Wolfram Mathematica - 2012-05-22 (page 1 of 2)

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12:39 AM

0

Q: What is delaying graduation of Mathematica.SE?

According to the About page: Public betas typically last from 60 to 90 days, although they can go on longer. Our site appears healthy yet it has now been in public beta for 117 days. Is there anything we can or should be doing to move the process along? Is moving the process along at this...

discussion beta

12:49 AM

@RM any comments on @Mr.W's question on meta?

@acl no.

@RM short and to the point then

I upvoted it. SE's tactic of remaining silent gets annoying after a point, especially when there's a community that's vibrant and active. I can understand the silent treatment for most other betas out there...

@RM there's an answer there now

it'll be funny if it gets shut down because not enough high-rep users exist

can't @MrWizard compensate for the lot of us?

although I notice he's back to more human levels after SO

I was about to edit my previous message to say that "I'm willing to be surprised" when you mentioned the answer... I'm not surprised that I wasn't surprised.

1:06 AM

@RM hm I just looked at webapps.se. I see your point

@acl They've been a fully graduated site since late 2010!

@RM but do they actually have any mechanism in place to measure community vibrancy? I doubt it

Yes, I did; 'twas a bad choice of words on my part. I guess I should clarify: Mathematica.SE looks great - the only question is whether it's ready to graduate now or soon. The number of high-rep users is "worrying" only in the sense of "would we hamper your growth by graduating you now" - some of the folks who can and are editing or closing right now wouldn't be able to immediately after graduation, for instance. — Shog9 1 min ago

Yet another canned response... the people editing and closing now have enough rep to be editing and closing after graduation too.

right, and there's another comment about a quality evaluation

so we're going to be compared to google for open questions. let's hope the influx of mindless code-dump questions recently doesn't hurt us

well, a decent evaluation would conclude that we're doing very well indeed (if I may so, and not due to my own work); but is this visible to someone who doesn't use mma daily?

2

They randomly sample questions and ask us to evaluate... that was the point of that. They're paid to do the evaluation, but outsource it as usual :P

1:18 AM

@RM he is correct on some level. But, every site that graduates goes through that, and we hit that sort of bump when we went from private to public. As it stands, 39 users will retain their edit rights when we graduate, 29 will retain their open/close ability, and 4 non-mods will retain their access. Also, while I like the moderator tools, I've done just fine being a 5k+ user on SO.

@RM ah, much better, I misunderstood

good

@rcollyer 39? really? I had no idea I was so privileged :)

@acl yeah, during public beta, it is 4k for access to everything. And, 39 is much better than a lot of sites.

@rcollyer I meant that in a site on mathematica programming it's pretty funny that I end up amongst the top users. I am at best a fiddler

@acl well, ahem... I'm more of a fiddler than you are.

RPG has 56 2k+, so not that much greater than us, and 6 non-mod 10k+ users.

1:22 AM

I probably have more time than you because of being lower in the academic hierarchy

@RM I did not realize either of you played violin.

@rcollyer Fiddler on the Chinese roof

@rcollyer on roofs, too

@acl ha!

Brilliant!

1:24 AM

@RM I mean, this should have been obvious

19

A: Using Mathematica's Graph functions to cheat at Boggle

My solution is a recursive tree traversal algorithm which seeks and searches neighbouring vertices only if it will lead to a word (e.g., Something starting with ZQ is immediately disqualified), but it's faster than yours because I construct the adjacent vertices list from the adjacency matrix rat...

@acl From what I've seen: the term fiddler does not apply. Definitely a craftsman, maybe not master status (Leonid and Mr.W have that locked up), but up there.

but actually it wasn't

@RM the same goes for you.

@rcollyer come on, Heike is way up there. Leonid goes for crushing everything in front of him, Heike finesses it

(I am idol-worshipping for the first time in my life!)

@acl I completely agree, and not including her on that list was an oversight.

1:27 AM

@rcollyer As penance, you should write 10 For loops

@RM with GoTos

"10 for loops with GoTos"

Done!

@acl That's the most viewed question on the site as of today... just 3k away from a gold badge for Pillsy

@acl it was trying to decipher some Fortran code that used if-then-goto (Fortran IV) that I discovered that mma has Goto and Label.

@rcollyer thing is, I still find it easier to program in C or Python than mma, when it comes to coding up complicated things. I apparently think imperatively.

guess I'm stupid or something

I have had various mini-epiphanies while learning lisp and mma, but still I find imperative programming easier

1:31 AM

@acl it took me a long time, and a lot of it spent with the pre-v6 docs, to start to come to grips with the functional paradigm. It helped that I was learning meta-programming in c++ at the time.

even though I practically only program in mma nowadays

I highly recommend:

@rcollyer but that's it really, I haven't touched C except for trivial things in something like 5 years!

amazon.com/Modern-Design-Generic-Programming-Patterns/dp/…

it changes the way you think.

@rcollyer nooooo......

1:33 AM

@acl :)

(Insert evil laugh)

ok I confess: I loved this

amazon.com/…

never read it.

it's pretty good. but, again, I am not primarily a programmer, and I think more in equations than programs

so, do I.

I responded to Shog9: meta.mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/396/…

1:54 AM

@rcollyer just saw that you're on. Did R.M. ever send you that stylesheet based on solarized (or whatever it's called). That was gorgeous! If you did get it, do you mind sending it my way?

@tkott he did. Do you have an email address I can send it to? If you don't want to post your real address, consider using spamgourmet.com

I'll understand.

Oh, sorry, thought it was visibile from my profile. It's a gmail address: "tkott.spam" :)

(I throw that one around willy nilly, but useful for cases like this...)

@tkott sent it. I took out @RM's info.

@tkott I'll post a "how to" as an answer and probably upload that stylesheet some place so other others can use it (will also keep me motivated to finish it fully)

@rcollyer thanks :)

@rcollyer thanks :)

2:03 AM

Either of you attempt the pattern madness?

@RM Since you hadn't given me permission to spread your info around, I didn't.

@RM When you do, I'll be sure to upvote it. That is a very pretty looking stylesheet!

I thought I spotted something earlier, but now I'm just as confused as everyone else.

@rcollyer I'm just stumped period. It took me 5 minutes of staring to even understand what the point was!

Look at Rojo's pattern:
In[]:=FullForm[b_[PatternSequence[_, _]]]
Out[]:=Pattern[b,Blank[]][PatternSequence[Blank[],Blank[]]]
versus Heike's
b : _[PatternSequence[_, _]] // FullForm
Pattern[b,Blank[][PatternSequence[Blank[],Blank[]]]]

In Rojo's, it is interpreted as Pattern[b,_][_,_], Heike's: Pattern[b,Blank[][_,_]]. Interesting, huh?

Hi, @Verbeia!

2:19 AM

Hi there.

Any insight into the pattern madness?

@rcollyer certainly something with precedence

@RM likely.

Regarding the meta question - I also added a comment. I've been logging who votes to close.

Obviously, this works without a message: head[b_[_, _]] := {b}

2:29 AM

I should note that our traffic has stagnated. I haven't updated the graphs for a while but I will soon. But it seems like we've hit a stable/stagnant patch.

@Verbeia he's already responded.

@Verbeia are our user counts still growing?

@rcollyer Yes and we have had 12 new "avid users" in the last two weeks, 194 all up. But traffic is a bit stuck.

@Verbeia I see that. I thought it had stabilized at a new (higher) level after all of the promotion by RM, though.

215 Teacher badges now

@rcollyer It has stablised just under 1500 visits/day, according to Area 51.

@Verbeia that's what I meant. prior to the posts by RM on reddit, I thought we were hovering near 1200/day.

2:36 AM

brb - need to eat

@rcollyer I am curious as to where the integers come from. It looks like the presence of PatternSequence causes some numbering of the patterns appearing within an expression but the way this works appears quite well hidden inside the kernel.

@OleksandrR That is the part I don't understand, and Trace (or, TracePrint) aren't that helpful. According to the comments, though, @kugler might have a handle on it.

I hope so, because I can't make sense of it. Especially not for patterns like (p : {a_, b_, c_})[PatternSequence[]] -> Null.

@OleksandrR wtf? that is interesting, in the scratch my head sense. Maybe it has to do with the function call? ([PatternSequence[]])

@Verbeia I added a comparison to Skeptics as our top user count compares very well to theirs.

@rcollyer I get the impression that PatternSequence is somehow "magic", like OptionsPattern, and its presence affects the parsing of the entire pattern. But what is happening or why it goes wrong, I don't know. Hooking Pattern gives no useful information.

2:50 AM

@OleksandrR I didn't think it would, so I didn't try a hook.

As far as I can tell, patterns seem inert until they're acted upon, such as inside of SetDelayed or RuleDelayed.

@rcollyer all it really shows you is that the patterns (a_, b_ &c.) are in fact being walked through in the order that they're numbered in the message.

@OleksandrR try removing the p, the result is almost as interesting. not useful, though.

@rcollyer indeed, yes. That was my first iteration. Adding p does give you a bit more useful structure though.

Removing the a, b, and c seem to indicate that it is adding a pattern to the head of something containing PatternSequence that is the problem.

hi all

2:55 AM

Hola.

Hola rc!

Hello, belisarius!

@belisarius Any thoughts on the pattern madness question?

@rcollyer Ha! I tried to get at something ... and all I got is a headache

@belisarius I understand. Thought I had something, and it was all an illusion.

3:00 AM

@rcollyer De ilusiones también se vive

@belisarius My Spanish is very rusty, can you translate what the title into English?

@rcollyer "Miracle on 34th Street" ? :D

@belisarius I saw that. I meant a literal translation. :P

@rcollyer Wow, no non-mod 10k users other than the mods over at webapps.SE. I never looked there before. That's an oops. I see your point @rcollyer about top users on Skeptics, too.

One thing I've noticed lately is that a lot of recent first questions have come from people who actually joined a couple of months ago.

@Verbeia interesting, so they came back. cool.

3:08 AM

@rcollyer It's something problematic, because it is a common expression. "Se vive" is difficult to translate. It can be "you may also nourish from your illusions" or "you may live on your illusions" or something in between, all simultaneously.

@belisarius Google translate was equally helpful: "miracle on live."

@rcollyer Nahhhhhhhhh

@belisarius Although, I take your two meanings as being synonymous.

@rcollyer this guy is one example; this guy wasn't asking his first question, but has returned;

and this guy

@rcollyer "live on" and "nourish from" are not necessarily synonyms!

@Verbeia I asked my first Q two days ago :P

3:12 AM

@belisarius absolutely. But, enough so, either would work. Though "nourish on" is a bit creepier.

@belisarius Maybe "nourished by" is a better phrasing.

@belisarius indeed, but you have answered some :)

As rcollyer says, "nourish on" sounds a tad ghoulish...

@JM Oh well, my English never was better than that

@belisarius you don't count! (at least not in russian)

3:13 AM

So, is there a concensus that we want to graduate now? I'd been wondering myself: while we could stand amongst the other graduated sites easily enough, is our traffic high enough yet? Compared to startup business, money, or fitness (three others I would expect to graduate soon), it still seems a bit marginal. On the other hand I don't know if perhaps graduating would make our site seem more official and draw more traffic as a result.

@OleksandrR it's not our consensus that matters...

@OleksandrR my preference would be to get traffic a bit higher and consistently rising.

Indeed; they have the hosting, they make the rules...

@OleksandrR I think we could live with being beta for another couple of months. But, personally, I'd like to graduate soon, just to continue to twist the knife.

@Verbeia I wholeheartedly agree.

@rcollyer Whee vendettas! :D

3:15 AM

That said, I'm glad Mr.Wizard asked that question on meta. I think it has prompted the staff to put us back front of mind.

@rcollyer understandable! I agree as well, @Verbeia.

there will be a small increase in traffic when we graduate because it gets linked to from the footer of all the other graduated sites.

@RM "There's a site for that? I didn't see it linked at the bottom..."

@Verbeia never underestimate the convincing and reassuring powers of canned responses :)

From our experience on Area51, the staff is very content not to communicate with us. So that, we are then forced to up the ante, and push for things ourselves. On the whole, that may not be a bad thing, but I'd like more communication, personally.

3:16 AM

I spent some time answering Q on beta sites that got wiped out afterwards. A nasty experience.

@belisarius At least you were able to help a few people...

@belisarius I agree. At least mine were moved.

@JM But I as didn't keep a personal log ... all my work just dissipated.

@belisarius It should be in the data dump

@JM yes, there is lingering resentment. but, I think we're better for it. we push harder.

3:19 AM

@rcollyer yes, the lack of feedback at times is certainly a concern. I think we're largely self-sufficient, but being at the mercy of others who won't tell (often, or clearly) you what they're thinking can be troubling.

@Verbeia Thanks. Perhaps I get courage sometime and look for it!

@OleksandrR exactly, and well said.

@belisarius so were you posting things on sex.se?

@rcollyer (blush!) How did you recognize me?

no, better don't tell

@rcollyer speaking of which ... here it is again

@rcollyer I'm still laughing; I had once thought that that site would be the MOST POPULAR SITE EVAR!!!1!

3:22 AM

@Verbeia hey, if they can do it, great. I don't think they can, though.

@JM and, we're still hotter than sex!

@Verbeia what's wrong with Yahoo answers for those sorts of questions? ;)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) is Woody Allen's fourth film, consisting of a series of short sequences loosely inspired by Dr. David Reuben's book of the same name. The film was an early smash for Allen, grossing over $18 million in the U.S. alone against a $2 million budget. Film structure The credits at the start and close of the film are played over a backdrop of a large mass of white rabbits, to the tune of Let's Misbehave by Cole Porter. The film is divided into seven vignettes, as follows: # Do Aphrodisiacs Work?A court jester (pl...

@OleksandrR "How is babby formed? How girl get pragnent?" ;)

@OleksandrR have you read any yahoo answers before? Your lucky you don't get infected just from reading them, much less following their advice.

Hi, @BrettChampion. All set for tomorrow?

@JM yep! At least 80% of all questions and answers on that site are sheer trolling.

3:24 AM

Hello, Brett.

@rcollyer Eh? What's this about tomorrow?

@JM Interestingly the other site that went to beta just before us was poker.SE. I hadn't looked at its stats lately ... sad

;-)

@BrettChampion ah, another procrastinator. ;)

@BrettChampion Cocky, cocky. :)

3:25 AM

Since you're here, @brett any thoughts on this question?

@Verbeia Well, they really ought to shuffle things up a bit...

@Verbeia I saw this evening that it was back...

Hi @BrettChampion - is there going to be a video to watch later of the Q&A - it's on at about 3a.m. here. Staying up that late for a Mathematica thing would definitely get my into trouble with my beloved.

@JM that's just wrong, that joke should be flushed.

@rcollyer I used yahoo answers to make clear to my kid why he should not trust everything he reads in the Internet. He understood very quickly.

3

3:26 AM

@Verbeia I believe there should be a video available afterwards. Don't know how soon. (The video stuff is an entire

@belisarius that is funny, and scary. glad it worked.

@belisarius You are a good man, bel. :)

Hm, it's getting light. I should go to bed. Bye all.

@JM We did a test run this morning... And a partial one Friday...

@OleksandrR night.

@BrettChampion I'll have to make sure I'm in a building tomorrow that doesn't drop my connection every 30 secs like the one I was in today. :|

3:28 AM

I'll wait for the video; my connection these days craps out even on YouTube...

anyway, back to work - see you all

@Verbeia bye.

@rcollyer I have no idea about the PatternSequence question. I stay far away from the actual implementation of the pattern matcher...

@BrettChampion that sounds like a good thing to do.

@BrettChampion That hairy?

3:33 AM

@JM One of the nice things about the pattern matcher is that it doesn't change very often, so doesn't need changing often.

It's the sort of thing where any change you make is likely to cause some subtle change in behavior somewhere else in the system.

In other words, it is very deep in the system, and literally everything else ultimately depends on how it functions. So, don't touch.

Yup :-) At least not without a very good reason.

Ah, just like the Lorenz equations... :)

PatternSequence is relatively new (v.6), so maybe there's something subtle here that didn't quite go right when it was added.

Repeated was also modified in v.6.

Speaking of new stuff, I'm wondering why nobody thought of Except[] earlier myself.

3:37 AM

Point, but it is v5.1 vintage, so of middling age.

What is this? Does anybody understand it?

0

Q: --W. Mathematica Application Structure

I had such expression in "applicative form", like : Y [X][X][Z][X][Y [X][M][Z][X]][Y [X][F][Z][X]] In these structure we have different types: Y,X, Z, F . And I want to index such structure, in a way to rewrite this expresion like ..we have : Y [X][X][Z][X][Y [X][M][Z][X]][Y [X][F][Z][X]] ...

index mathematica expression-trees

I like Except, but it can be devilish at times...

@belisarius not a clue. maybe a y-combinator type problem? but, that's just guessing.

@belisarius Haven't looked at it closely, I figured it was related to the earlier question about combinators.

(And what's '--W'?)

@BrettChampion it works Except when you need it to. :)

@BrettChampion a bad attempt to get by some of the title filters?

3:39 AM

@BrettChampion The inverse of W++?

" Mathematica ++"... hmm, I wonder.

@belisarius not exactly, that's a pre-decrement, W++ is a post-increment.

@rcollyer I should ponder about it :)

@belisarius it is all fully understandable, see this wiki article. =)

@rcollyer Pick[{1, 2, 3}, {1, 0, -1}, Except[0]]

Without evaluating, what's the result?

3:43 AM

@BrettChampion sorry, already evaluated it. mostly because I had to look up how Pick operates. And, that is certainly not Kosher.

@BrettChampion Holy crap...

@rcollyer Many years ago, when I was learning C, I thought it was kind of pedantic to set a syntax exception just to earn one character in source code. It took me a few days to understand that the real thing was the difference between ++c and c++

In a similar vein: Pick[{1, 2, 3}, {1, 0, -1}, _?(# =!= 0 &)]

(Pick[{1, 2, 3}, {1, 0, -1}, _?(# != 0 &)] works as expected, of course.)

@belisarius yep, and it still fubars people to this day.

@JM Yup. It's incredibly annoying that Except[pat] isn't the negation of pat.

3:48 AM

@BrettChampion I know, but I'm surprised that piece of code I gave has the same malfunction...

@rcollyer If I remember well (and it could be an implanted memory) it came from and antique Assembler (VAX , PDP11, Perkin Elmer ... one of those)

I was about to say "I'm glad this works..." until I tested it.

@belisarius I know just enough assembly to understand that I need to run away and hide.

@rcollyer You've never tried assembly language programming? :) It's fun! (for certain perverse definitions of "fun")

@rcollyer I was my vice when I was tender and young

3:51 AM

Can anyone tell me why this only prints one statement?

Internal`InheritedBlock[{UnsameQ, inQ = True},
 Unprotect[UnsameQ];
 s : UnsameQ[a_, b_] /; inQ :=
  Block[{inQ = False, res}, res = s; Print[res];  res];
 Pick[{1, 2, 3}, {1, 0, -1}, _?(# =!= 0 &)]
 ]

Have it print a...

(And that's a lot of effort to do Pick[{1, 2, 3}, {1, 0, -1}, _?((Print[# =!= 0]; # =!= 0) &)]

@BrettChampion why yes it is, and it only prints once there, also.

@rcollyer Correct. :-)

@JM I learned postscript, instead. Of course, I used it to test a bug in the transfer from the network controller to the main controller (i.e. print engine) of a printer. The bug involved a file that was slow to transfer. Mine took a half hour per page, as it was generating a page covered with 2pt by 2pt blocks with random colors. These print outs could then be used to give the compression algorithm a heart attack when scanning it in. :)

@rcollyer Okay, you get a pass... thing's tricky.

3:56 AM

@rcollyer Try Pick[{1, 2, 3}, {1, 0, -1}, _?((Print[#]; # =!= 0) &)] and then remember that we're dealing with a ...Q function...

@BrettChampion you'll have to explain why being a Q function effects the behavior.

...and the difference between that and Pick[{1, 2, 3}, {1, 0, -1}, _?((Print[#]; # != 0) &)] is illuminating indeed.

ah, I see. It is recursive decent. sob. that would be frustrating to try to get right.

Time to go. 'Night all!

But Cases[{1, 0, -1}, _?((Print[# =!= 0]; # =!= 0) &)] works nicely. It really is something with Pick[]...

See you, Brett!

4:01 AM

@BrettChampion night. talk to you tomorrow.

@JM yep. As I said: recursive decent. The top level matched, so it didn't look any deeper.

@JM do you ever feel that we're just amateurs at this?

@rcollyer I always assume I'm an amateur unless proven otherwise. :)

(...and I've been screwing around with the program for nearly two decades.)

@JM I thought I was good at this, and then something like Pick or PatternSequence comes along and forces me to re-evaluate my standing.

@JM The first version I bought was v3. My university had the one prior to that.

Oh, version 2.2 was its own brand of fun. :)

Anyway, it is very late here, and I need sleep. Night.

@JM I love your "one liner" aphorism

4:25 AM

@belisarius That was R.M, not me... :)

4:36 AM

@JM One letter could not make such a difference! :)

7 hours later…

11:51 AM

@Verbeia That was part of my reason for asking the Meta question; I want to know if the site as-is is considered "good" or "complete" or whatever. Also note that I wonder about the need or benefits to graduation, though I am not pessimistic about it as Leonid is.

12:15 PM

@BrettChampion That was already posted as a question on this site. It's counter-intuitive, but it allows for things like Pick[{{1, 2}, {3, 4}}, {1, {0, 1}}, 1]

1:03 PM

@JM I still don't see what's wrong with my Mobius strip ... it's simply not transparent and the text is 4Pi long, not 2Pi long. This doesn't make it a non-Mobius strip. What I plotted there is the same thing I get after taping a twisted ribbons two ends.

@JM Please see my comments.

1:52 PM

@StackExchange I am wondering what "graduation" means, in detail. What kind of immediate or short term impact is it going to have?

1. Rep thresholds increase 2. We get a new site design 3. ??? is there anything else? @Leonid thinks there'll be an influx of new users, but it's not clear to me why this would happen. Will there be any changes (e.g. to advertising) that could trigger this?

No, not that I know of. The site gets linked to from footers, but that's only a tiny amount of lame visiting traffic...

So the rapid expansion that Leonid talks about is not likely to happen then?

No, I don't think that will happen and I disagree with him on that.

Yu-Sung said he'd mention my question at the event today... so we could expect some influx of new users today. Similarly, promotion at the WRI conference in October could bring in large number of new users

I agree with him that a very rapid expansion might not be good, but: 1. as you said, I don't see why would that happen 2. it's necessary to keep up growth, and I think we could use some more advertising while in beta

but both these crowds are not the type of people you'd have to worry about...

1:56 PM

Oh yes!

I almost forgot, let me set my alarm ... should be 17 o'clock, CET

Another thing to think about: how can we make the most out of graduation?

oh and when we graduate, top users get swag :)

Several people (I don't remember who..) said that maybe it would be good to synchronize it with some other event, such as: Mma 9 launch, some Mma conference, etc., so get a little more attention

@RM how many of those users get swag? Do I have to bump up my rep to get there? :)

@Szabolcs that may not be a bad idea. not a bad idea at all.

what's 'swag' ? :-)

@Szabolcs Yes, I was suggesting launching a little before MMA 9 release or the conference, and I still think that would be the best time to do so

@rcollyer first two pages, typically. So you're easily there and probably won't slip even if you go mum for the rest of the year :)

2:00 PM

regardless of whether we graduate now or later (I'm not in a hurry, I feel pretty comfortable and I'm not looking forward to the rep threshold increases), we should make sure we're ready: 1. Complete the FAQ 2. push the site design some more 3. anything else?

@Szabolcs FAQ is a project to start on... we have a decent number of meta posts surrounding the scope of the site to base it on

the site design is ultimately done by an in-house design person in collaboration with us, so we can push it, but it won't go far until he gets involved.

@RM works for me

I really liked wxffles's design, even though the techinique to make it is very very similar to the one used to make the official logo

@rcollyer What I mean is: don't let him do all the work, I'm hoping to have several ideas he can build on before he actually starts on this. I want more control :-)

@Szabolcs I agree. It is similar enough that it is recognizable, and yet different enough that I don't think we will get into trouble.

@Szabolcs I don't have an issue with that at all.

Question: There was @J.M.'s suggestion to run ads on graduated sites (Math, Physics). How about using wxffles's current logo to make a little ad, and post it on those sites? It should be easy, I could try to make the images and come up with a tagline (but someone who's English is better could come up with something nicer, probably)

This should push the site design too (motivate people to think about it)

2:04 PM

@Szabolcs post that on meta. I think David Z had a post about it.

Oh yes, it was David Z, not J.M.!

I haven't seen him in a while.

If I could spell his last name, I would have.

"seen Mar 2 at 23:21"

@Szabolcs true. he's been on physics, and probably the semester killed him.

If you learn how to read one or two Eastern European languages, it'll be much easier to remember :) I always remember sounds, not letters. If those sounds map easily to letters, I can remember spelling (Hungarian spelling is almost 100% phonetic)

hi @acl

2:07 PM

@Szabolcs well, English does not fall into that category. and I have no clue how to pronounce your name.

hi @acl

I'm using my gf's computer, and there's no IPA keyboard layout installed here :-)

hi all

Jan 25 at 11:41, by Szabolcs

@MrWizard
sz pronounced like s in salt
a pronounced like a in what (British received pronunciation， not American)
b - what you expect (b in bee)
o - like o in German or Italian
l - what you expect (like l in light)
cs - like ch in China :-)

@Szabolcs helpful, but I will probably have to hear you pronounce it at some point.

@rcollyer zh.forvo.com/search/szabolcs

2:10 PM

@Szabolcs that sort of thing always confused me... how is the a in what pronounced differently in received and american pronunciations? I never noticed any difference!

(you can imagine what happened when I tried to learn russian)

@Szabolcs um, it is unlikely that I will get that right any time soon.

@acl It's the best description I could come up with, but it's not perfect ... btw the A sound in Hungarian is the most unusual and the most difficult for non-natives.

@acl If I count you among the four Greek people I know, then I can say that three of them have learned Russian!

@Szabolcs well "have learnt" is maybe too kind a description, but yes

but how come there are other two? I don't think it's that popular

@acl hey, maybe you know Russian in the same sense I know Spanish. :)

@acl In American, the a in what is closer to the a in father (it's long too). In RP, the a in what is shorter and more rounded.

Well, all three border on being language geeks (and no, I did not get to know them through language learner groups!)

2:14 PM

@Szabolcs so I am actually the fourth? amazing

@Szabolcs no doubt, but I simply don't hear the difference

probably why my accent is like it is (I've seen videos of myself giving talks, it's hilarious)

No, you're the third. One learned Arabic (and Scanidnavian), another Russian, French and Scandinavian, another Russian and German and Italian.

you know Dutch and Russian (and German maybe?)

@Szabolcs no. and when it comes to both dutch and russian, know is too kind.

Okay, maybe it's like my Greek :D

let's say I can read newspapers easily in dutch. but conversation is another matter...

which I mostly forgot so I couldn't start writing easily right now ... I had ~1200 words in Anki when I stopped, but I almost never spoke, I only wrote, so I was pretty slow.

What is "swag"?

2:18 PM

@Szabolcs a whole program to memorise things! why didn't I have this when I had to take chemistry and french exams at school...

It works pretty well if you do the practice every day. It's also a good indicator of how tired one is. On some days words just don't "stick".

So, I'd like to use this to make an ad for this ...

@Szabolcs t-shirts, mugs, stickers, pens, caps, etc., all with the logo

@RM even if you're not in the US?

yes... they ship anyplace that has a post office

or fedex/ups

In true SE style, you'll probably have 2 kids by the time you receive it, but you will... ;)

I just got motivation to keep that 2nd place ;-)

2:26 PM

Oddly, careers.se sent me a nice portfolio for interviews a couple of days ago. Swag can be very nice.

3:20 PM

@RM Does the "evevator pitch" get used anywhere, or it's just something to encourage people to promote the site more?

@Szabolcs not necessarily to promote, but to be able to explain what the site is about in a few words... I see it as just some SE nonsense that might apply to some sites (e.g. Apple -> AskDifferent), but not for all

Anyone watching the visualization Q&A?

@RM Just looking for a tagline for this

darn, forgot about the vis QA ....

It's mostly "Excellent question! Here's this example in the documentation/demonstrations that you didn't look at and perfectly answers your question"

I'm watching now ...

Any mention of Mma.SE yet?

@RM watching it now.

@RM thus far. maybe they will get to my questions, like how to make the graphic on the cover of this book with mma?

@Szabolcs not that I've heard.

Hmm, the use of Labeled is a nice trick for making legends. Will have to try that.

3:43 PM

@RM I notice that you reversed my edit. I was trying to draw attention to the question. Would bold be more to your liking?

those options are in a list, why does this work? I didn't know this

@Szabolcs What are you watching?

@MrWizard I didn't know that it was your edit... I thought it was the OP's. I felt that there was no need to bold something to draw attention when there are only about 3-4 lines in total (also reduced the dimension of the image to avoid scrolling). Either way, go ahead and bold it if you want... not picky about it

@MrWizard blog.wolfram.com/2012/05/16/…

live

@MrWizard watching the visualization Q&A

3:46 PM

R.M no, it's OK; I don't know why but I felt that the question needed to be more prominent; if I'm the only one it's probably just a mood I'm in. :-)

@Szabolcs thanks

Bold is often good. Makes skimming easier.

4:22 PM

am I the only one annoyed with people who post questions based on notation only standard in their own field and expect us to waste our time unpacking before answering?

like this

0

Q: Formal power series form of linear operators

I want to know how to make Mathematica to automatically convert between forms of linear operators: algebraic expression and formal power series expression. Examples: $f(ax)\rightarrow a^{x D}$ $f(a+x)\rightarrow e^{a D}$ $\int_x^{x+1} f(t)\,dt\rightarrow {e^D - I \over D} $ $f(x+1)-f(x) \rig...

Hi, I'm running an optimisation algorithm with `NMinimize[{Total@Functions,
Append[AllConstraints, Element[Vars, Integers]]}, ranges1,
MaxIterations -> 1000]`. Because of `MaxIterations -> 1000` and over 600 variables the calculation takes a lot of time. Is there any other way to achieve a similar precise results but much faster?

I suppose D is a differential operator wrt x, but more and more questions recently are like this

@acl I gave up trying to find the pattern in that question

@Heike the 2nd, 3rd and 4th make sense if I interpret D as $\partial_x$ but the first and last I don't know

@acl For the first one I would have expected something like Exp[(a-1)xD]

4:44 PM

yes with some imagination last and first make sense too

but really, why is this here....

I really want to ask a general question on how to improve rendering performance, how to make sure that very large Graphics or Graphics3D objects render as fast as possible. But I'm worried that the question will look too broad ...

It'd still be nice to have some guidelines. E.g. Point[{pt1, pt2, ..., pt10000}] used to be faster than Point /@ {pt1, pt2, ..., pt10000}, but I haven't benchmarked recently.

5:04 PM

@Heike Quick question (since you're here), but only if you know the answer right without looking it up: what's the best way to put a Locator on an Image? Do I need to put a Raster inside a Graphics and put the Locator in that, or there's a direct way to put it on the Image?

LocatorPane. Got it.

5:21 PM

@Szabolcs Unfortunately, I'm far away from crafts supplies like scissors and acetate to try your example and whuber's out... but I think I see what you mean.

@Szabolcs It's a case-to-case thing, I believe...

1 hour later…

6:50 PM

@acl This appears to be a simple transformation, and the notation confused all of us. With luck, it will be edited by the OP. If not, I'll vote to close.

7:30 PM

@rcollyer if all he wants is a visual representation of this (ie, he gives a list of these things and wants to transform between the ones he gave) then yes it's simple. otherwise no it is not: one would need some sort of ability to reason about an arbitrary (ie the nth) term of a formal power series involving derivatives (eg, $(x\partial_x)^n$) and then resumming them. and you'd need to do that symbolically. obviously nontrivial to do in mma

7:59 PM

@JM here is what I get if I use your polar sort and then display the points in order:

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