Thursday, June 14, 2007

bad news.

yesterday a fellow grad student stopped by my office and asked me about one of my proofs. he thought there was a flaw in it and i asked him to explain.

sure enough, there was. he apologized for not telling me sooner (he knew on monday) but i don't think it really mattered.

so i lost a handful of theorems .. mostly corollaries from that one "theorem" .. and there's not much of my collected work left.

it's been a bad 24 hours.

i met with the advisor today, and we came up with a few ideas. none of mine worked, so i'm trying one of his.



the thing which stings the most is that i didn't catch my own error, and it's not for any reason of vanity or embarrassment. the fact that i didn't spot the error means that i'm not as good of a mathematician that i thought i was.

just when things were going right, that i felt like i was making progress .. and now? now i feel like i'm starting over, pillaging the salvage.

1 comment:

Saara said...

Well, I doubt it's any consolation, but you're not the only one who feels that way...