|
Welcome to a brand of
Mathematical
Services. 2026-07-17 03:24:38 - Paul D. Foy - RobinsonCollege This is a post on my experiences at Robinson College, where I went to study Mathematics in 1983. I had three broad objectives and three themes to my time at RobinsonCollege: 1. There was an attempt to get a girlfriend. 2. There was the development of my athletics career. 3. There was developing myself and learning as much about Mathematics as I could. On the finding-a-girlfriend front this was considered a fairly important thing to do to get some companion, some mate, somebody you could lark about with whilst you were studying, to help your studying, possibly to equip you for life, a life partner. I view this as quite important. I thought it was a natural thing to do when you are young, the best time to do it, and that you were preoccupied with other things like working as you got older. I thought this was a very natural time to do it so I put quite a bit of effort into it to tell the truth. It probably didn't do me a lot of good academically. There's quite a big distraction. I tend to operate on a very straightforward basis. I would simply approach a young lady and ask her if she'd want to come around to my room for a cup of tea or something or perhaps even I would use the phrase "you want to go out with me or be my girlfriend" or something like that. Just completely straightforward. This wasn't generally with random people although occasionally it was with someone I hadn't had a larger interaction with. It generally was somebody I felt had shown some definite interest in me often but not exclusively through some licentious eye contact or looking or something like that. That was a fairly common theme. Unfortunately this approach proved largely unsuccessful and I tended to tail it off in the third and fourth years but it never disappeared completely because these things never do. It's never disappeared in life. In fact the desire to get a mate or someone to lark about with, a partner in life, friend, has never gone away. I suspect it's very deeply rooted in my sexual proclivities and sexual behaviour and is probably not going to go away. I perhaps should comment unusually that there was very little sexual, as you might conventionally see it, at this time. I didn't know a lot about ladies or women to tell the truth. I didn't know much about their anatomy or physiology other than what I could see with myself and to tell the truth this wasn't a particularly big thing. It was more a case of simply finding somebody to accompany me, to be a partner with. I wasn't thinking deeply about sexual things in any particular way. Secondly this was quite important to me at that time, being a young person. It was the development of my athletics career. I'd been a very keen runner of 400 metres since I was about 12 years old, to tell the truth, since I was in middle school. I was keen to take that as far as I could go so I trained regularly and I competed for the university, for Cambridge University. My proudest moment, to tell the truth, was when I got my best time of 51. 7 seconds whilst running against Oxford at Ifley Road, which is where Rodger Bannister did his four-minute mile. I was very pleased with that achievement. I was also pleased with winning the university trials to be able to represent Cambridge in the first place, where I did 52. 0 seconds. That was quite a good race and I ran 52. 0 seconds on several occasions, actually locally in West Yorkshire, in the West Yorkshire Track and Field League. That was at the time they did it at the trials for the university. That was my fastest time, eclipsed by the 51. 7 in the race against Oxford itself. I was very pleased with that. I always put that on my CV and that's quite a significant thing in my life. It's remained an interest throughout my life, much like trying to find someone to lark about with or a friend, and yes I was very pleased with that. Now thirdly and perhaps more importantly, as Robinson is concerned, it was my desire to develop my mathematical skills and knowledge and learn as much about mathematics as I can. Since I was quite young, since I was a young boy, I've always had this desire to do a PhD to tell the truth. I expressed that to one of the mathematicians at Durham University, where I went for an interview, and I wanted to do as well as I could in mathematics. I found the course at Cambridge very difficult, very challenging, very hard work, particularly understanding the lectures. To tell the truth they were quite hard going because I wasn't particularly comfortable in the lectures. They were very hard benches. You had to write down everything very quickly if you wanted to remember it in any other way than remembering the verbal utterance in your own head. I found that quite difficult and it took quite a bit of time to master that technique. I suspect I wasn't a model student in how to study. I didn't know particularly how to study very well at that stage and it took quite a bit of time to get to grips with how to properly study there. I managed to scrape through and then I did a PhD, which did give me a lot of satisfaction doing the PhD but that's not concerning Robinson. Now I'd like to say that. That is the three themes. I'd like to say a few words on the people at Robinson College because I found them quite kind, to tell the truth, and kind and sensible people. I was perfectly happy with the people there. This is not just the academic staff and my supervisors but also the rank and file members of the college community, the college staff. I found them quite kind and good people. I particularly remember the head porter, who let me unusually keep a car in the underground car park. That quite brought a smile on his face but I much appreciate that. Perhaps I should mention the students themselves. There's a great variety of people at Cambridge and in Robinson College and most of them I found quite sensible and hardworking. There's often a criticism of Cambridge that those that went to a public school, in some senses, have a feeling of entitlement or something like that. I didn't find this the case. I found that public school people, if you could know that they went to a public school, were quite sensible people. They, a bit like me in some ways, like to lark about but also they understood the importance of studying. I found that they appreciated those things perhaps more than the comprehensive students so I don't have a particular prejudice against students of any particular background or school. It's fairly much horses for courses. 2026-07-18 06:36:27 - Paul D. Foy - I was training regularly whilst I was at Robinson College in Cambridge. Interval training, repetition: 200 m, 100 m, 300 m, 400 m, that kind of thing. Long-distance runs occasionally as well. I sometimes train twice a day but I think I was doing it about once a day. I'd regularly go to the track at Milton Road, quite a distance away to get there. It wasn't very good in the winter either, not a particularly good track to tell the truth. It was an asphalt track. It was waterlogged in the winter and you had a groundsman chasing you off saying, "Haven't you got any common sense or something. " He was right actually but I thought it was important that the track was kept open to train from my point of view. Anyway I think in my second year that was when I got my car there and I became a bit more adventurous. I think I went up to Milton Road by car and I remember making a trip to Harlow where there was a redgrae track, as it's called. Synthetic tracks are much better. They're all with their tracks. There was one very close to where I lived, the synthetic track, which is one of the reasons I got interested in athletics perhaps because I could have run very readily. That was in Cleckheaton but there wasn't one very near Cambridge and they weren't very common at that stage. In fact that was the time when you could just turn up, pay a fee, and have a run on the track. It doesn't seem quite like that these days. It seems to be a bit more secure, with a bit more structure to it. I miss that freedom, to tell the truth, of being able to do what I like when I like, and we seem to have lost something there for various reasons. 2026-07-17 20:27:32 - Paul D. Foy - I'd like to slip in a general comment here which applies in many scenarios. These scenarios may be: - The mathematics course at Cambridge - The software development and programming languages - The availability of library books - The cost of buying something - These kinds of things If you generally make something inaccessible, or too exclusive, or too expensive, or too unavailable, people will generally rail against it. They'll find ways of avoiding it. They'll find ways of paying less. They'll find ways of understanding something more easily. They'll find ways of developing software more easily. For example the marketeer, the salesman at MATLAB, wouldn't let me have a copy of MATLAB to use on my home computer for free of course. Ultimately I wrote my own mini version of MATLAB in mathematical-services. co. uk. If you make something too expensive, people will strive to do the same thing of the same quality for less because they can't afford, for some reason, the more expensive version. If something is too difficult for some reason, people will find ways of making it easier, of explaining it better, of doing it differently in some way so that it's more accessible. I've come across the phenomenon of students tearing out a vital page in a book. I don't condone that, of course. It's completely wrong but I've come across it. The particular bit I wanted to look at was missing for some reason. People work to do things about this. They developed AI so that all books are digitised and regurgitated back to you. That takes away the library, doesn't it? You don't have to bother with whether the book is available or not. You just type it into chatGPT or Google. It applies in all phenomena. The thing is I'd ask somebody who is making something in that direction, too exclusive, too expensive, too unavailable, that kind of thing, what their motivations are. Whether they are good motivations, because if somebody is rearing against you, it may not be a good motivation and it might not be a generally good one to develop that motivation. You have to think very carefully about yourself and what you're trying to achieve. 2026-07-17 11:37:37 - Paul D. Foy - I'd just like to make a further comment as to why I appeared to stop doing athletics in the 400 m actively in my third year. It seemed to raise a few eyebrows amongst my fellow students, members of the athletics club, that I had in some sense given up trying to better myself or pursue my 400 m interest. Well that's my nature. I'm a very practical person and I made the decision that, as far as this 400 m running was going to go, I think it had largely run its course. The reason why I came to this conclusion is that I'd run quite a few 100 m, 200 m, and 400 m in the West Yorkshire Track and Field League and elsewhere. My best 100 m time was 11. 8. I was doing a lot of 12. 0s. My best 200 m time was 23. 8 and I was doing a lot of 24s around that kind of time. I made the decision that I was going to really struggle to get my 400 m time much faster. I was never going to be an Olympic athlete or even a national athlete in some sense, perhaps just a good club 400 m runner, not even perhaps a good club 100 m or 200 m runner. I made the practical decision to try and concentrate more on my studies and less on girls, young ladies, and running if I could. That's generally what I did and that's the basis for how that direction in my life went. Post a comment: |