The following was written for a collaborative effort between the Environmental Action LLC and the ENVS department.
This post is inspired by the work I have been immersed in for the past 48 hours. This work has seemingly nothing to do with hourglasses, situating, the nature/culture hybridity, or any other ENVSy concepts. It’s an epic problem set that I probably should have started working on a lot sooner but coincidently, it is about transformations. Specifically, it is about linear transformations on complex numbers. I think the main reason I decided to take this class was how little I knew about the mathematical realm of the imaginary. This not meant to be a plug for the math department, but I have never regretted a math class at Lewis & Clark. Each one has given me a whole new perspective on the numbers I use in other classes and day to day. While I am semi-tediously transforming complex variables with messy functions onto new planes, I am also reflecting how these numbers have transformed my path in college.
While I was planning my concentration I was taking Calculus 2 out of curiosity. I had a crazy idea that I wanted to minor in math and so I chose my concentration based one that idea. I snuck a bunch of math classes into my concentration courses on the pretense that they would be useful in hydrology. At the time, I had no idea how because I didn’t really know what hydrology was nor what the subject matter of the math courses I would be taking was. I felt like I was blindly deciding what the rest of my life would be like.
With each class I took, first discrete, then differential equations, linear algebra, statistics, calculus 3, and now complex variables I gained more and more context for all the other numbers in my life. I found connections all over the place. Simple population models and economic models made sense with just a bit of calculus. Set theory kept popping up in my every day life and social network analysis wouldn’t work very well without a whole bunch of graph theory. Mathematics transformed my perspective of numbers and reasoning.
Even though my thesis has taken a very different turn from my first concentration, they are not entirely disconnected. The study of how water moves isn’t complete without an understanding of precipitation and the formation of clouds. I wouldn’t have ended up studying clouds if I hadn’t taken spatial problems (one of my non math department concentration courses). I wouldn’t have done Rogers Summer Research on clouds if not for my math background. So in many ways where I am now is a direct result of my curiosity about numbers. Deciding to take some math classes here and there didn’t seem like a big decision at the time but now, looking back, they have given me a whole new perspective.
