And my discipline gives way. I knew it wouldn't take long, but hoped it would and now I task myself with reigning it in.
Recently, I've been trying to delve into the field of combinatorial game theory. Conway's On Numbers and Games was too "deep" for me, so I've tracked back and reviewed Morley's wonderful succinct lectures on the topic. Currently I'm ploughing through a course on MIT. Along with this, I hope to complete a few problems on topcoder and similar sites relating to the topic, after which I should be able to turn to Conway once again (maybe using this as a walking stick along the way).
It looks like I may have to read up about groups, fields and rings too. I hear that is called Abstract Algebra.
Conway's approach is quite fascinating to discover. Developing a number system from games? Ingenious, no less (or should I say surreal?). The whole idea of games that aren't numbers along with their generation is a little tough to wrap your head around though. Have to get to Knuth's "fictional" book on surreal numbers as well.
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