« first day (1796 days earlier)      last day (3218 days later) » 

12:06 AM
@AlecTeal so do you plan to make your programs open source or is it for profit or just for private use?
 
1:00 AM
Sorry for the late reply, @r9m! Account got suspended for a short while! :-P
 
r9m
1:20 AM
@KhallilBenyattou ??!!! what did you post? 'inappropriate content' ? :P
@robjohn completed my answer for the $4$-th power case as well :-) .. the derivation looks a bit tedious .. couldn't figure out if all that could be compressed to a shorter proof!
 
1:37 AM
@TedShifrin hey ted!
I am trying to think about what parameterizing a level set means. Suppose I am considering a straight line budget constraint like $y= -x +3$ on the interval $0\leq x \leq 3$. This would be a "parameterization" of the level set using a hyperplane right?
Why is this useful?
 
@StanShunpike: Suppose you've got a function defined on that level set. Suppose you want to find its local minima. (For instance, $x^2+y^2=1$, and your function is $f(x,y)=xy$.) I can do calculus better on $\mathbb R$ than I can on a circle - so I parameterize the circle and work with $f(x,y)$ on my line. In general, if you want to do calculus on some level set, you want to work on a parameterization instead.
(The aforementioned example is a little oversimplified because we can just use lagrange multipliers, but I think it's instructive.)
(Indeed this is the whole idea of the definition of a manifold: if I want to do calculus on something more exotic than $\mathbb R^n$, how do I do it? By picking identifications of chunks of my something with $\mathbb R^n$, and doing the calculus there!)
 
1:58 AM
@MikeMiller but surely if I can do calculus on $\Bbb{R}^n$ then it shouldn't be much harder than $\Bbb{R}^{n-1}$. Like what specifically makes it easier?
 
@StanShunpike you there?
 
@MikeMiller Maybe im not grasping your example. Sorry if I am slow.
@AlecTeal indeed!
 
I very probably plan to open source parts of it (that can be useful) but not in it's current form (on the rewrite, It grew too much for the first!) as for profit. No, no ads!
 
@StanShunpike: Oh, you specifically mean for hyperplanes like straight lines in $\mathbb R^2$? Just notational convenience, I guess. Not much more. You want to find the minimal of $xy$ on $y=-x+3$. How do you do this? By subbing in; so you want to find the minimum of $x(-x+3)$ with respect to $x$. But what if your hyperplane were more complicated?
 
2:01 AM
Actually, no, even if your hyerplane is more complicated the parameterization doesn't help you at all as far as I can tell.
You're doing the exact same process as you would be by subbing :p
I guess I don't really see the point either when it's just a hyperplane.
 
@MikeMiller the example @TedShifrin gave me is to take some function $f(\mathbf{x})$ subject to $g(\mathbf{x})=c$ and show that if $\text{Hess}(f-\lambda g)$ is negative definite at some point $\mathbf{a})$, then $f(\mathbf{a})$ is a local max.
And he wants me to parameterize $g = c$ on a hyperplane I think
 
But $g(x) = c$ doesn't have to be a hyperplane! What if $g$ isn't linear?
What if it's, like, $g(x,y) = x^2+y^2$ like before?
 
He wants me to set $\mathbf{a} = \phi(\alpha)$ where $\alpha \in \Bbb{R}^{n-1}$ I think
And use this somehow with chain rule
 
Right, but $\phi$ will not usually be a linear function.
Do you know the inverse function theorem? Or maybe implicit, I mix up which is which.
 
@Stan: Who's this "he"?
 
2:11 AM
My other friend Ted
 
It's the implicit function theorem that tells you that you can write the level surface $g(x)=c$ as the graph of a function locally.
 
You have multiple friends named Ted?
 
No that was the joke lol
 
Was I allowed to mention that theorem, @Ted?
 
As in the proof of Lagrange multipliers, you can then write every such x as $\Phi(u)$ for $u$ in some open subset of $\Bbb R^{n-1}$.
Sure, @MikeM.
@MikeM: When does the conference finish?
 
2:13 AM
Coming Thursday. Ciprian will be in town next week.
 
Oh wow ... Long conference. Cool.
 
I go home Saturday; Sunday I'll put together my IKEA legos.
 
Ohhhhhh. Okay, I wondered how it connected.
Damn
Awesome.
 
Then you're back to usual max/min facts on that open set of $\Bbb R^{n-1}$, @Stan.
That's why I told you chain rule. You're going to study $f(\Phi(u))$.
Good, @MikeM ... you can come help me put together legos in a month or so :)
 
I find IKEA furniture to be so much fun.
 
2:15 AM
Okay, this is much better. I googled a bunch about parameterizations and that didn't seem to help. I knew it must have connected to the other ones.
 
You're still young :)
Sometimes a textbook is better than Wikipedia and googling :D
 
I've got a bed, desk, table, bookshelf to assemble... I think J's getting his stuff delivered and assembled for him.
 
Wow, that's a lot of stuff, @MikeM.
 
Grad apartments were furnished.
 
@MikeMiller That sounds like a room full of furnitutre
 
2:16 AM
Hey, @Ted, @Mike, morning.
 
hi @Soham.
 
It's a full bedroom. My housemate also bought a bedroom, and together we bought a kitchen and living room.
 
Damn, y'all bought a lot of stuff, @MikeM.
 
Speaking of purchasing, some of the tickets to the copa america final sold for $25,000
 
All the furniture I brought with me was my previous bookshelf (now too small for all my stuff) and a chair.
 
2:18 AM
Now you're a semi-adult, @MikeM.
A ticket for what went for $25K? @Stan
 
I furnished my apartment in Santa Clara before I left for UCLA... that's before I realized the bedrooms were furnished.
Got most of my investment back but not all. All for 3 months of furniture...
 
@TedShifrin The copa america final?
My econ professor is crazy about it
 
Luckily that wasn't a living room, too.
 
He went down to watch with all his family and friends in Chile.
It's like the Regional Cup for South America
instead of World Cup
but hugely important to them
 
Well, look how nuts people are (not us) about American football in this country.
Is skull here starring things again?
 
2:21 AM
He's not in the list.
 
He's the only one I know who stars so much.
ugh ... what horrid letters for a scrabble/WordsWithFriends move: ICBGWIM
 
Who stars a lot?
 
skull, @Stan
 
Are you trying to outsource your words to us, @Ted?
 
LOL ... No, just bitching about horrid letters.
 
2:23 AM
could've almost gotten bigwig.
 
he still could, if there's a G lying around somewhere convenient
 
There isn't.
 
Supposedly according to the anagram solver you can only make 2 and 3 letter combos
@TedShifrin
out of that combo
 
Yeah, I had already decided that. If I don't care about points, I can use a T or an E.
 
@TedShifrin Used the solver too, eh?
 
2:26 AM
Nope. Just my feeble brain.
I ended up using an N and making WIN (with W on the triple letter). But the replacement letters are even worser.
Ugh.
 
Scrabble is a family game thing in my house
My uncle proposed to my aunt on a scrabble board.
 
I have boards for English, German, and French, @Stan :)
 
We aren't like that serious they are sorta weirdos
LOL
 
How do you fare at that game?
 
LOL ... what a romantic proposal.
 
2:29 AM
Yeah, they had letters at the wedding apparently
@MikeMiller I met a guy once who averaged around 400
 
I played words with friends for a little while before I realized I just wasn't clever enough for it.
 
I used to play with the wives of former colleagues who were that good.
OK, @Stan, I'll challenge you to Scrabble in French :D
 
You used to play with wives of former colleagues, huh?
 
/r/nocontext
 
French?!?! I just started with DuoLingo lolol
L'eau
 
2:32 AM
I'm doing that for Spanish, @Stan.
You know better, @MikeM.
 
Duo can be pretty funny at times.
 
Too fun to pass over.
 
@TedShifrin Spanish is great and the tenses are nicely organized
A very consistent language in that regard
 
Someone posted this to /r/shitduolingosays with the caption "Apparently French is very reliant on body language"
 
@TedShifrin: I guess you're the wrong person to ask, but do you know why the hyperbolic Dehn surgery theorem is true?
 
2:34 AM
I don't even know the theorem, @MikeM, so, yes, I'm very wrong.
 
Darn. A weak version is that surgery on a knot is non-hyperbolic for only a finite number of surgery coefficients.
 
You underestimate how little I know, @MikeM.
 
I wish there was an Arabic duolingo
 
Not true, @Ted, I said I guessed you were the wrong person to ask :)
The right person to ask left on Thursday... :(
 
@Soham: I'll have to test that out.
 
2:38 AM
Is it normal in the States to call your adviser by their first name, @Ted?
 
Tomorrow I will start sorting through all my cabinets to decide what goes and what doesn't. Not fun.
 
This depends on the advisor. At my school most people are on a first-name basis. By "most people", I mean I can't think of anybody who's not.
 
@SohamChowdhury It depends on the person. @TedShifrin is cool like that.
 
(And I don't just mean advisor-student, I mean faculty-grad student.)
 
@StanShunpike Haha, I can see that.
 
2:39 AM
No, @Soham. Depends on the professor and also on the student's comfort level. Half my students call me Ted, the other half don't. About the same with grad students. I called a lot of faculty by first names at Berkeley, but most grad students didn't.
 
Wow, the $ab^{-1}$ condition for subgroups is pretty useful.
 
Not really, @Soham.
I never teach that. I just stick to the usual.
 
It's useful for exercises, after you've learned the usual :P
 
Jesus, popular question. There were really not 9 answers worth of answers there.
 
It might save you a line occasionally.
 
2:40 AM
Yeah. Sort of like this:
The Wolfram axiom is the result of a computer exploration undertaken by Stephen Wolfram in his A New Kind of Science looking for the shortest single axiom equivalent to the axioms of Boolean algebra (or propositional calculus). The result of his search was an axiom with six Nand's and three variables equivalent to Boolean algebra: ((a.b).c).(a.((a.c).a)) = c With the dot representing the Nand logical operation (also known as the Sheffer stroke), with the following meaning: p Nand q is true if and only if not both p and q are true. It is named for Henry M. Sheffer, who proved that all the usual...
 
Oh boy, something else Wolfram's named after himself.
 
(dunno if he made it himself or, uh, appropriated it from someone :P)
 
Wow, Pete's reappeared. I hadn't seen him on here in months and months.
 
r9m
@robjohn @Chris'ssistheartist $\displaystyle \sum\limits_{m=1}^{n} \frac{(-1)^{m-1}}{m^k}\binom{2n}{n+m} = \sum\limits_{1 \le m_{k-1} \le \cdots \le m_1 \le n} \frac{H_{m_{k-1}+n} - H_n}{m_1 m_2 \cdots m_{k-1}}$ .. I wonder how the RHS will look like in terms of general Harmonic numbers .. :)
 
Yes, probably the latter, @SohamChowdhury. It's his standard practice.
 
2:42 AM
Who is Stephen Wolfram? Like I know his background, but like has he actually produced any interesting academic stuff? His book seemed pretty fluffy.
 
Sorta like how Euler's formula was first noted by someone rather before Euler?
 
@StanShunpike: You might like this review. For a more measured approach to the issue see this question.
 
I remember being pretty non-happy when I found out about the Rule 110 controversy.
I used to find cellular automata and the Game of Life very cool as a kid.
 
@TedShifrin: Which one?
 
$e^{i\theta}$.
I learned that fact in Maor's book e: Story of a Number, which, of course, I no longer have.
 
2:47 AM
I wonder how many numbers have a book written about them.
Ignore multiplicity.
 
"Wolfram, for his part, responded by suing or threatening to sue Cook (now a penniless graduate student in neuroscience), the conference organizers, the publishers of the proceedings, etc."
Sheesh.
 
@MikeMiller why is the accepted answer to that question below the one with 49?
 
Ah, Cotes published it in 1714.
 
Interesting. Maybe because the OP posted the answer, @Stan, and the system is biased towards other answers?
 
Ah, the OP posting would be why
I have done that on ocassion, usually in the econ SE
 
2:52 AM
Econ major? What year are you?
 
I am a second year undergrad
 
Cool.
Maybe you'll do like I did and quite econ for math... ;)
 
Ah, there are apparently abelian groups with non-abelian $\sf Aut$ (easy to see) and even vice versa.
27
Q: when is Aut(G) abelian

Martin Brandenburglet $G$ be a group such that $Aut(G)$ is abelian. is then $G$ abelian? this is a sort of generalization of the well-known exercise, that $G$ is abelian when $Aut(G)$ is cyclic. but I have no idea. at least, the finitely generated abelian groups $G$ such that $Aut(G)$ is abelian can be classified.

@MikeMiller You were an econ major?
 
@MikeMiller lol i doubt it but I must say I prefer the company of mathematicians. My econ classes made me cringe sometimes. They wouldnt even use vectors and gradients
So we always worked in 2 or 3 variables
Rather dull
 
At UGA econ majors only need one semester of calculus. I would hope that UC is a bit more rigorous than that.
 
2:55 AM
Some combination of that and marketing and political science, @SohamChowdhury. I don't remember quite which two of three, because I was taking all of those classes.
Some interdependency in various directions.
 
@TedShifrin they force you to take math. And if you ask for more, they will give it to you in greater detail. I just had hoped they would be a bit more mathematically challenging instead of computationally intensive. So far a lot of "shut up and calculate"
 
@MikeMiller That was your undergrad?
 
The first year of.
 
How much math is required for econ majors at UC?
 
I think you can get away without real analysis
 
2:57 AM
Any help on visualizing $\Bbb RP^n$?
 
Lots of econ departments don't tell their students that if they want to go to grad school, they need to take more math. Most econ grad schools require real analysis, say.
 
Students who want to do a Ph.D. in econ need real analysis, but I doubt even UC requires more than a few semesters of calculus.
 
At the very least your application is significantly hampered without some serious mathematical maturity.
 
@MikeMiller they do tell us that
 
Ah. mine didn't.
UC is a bit of a different level though.
 
2:59 AM
Most grad programs in econ do a math bootcamp at the beginning.
Or that's my impression.
I've known of some students who quit at that point.
 
@TedShifrin amazingly, I went to see one of the math tutors on campus about one of the problems we had and i saw this guy in analysis. He was in the last quarter of it. And he didnt know how to do partial derivatives. How is that possible?
 
That's because of the stupid theoretical sequence I've complained to you about at UC, @Stan.
 
@TedShifrin: The point is getting in to a good school. They can bootcamp all they want, but the good schools can pick from good students.
 
Yeah, well that is ridiculous.
 
I agree totally, @Stan. Hence my wanting students to have a course like mine instead of a course on analysis in Banach spaces.
 
3:00 AM
@SohamChowdhury: Disc mod identifying antipodal points on the boundary. Alternatively think of $\mathbb{RP}^2$ as the standard quotient of $\mathbb R^3$. Then $(x,y,1)$ corresponds to the standard plane inside $\mathbb{RP}^2$ (the open disc in the disc model) and points of the form $(x,y,0)$ are the points at infinity.
Think about those two things a bit. If you're not satisfied, google around.
 
@TedShifrin what amazes me is that more schools arent using online lectures.
 
If you want to work on your visualization, $\Bbb RP^2$ is topologically a disk with a Möbius strip attached along its boundary. @Soham
 
@TedShifrin there are local high schools with teachers who cant teach at all. They could just play online videos
 
:22570135 Well, aren't you a good influence . . . :P
 
I'm from California. That's all.
 
3:03 AM
I would hope such teachers would get fired, @Stan, unless they're doing a lot to make up for it.
 
@SohamChowdhury so what kind of stuff do you like to study?
 
@MikeM: I think I'm going to avoid Facebook for a while. I said something controversial on one of my friends' controversial posts, got called an idiot by one of his other friends, and then posted something more explicitly contentious.
 
Oh, well, I like knots a lot. Does that say anything?
 
@TedShifrin but thats not reality. Reality is there are such teachers. But thats why i am surprised. It doesnt take much brains to google a lecture. It should be an enforced policy not at the discretion of the teacher.
 
@Ted: I just defriend the contentious assholes. More problematic is when the contentious assholes are family.
 
3:04 AM
@TedShifrin I have an add-on that nukes my News Feed. So FB is now a sort of messaging app for me. Problem solved.
 
I suspect there would be complaints to school boards about teachers' not doing their jobs, @Stan.
 
If you're worried about those guys giving you a hard time they'll have forgotten in two days.
 
The person who called me an idiot isn't someone I know, @MikeM.
 
@TedShifrin maybe students would perform better tho.
Even with good teachers, the internet now allows you to find the best.
 
@TedShifrin That makes it rougher. Sorry to hear that.
 
3:05 AM
So you're saying I should have shown videos and not bothered teaching, @Stan?
 
I hope you keep the messager app. It's a convenient way to contact people.
I can't talk to my representation theory friend at home because I'm in Canada with no cell service...
 
@TedShifrin not at all. But there are schools where teachers cant teach but people need jobs and the system just sorta has to work like that. I dunno. I just feel bad for the kids :/
 
That's what email is for, @MikeM.
 
Like he's checking his email over break...
 
@TedShifrin bad teachers = no fun = bad stuff happens like drugs and gangs
 
3:07 AM
Then there's the additional problem that a good proportion of students in schools don't even want to learn. That includes many college students.
 
I seem to finally be gaining some intuition for cosets and quotients and stuff. :)
 
Drugs and gangs are not immediately a consequence of bad teachers. There's a whole lot more going on there, @Stan.
 
I agree
 
@Soham: For that reason, I prefer to start with rings and get to groups later.
 
But i am saying that i think a healthy school environment is an important foundation for success
 
3:08 AM
They have a common underlying factor, though.
 
Agreed, @Stan.
 
@TedShifrin I often wonder how there are some (not-depressed) classmates of mine who have exactly no passions they care about. How is that even possible?
 
I know!
 
@TedShifrin oh? how far do you go?
 
I think that's more the norm than you realize, @Soham. Especially in this day of video games and cell phones.
What do you mean, @Soham?
 
3:10 AM
I mean, I have friends who absolutely detest math and literature and everything I'm interested in, but they almost live to play football, or piano, or whatever.
 
I'm saying that working with commutative rings (like $\Bbb Z$ and polynomial rings) and understanding quotients by ideals is much more intuitive than dealing with nonabelian groups and understanding normal subgroups and quotients.
 
@TedShifrin how much ring stuff do you teach before starting groups?
 
@TedShifrin the video game thing is a problem
 
Through the fundamental homomorphism theorem for sure, @Soham.
 
3:11 AM
It's absurd to claim that this is a modern phenomenon. Some people are not gripped by things. This has been the case for millenia; every generation has been claiming that its successor is that much worse.
 
I consciously drew myself out of videogames in seventh grade.
 
Yeah exactly
Me too
 
G'night, all.
 
Night, @Ted.
 
Bye ted!
 
3:12 AM
Morning @Ted.
@Stan, @Soham: Your loss, I guess. I've never seen the point in avoiding something you enjoy. (If you don't enjoy it that's obviously another story.) Being moderate in how much you engage is something one should do for all media, not just video games; a generation ago people were surely saying the above sentence with "especially in this generation of television"...
 
I do play a little nowadays (mostly Clash of Clans or Kingdom Rush-y stuff). But I used to be near-addicted then, and I needed to do that at the time. Five hours of games a day is bad, IMO.
Do you know any nice way to compute auts of groups, @Mike?
 
Fair enough. Addiction is addiction.
No. I don't think you can even do so algorithmically.
 
For (not in the technical sense) simple groups. For example, how would you start to compute, say, $\sf Aut(\rm Q_8)$?
Is there any way apart from listing homomorphisms and finding which ones are auts?
 
Write down a small system of generators. Figure out where you can send those generators in a way that actually extends to an automorphism of the group.
 
Hmm, that makes sense.
 
3:21 AM
$S_n$ can be generated by two generators, for instance (a transposition and a cycle). So immediately the transposition has to go to something of order 2 and the cycle something of order $n$. This is restrictive. Now be a little more clever to be even more restrictive.
 
@MikeMiller i play video games lol. I was just pointing out that I think they can be harder to do in moderation than other things. But I hear your point. Evolution doesnt change in 25 years
 
gotcha, i've heard that from people who quit video games because they thought there were dulling their brain or something, even though they enjoyed them. those people are silly.
 
Well, so ends a relaxing night of blowing stuff up for America.
 
I'm in Canada this week so all the fireworks were on Wednesday
 
I don't consider myself a hardcore patriot or anything, but there's definitely something satisfying--cathartic, even--about explosives and barbecue.
 
3:39 AM
All groups are quotients of free groups by something, and also subgroups of $S_n$s. Is there some sort of deep CT-ish duality here?
Or am I simply reading too much into things?
 
All finite groups, of course. And no, there's not.
 
Hm, thanks.
 
Every finite group is also a subgroup of $GL_n \mathbb F$ for any field $\mathbb F$. I wouldn't read into that, either.
(Of course, I'm cheating: $S_n$ is a subgroup of that. This is effectively the standard proof.)
 
Haha, I get the point. It's just that subobjects and quotients are dual concepts, which made me think. Which symmetric group is $GL_n\Bbb F$ a subgroup of?
 
You have the subgroup backwards.
 
3:43 AM
No, I got what you said.
But won't that also be a subgroup of some $S_k$?
 
That's only possible if $\Bbb F$ is a finite field.
 
If the field is finite, yes. I don't know how small you can go. Obviously you need $k > n$.
 
Ah, I see.
Thanks.
 
MGA
Hi guys. Quick question while I'm doing linear algebra exercises. Am I right to say that R^2 is not a subset of C^2 because it does not satisfy closure under scalar multiplication (where the scalar comes from C)?
*I mean subspace not subset.
 
@MGA If you're considering $\Bbb C^2$ as a vector space over $\Bbb C$, yes.
 
3:48 AM
You have to clarify what $\mathbb R^2 \subset \mathbb C^2$ you mean. (There are plenty of embeddings.) Do you mean the one of the form $(z_1, z_2)$, where $\text{Im}(z_i) = 0$?
 
MGA
That's all the question says, what I wrote is almost an exact phrasing. It's from Axler's Linear Algebra done Right.
I think he means C^2 as a vector space over C.
The exact question is:
 
Then he means what I said and he means what Fargle said, and you're correct.
 
MGA
"Is R^2 a subspace of the complex vector space C^2?"
 
Then yeah, it's over $\Bbb C$. That's the standard meaning of "complex vector space". And really, any embedding of $\Bbb R^2$ would fail to be a subspace, I think, unless @Mike can correct me on that.
 
@Fargle: What about $(x,y) \mapsto (x+iy,0)$?
 
3:51 AM
@MikeMiller I meant besides those that identify $\Bbb R^2$ with either complex plane on their own. But I should have been more clear, I suppose. You're exactly right.
 
@MikeMiller Do you play videogames? What are your favs?
 
@Fargle: Sure, but that's an important distinction. In general, there's an important notion of a totally real subspace of a complex vector space: $V \subset \mathbb C^n$ is totally real if $V \cap iV = 0$. In $\mathbb C^2$, (real) dimension 2 subspaces have the dichotomy: they're either complex subspaces or totally real.
Wait, that's a lie.
It's a far less interesting trichotomy: it's totally possible for $V \cap iV$ to be a 1 real dimensional subspace.
WHATEVER.
 
@MikeMiller Yeah, it's good to keep in mind. I tend to err on the side of careless. >_> And I'd never heard of that notion before, but it makes sense as a notion (even if that's a lie).
 
I don't actually know if it's interesting in the context of complex geometry, but it's shown up in my own adventures in topology and symplectic geometry.
(I don't know any complex geometry.)
 
@Mike, what courses are you taking right now?
 
3:58 AM
@StanShunpike: I'm pretty standard. I like the final fantasy series, Zelda, fire emblem. There's a game on the 3DS called SMT4 I like a lot but haven't played lately. I think I have a bunch of old PS2 game collections for my PS3 that I touch on and off.
I'm pretty behind on new games.
 
I wish I knew more geometry in general--even Euclidean synthetic geometry I'd like to see treated on a higher level than my high school did.
 
(I like Smash, of course.)
 
@MikeMiller Have you seen the new Arkham Knight?
 
@MikeMiller Smash is the constant favorite in my friend group. Between us we have all three next-gens, but the WiiU gets the most use specifically because I like to ruin people's days as Little Mac.
 
@SohamChowdhury It's summer. I'm not taking courses. But as a grad student I only take courses sporadically anyways. Next year I'll be taking some algebraic topology courses from Mike Hill, who's our new algebraic topology hire (depending on whether or not the courses are about things I don't know), but that's it. We also have seminars and student-run reading courses, which I participate in.
@Stan: Nope, I never played that series at all :S
 
4:00 AM
It's awesome. You get to drive the batmobile tank in the latest one
 
So what happens when you get into grad school? I thought you had to do a bunch of courses and pass quals.
 
Oh, one of my favorite games is fallout: new vegas. Absolutely fantastic. Worth a play (on PC. Other console versions are too bugged and you can't mod them)
 
That's true of most of Bethesda's games, really. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim are all fantastic, but their console versions are buggy and really middle-of-the-road at best.
 
@Soham: Depends wildly on the school. My school has a fairly moderate coursework requirement, which you have your entire tenure as a grad student to cover; you could reasonably take a single course each quarter you're here and finish. I did most of mine last year. I think I have 4 or something left.
New Vegas is not Bethesda, it's just published by Bethesda. I don't think Bethesda has made a game that gripped me since Morrowind. It's by Obsidian. I hope to god they make another fallout game after FO4 comes out.
 
True, true. Still the new Fallouts seem to have the same release problems as TES.
 
4:04 AM
Yeah. The issue is that Obsidian is a small studio, so the bug testing is done by Bethesda. And, well.
 
Morrowind is totally the best Elder Scrolls game, though, hands down. "Waaaah not every attack lands." Well, don't ever play DnD.
 
have you seen the morrowind speedrun?
 
Yeah, I think with their QA philosophy, they honestly took the "infinite monkeys will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare" idea and ran with it, but only use finite monkeys and maybe six months.
3
Oh, yes, I have. 7:30-ish, as I recall. Alchemy abuse is beautiful.
 
3 minutes.
 
Oh, man, I don't think I've seen that one.
I assume they abuse alchemy as well.
 
4:06 AM
Oh wow, I'm so happy. I understand the correspondence theorem now.
Am I right in saying that quotienting $G$ by, say, $H$, essentially reduces $H$ to the identity coset in $G/H$ while maintaining the group structure (so if $H\triangleleft K\triangleleft G$, then this "structure" is preserved when we quotient by H)? (Does that make sense?)
 
Morrowind just felt so freakin' big. I love speedruns and the dedication/ingenuity that they require, but I feel like speedrunning Morrowind misses the point completely.
 
Just a different point. I love that speedrun but of course it's not what Morrowind was built for.
 
Yeah. I have some friends who are upset about it. I don't choose to take it that far. I just don't go for it personally.
...wow, this is gamey as hell.
 
Isn't it great?
 
4:12 AM
Amazing. It's the intersection of every game-breaking glitch.
The lockpick one-hitting everything was one I had forgotten about.
 
Some of the coolest (glitch) runs I know are of OoT and Majora's Mask, if you enjoyed that. The second one is way longer since you can't really avoid getting the four songs, but you can glitch your way to and through the temples.
 
Yeah, OoT speedruns are ridiculous.
There's definitely an art to breaking a game. I've always liked old-school Sonic speedruns.
 
OoT is single-digit minutes I think.
Of course, this is a classic speedrun ;)
 
I've seen someone do Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts.
 
I should watch one of those sonic adventure runs at some point, I loved that game as a kid.
As SGDQ happened yet?
 
4:18 AM
Nah, it's in late July.
 
Have they posted the schedule?
 
How old are you? (Feel free to be imprecise.) I don't know why, but until you said you were a grad student I assumed you were, like, 60, haha.
 
Lol, the half minute hero run will be funny. Rearmed 2 will be too. Dustforce is one of the coolest games ever so I'll be psyched to watch that run. I don't know Calistus though.
I'm 21. More relevantly, I'm entering my second year of grad school.
 
Well, you're doing better than I am.
 
I started early is all.
 
4:23 AM
@Mike, when did you start your undergrad?
 
Just before I was 17. My birthday's in October, so the state of California demands I start school a year earlier than most, and my parents pushed me earlier than that.
 
I wish I could have done so! Maybe it's the hubris so typical of mathematicians, but I feel like I could have started college well before I did. (Then again, I haven't exactly displayed the highest level of maturity, and that's half the battle.)
 
Oh, no, I meant I started everything earlier.
 
Ah. Well, even then.
 
@MikeMiller So . . . around my age. Lucky you. :)
 
4:25 AM
Non-sequitur: my biggest fear is a professor from UT coming on the MSE chat and knowing who I am. >_>
 
I think it's good to go at a fairly standard pace. Helps you grow up better. Being two years younger than most people in high school was an odd experience.
 
I can imagine. There was a time when I was being ferried to the high school from my middle school for math classes. To put it lightly, that shit was awkward.
 
I think I would have done better had I started everything a year later. But things turned out well in the end, and there's no point regretting what's two decades past.
On the other hand the 18-year-old in my cohort seems to have turned out fine. (U Wash apparently has a program where they take bright kids and have them skip high school.) On the other hand, he doesn't come to the weekly fluid dynamics seminar very often.
 
4:49 AM
I was scared at one point about going into higher mathematics. I was worried that math would become something entirely different, and that my knack was merely a knack for computation. I've turned out to be at least half right.
 
Math is terrifying. It just happens to be really fun too.
6
 
@MikeMiller I don't get it, but there's nothing like it. I get a very visceral thrill from the search for truth.
 
I think it's mainly the thrill from getting things right, and then on the way there's the thrill of the hunt. The hard parts for me are when I've got no idea where to go so I feel neither of those. When one's really truly stuck, I mean.
 
@MikeMiller Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes a simple book exercise will haunt you for weeks. I've always found that the back of my mind has a special talent if I leave it alone for long enough, though.
It can almost feel like divine inspiration, and certainly, from the outside looking in, it looks like it.
 
Yeah, I know what you mean.
The harder the problems get the harder that gets, though. Maybe it turns around eventually and becomes easier, like for Poincare or whatever on his questions. I dunno.
 
4:58 AM
I worry, though. I've never been a particularly creative person in any walk of life--maybe mathematical creativity, to some degree, can be learned, but when it comes time for me to contribute something meaningful...I don't know. The idea of original research gives me a lot of anxiety.
 

« first day (1796 days earlier)      last day (3218 days later) »