Keep Exploring . . .

     In addition to its published magazine, Scientific American has a large variety of blogs.  One of my favorites was Roots of Unity by mathematician Evelyn Lamb.  The blog -- with several hundred postings -- adds to the also-frequent articles that Lamb has contributed to that magazine,  In her posting, "What T. S. Eliot Told Me about the Chain Rule," she quotes these lines from "Little Gidding" by T. S. Eliot (published in Eliot's 1966 collection, Four Quartets) and discusses the outcomes of difficulty and confusion coupled with curiosity, energy, and persistence -- frequent ingredients of the process of learning new mathematics.

     from Little Gidding     by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

       We shall not cease from exploration
       And the end of all our exploring
       Will be to arrive where we started
       And know the place for the first time.

Read more at Lamb's blog posting, "What T. S. Eliot Told Me about the Chain Rule."