了绿卡。戏中“空军一号”正从一次于莫斯科召开的峰会后返航,机上载着由哈里森·福特扮演的美国总统。我们的动画师和工程师团队辅助让所有的爆炸镜头显得真实,模拟空军一号飞机在空中加油,并让每个人都相信,总统已从一个我们为他用电脑生成的逃生舱逃离了飞机,该逃生舱通过飞机底部由电脑生成的舱门抛出。我甚至得到了在索尼公司面见“总统”的机会,我说的是哈里森·福特,同时还看到其他正在一个巨大的鼓风机前演习跳出飞机的演员们。我们以一场奢华的好莱坞派对来庆贺该电影的首映,派对上还有古巴雪茄。
“9·11”恐怖袭击事件后,我认为自己能够通过教会电脑识别可疑行为来帮助我的第三故乡——美国,防御恐怖分子。然而我意识到,在经过15个小时的跨大西洋飞行,我带着两个孩子,睡眠不足且担心承认用背包私运了一个苹果时,我会紧张地回避安保人员的目光,这时我的系统应该已经查探我为威胁之一了。于是,我放弃了之前的想法。
相反,我加入“军队”去对抗另一个更广泛且阴险的敌人——癌症。在放射外科,我们使用一流的数学运算模块去攻击恶性肿瘤,精准度能精确到一根头发丝,辐射并杀死癌细胞,并对周围组织的伤害降至最低。
如今,沉浸于稳定的亲子生活中,我对将数学融入我们日常家庭生活中这一做法尤感兴趣:弄明白一张学校发来的带着双重否定的便条:“如果你的孩子周五不来上学,请在下方标记是或不是”;说服自己购买250美元的冬靴,因为靴子的每次着装成本看起来相当小:250美元 /(100 个冷天×3 年)=每次着装少于1美元;建议我儿子跳远时该在摆臂的什么时候起跳可以跳得最远;或者是,找一个最佳居住地以便将我们全家所有人的交通时间降至最低。
我正努力将自己对于数学的热爱传承下去,就像一个人将其传统和语言代代相传一样。我五岁的女儿跑来跑去扮演着女超人,唱道:“我想做怎样的人就能做到。”我相信,对于数学的热爱也许将会是我能分享给她的真正超能力,这种能力将为她的人生旅途带来魔力。