5 years already

Our little angel would be 5 today. Unfortunately he wasn’t to live more than 13 1/2 days.
So how are we coping 5 years on?

It’s still sore! Not the sharp pain that it was then but that numb residual pain that you know will be there forever. Have I come to terms with it? Not really. I have accepted the death of my child but I still resent the attitude of the medical corps during and after Pierre’s life.

The nurses that looked after Pierre in intensive care did all they could to make Pierre comfortable and faded into the background when we were around. They really did care.

The same cannot be said for the paediatric doctor that dealt with Pierre and us. as far as I’m concerned an executioner shows more compassion towards the condemned than this man. Somehow he became a doctor. it certainly wasn’t for his human interaction capabilities.

I don’t know how it’s done in other countries but still today I find that being asked as a parent to turn the ventilator that kept Pierre alive off was the worst thing to ask from anyone. How can any parent make such a decision? To this day I still don’t know how we did it.
All I know is that I, the father, took that final decision as I don’t think a mother should ever have to make that one. Mothers give life, they don’t take it. Did I really take the decision or did I trust the doctor’s advice that Pierre’s brain haemorrhages had probably caused irreparable damage and that he would never wake from his coma? It was the latter of course. All I decided was the when. Once all the members of family who had access to Pierre had had the chance to say goodbye to him, and we as parents had done the same, I nodded to the nurse and doctor. I then waited with Pierre in my arms, my right hand’s index and middle finger on his little heart.
I still see the poor little guy, struggling for the last few breaths of air, his heart  slowing down, and then finally stopping. During all that time I tried to comfort him by singing the lullabies I sang to him for the previous two weeks. My wife was knelt in front of me, stroking his head, his little hands, a few kisses now and then but utterly distraught. As was I.
To this day, I still don’t know if giving the doctor the go ahead was the right thing to do. And based on the interactions we had with him after Pierre’s death theses doubts only grew.

I trust in science and the scientific method but when a doctor tell you and your wife that because Pierre’s condition was a genetic disorder and because it is carried on the chromosome inherited from the mother’s side, we would NEVER have healthy boys and daughters would be carriers of the gene. He might as well have cut us open without any anaesthetic, it wouldn’t have caused more pain. He made this statement before having tested my wife’s DNA.
As it turns out he was wrong. He had never considered the possibility that Pierre’s condition was a random genetic mutation. I did and we didn’t wait for the results from the DNA tests to try for another child.

We now have two healthy boys: 3 1/2 years old and 9 1/2 months.

Today, Pierre, you’d be 5 years old. We would have a lovely party for you. A nice cake, lots of presents and laughter. Instead I’ll be standing at your graveside singing those lullabies that I sang for you.

Life goes on but the pain never leaves…

Mathematics, Science and Engineering

I used to hate mathematics at school. Math was a four letter word worse than any other F-word could ever be. It wasn’t because I didn’t understand the subject, it had a lot to do with having to sit through continuous assessment tests every 2 weeks. It just took me longer than two weeks to fully assimilate the new concepts and make them part of my knowledge base. I never preformed well at those short term tests. My hatred for the subject also had a lot to do with the fact that our teachers taught maths for the sake of maths. Never really relating things to the real world and what the terms meant.
It took a very practical approach to maths for me to fall in love with two rather complex concepts at university. The maths lecturer drew a simple RLC (resistor, inductor, capacitor) circuit on the black board and asked us to give the circuit’s output waveform equation based on a step input. My eyes glazed over at having to solve those differential equations. After a few minutes of all of us sweating over the problem at hand he stood-up in front of us and said:
“Right! Anyone have the answer?”
Only one lonely hand was raised. Our maths buff thought he had the solution…
“Why is such a simple circuit so difficult to analyse? Because you have the wrong tool for the job! You’re trying to put a nail in the wall not with a hammer but with a JCB! You’ll get there but it will take you a lot more effort than necessary.”
He then proceeded to solve the problem by changing the problem’s equation space. Instead of solving differential equations he just did some arithmetic. and about 30 seconds later he had the solution.
I loved the simplicity of it. I loved the fact that I didn’t need to solve a differential equation again when designing a filter or a control loop.
The Laplace transform became one of the most powerful tools in my design arsenal.
At the test that followed a number of weeks later I obtained my best score in Maths ever! 105% No this isn’t a typo I completed all of the questions and the bonus one. I had for the first time in my life fallen in love with a mathematical abstraction, not because of its inherent beauty, but because of its practical applications.
The same thing happened for Fourier transforms and to a much les

Smith chart. Used for circuit analysis and tuning.

ser degree Z-transforms.
I have long forgotten how to solve differential equations but I still use Laplace, Fourier and Z-transforms on a regular enough basis in my job as an embedded system designer.

I probably would have performed really well at school if the practical side of Mathematics had been taught to us rather than doing Maths for the sake of Maths.

Like any language, mathematics needs to be useful to be understood. It needs to be practised in the real world. Physics is such a domain. One can understand most basic physics concepts quite easily but mathematics helps in explaining why this has to be so. Even the the special theory of relativity can be explained in layman’s terms, but it rarely is!

I intend on teaching my children mathematics at the same time as they learn to read and write. Hopefully being familiar with the “alphabet” of mathematics early on they won’t be scared off by them when it comes to sitting learning at school. Hopefully they will be as fluent in mathematics as in any other foreign language that I’ll be passing on to them.

Do I love maths now? Not really, I’m still scared off by differential equations and integrals, but I know where to go to help me solve them…

I mathematics important for a career in science or engineering?
I would have to say it is. But I’d qualify that by saying that practical mathematics is important. Theory for the sake of theory only serves to scare off people.

Just think of every day life and how mathematics can help you solve problems more easily.

Are you a Casino goer? Learn statistics! You’ll realise that the odds are in favour of the casino, not by a huge proportion but just enough to ensure that you’ll always loose more than they do. Roughly they are ahead by 1.5% in the odds. Some statistical analysis of the table you’re at might improve that to 1% in their favour. That small bias of odds towards the casino is what makes them rich and you poor. If you think you have a system that will break their bank: learn statistics and you’ll realise that overall you’ll only end-up loosing your hard earned money. All you can do is maximise the time it takes for you to run out of money…

Buying a house? Maths can help you compare the market. List the features you are looking for in a house (price, number of rooms, size, garden, local amenities etc…) and give them a relative value based on how important the particular item is on your “shopping” list. This multiple variable equation will describe your market and you’ll be able to compare houses more efficiently.

Want to invest your hard-earn cash. Mathematics will help you maximise your return on investment by comparing the various investment options available.

And there are many more applications of calculus to every day life.