My name is Colin, I'm a senior student at Utah State University. I'm majoring in Mathematics and Statistics Composite Education, and I have a blog here.

To me, "normal" is one of four things:

• A setting on the dryer,
• Referring to the Gaussian Distribution or the so-called "bell curve",
• Boring. Standard. Uninteresting. Not me.
• All of the above. (Using Newton's Law of Cooling, I'm sure I could manage to get all three of these in the same place, if I tried hard enough.)

Mathematics... It's sad to me that so many people don't really know and haven't had the opportunity to find out what it's really all about. It's a language, a way of thinking. You might even call it a way of life. Everything we deal with in life, almost, can be thought of in terms of functions and relations, graphs and digraphs. To see people who have no idea how this is possible is to see voids that need filling. As far as I'm concerned, if there's not anyone else filling those voids, well... I'm here for the job, may as well do it, right?

I enjoy games that make me think, as well as games that don't. Games I can't win are occasionally at the top of my list (Tetris, anyone?). I doodle with a compass and straightedge, I argue with my friends about infinity. Hand me a book, and you may as well just give up on seeing me for a while, it won't be pretty if you try. If you bring me a bicycle in need of repair, I'll help you fix it and show you how it can be done: I'm evangelical about good bikes. I'll try any problem once, be it mathematics or otherwise. (And yes, I tried a Wal-mart bicycle once. Once was enough.)

To date, my favorite subjects (I can't pick just one...) among the many branches have probably been probability (pun intended) and experimental design. All the joys of statistical analysis and counting problems with the added fun of Calculus thrown into the mix. Discrete mathematics is becoming a close third, if for nothing else than the many varied applications it has.