Thank you for taking the time to write this letter. I appreciate the effort so much that I have posted it on our blog for all our Hut aficionados to read. Furthermore, I have taken it upon myself to confront your conjecture with some of my own thoughts.

First and foremost, while I sympathize with your claim and understand where you’re coming from, I disagree with your stance. I respect your opinion, however, this so called “learning” you abhor so much will never stop; the process is life-long. For example, you learned something, whether you’d like to admit it or not, from writing the letter you just wrote. Yea, that’s right, you learned something and you will learn a new tidbit in the next paragraph too.

You mentioned summer school as the driving force behind wasting money on tutoring. Before imbibing on the self-indoctrinated merits of your understanding of the process of tutoring over the summer, a quick fact check is often a strong first step in the prognosis. According to your particularly poignant analysis regarding the dynamic of summer school, students will be tested every single day on new yet loosely conveyed material. This, I am quite certain, is not the case. Students are presented with outlines, generalizations about the subject matter, and classroom instruction, and it is the student’s responsibility to take the lesson to the next level, and engage with the text at home. In the event that the teacher is testing on a daily basis, it would behoove oneself to gain ground with some proactive study measures with a tutor the night before. Why? Because the teacher is faced with a surfeit of material that the student needs to learn in order for the teacher to be considered by administrators and peers as an individual worthy of the position. Crappy new teachers, are not “re-signed,” for the most-part, if the pre-determined requirements are not meant, or simply ignored based on the pleas of lazy students. Tutoring would be the best way to organize, prioritize and comprehend volumes of new material. Preparation over summer during the after school hours can often save students from earning a “C” in a class in which difficulty was the name of the game the first time around. I would hate to see poor grade wreak havoc on a students’ GPA twice in the same year.

I know you’re probably not enthused with my demonstrative rebuttal–you may even feel obdurate, truculent, or just plane sullied, however I must tell you something my dad passed along that made a lot of sense to me when I was your age. He plainly said, “If the average adult had the intelligence of a 16 year old, that person would be considered mentally retarded.” I thought about that for quite awhile, after a side-splitting laugh and hug from pops, I realized that I needed an attitude adjustment. The adjustment and my propensity to learn more ensued shortly thereafter.

In any event Donovan, you could use some writing tutoring. Would you feel comfortable reading what you wrote out loud or sending it to your boss to be published? Maybe you would Despite my anecdotes and sardonic disposition, your writing overall is excellent, and what you have to say was worthy of at least a mediocre (at best) diatribe of pernicious vernacular from yours truly (don’t worry D, I’m taking the piss on my response right now, not your initial letter.) There are some areas with your grammar, diction, and orthography with which we can help you. Polishing up these skills (the summer is the best time to have a positive attitude and knock that out twice/week) would serve to increase your successes, potentially land you a better job in the near future (a job where legit bosses don’t write you response letters for completed tasks), and ultimately, you will be able to line those pockets with a fat wad of dough, chedda, green, bones, or clams (to use the parlance of our times.)

I hope this letter finds you with a smile on your poor, newly humbled, tired face. As for being “fried” after practice: drink some G-series bro. Eat some veggies, don’t drink soda, sac up, and be responsible and go to bed at a reasonable hour… maybe “mommy” can help her “big boy” with some of those fruitful practices. Your brain is more like wet-cement at this point, so keep the flamin’ hot cheetos and the Pibb to a minimum. Also, your mind is weak and out-of-shape if school year fatigue plagues you during summer. Your football coach would make you run laps if your physical prowess was as soft as your mental fortitude. Stick with the tutoring. At least you will learn enough to make enough (moneys) and be able to express yourself well enough to attract a young woman (the older you get, the wiser they become; the hottest chicks only want well-to-do, intelligent men).

Thank you again for all of your efforts on behalf of the Study Hut Blog!

Regards,

Rob Stone

Owner
Study Hut Tutoring
Manhattan Beach

Let me explain, the summation can either be 0 or a 1 given a finite number of periods n that denote the number of +1s and -1s, where if n is the total number of periods, then there are i +1s and n-i -1s. This means that at any point in time of the infinite series your solution can be 0 or 1.

Your reasoning of being 1/2 is simplified and is actually the mean of the result, which makes sense since the arithmetic mean of 0 and 1 is 1/2.

Now consider this. There are two equations you mention (1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+… = 0+0+0+0+, which would represent infiinite summation of (1-1)n, which will always equal 0.

and infinite sum of 1+(1-1) = 1+infinite sum (1-1) = always is 1.

The problem with your logic comes from the fact that you first mention that we have an equal number of +1 and -1, but then in your proof you present the possibility that the number of -1 and +1 are not equal in number which means i != n-i. However, no sequence or series can determine if you get a -1 or a +1, which means probability must be involved, and if there is an equal chance of getting a -1 or a +1 on the very next cycle, then your expected sum will = 1/2 by stochastic properties.

If you need help understanding this, come see The Study Hut Master.