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8:06 PM
bananas, I've never really left, but I have lots of stuff to do for the next months ...
 
whatcha doing, @Ted?
 
@Kevin: We certainly teach graduate courses in Lie groups, Lie algebras, and representation theory. Some of the material gets covered, obviously, in graduate differential geometry (especially talking about connections and homogeneous spaces and symmetric spaces).
 
morning, by the way.
 
Good night, @Mike. :)
Grading my first diff geo papers, @Mike. Plenty of people who need to come get help in office hours but didn't ... Others doing nicely with no help.
 
woo
 
8:07 PM
wonders why Mariano is going to pound on @Pedro @robjohn
 
@TedShifrin clicking the '6h ago' will provide context.
 
I looked before, but I didn't see it ... I guess moving something MSE to MO ?
 
He migrated that torsion-free $\mathcal O(D)$ modules thing.
 
oh, his own question
I would think Mariano could have answered it in person for him :)
 
I suspect he tried that
 
8:10 PM
So, @Mike, do you know how to prove that commuting diagonalizable operators are simultaneously diagonalizable?
 
No.
I think this was a qual question that I solved during qual prep, but then forgot.
 
@TedShifrin He told me some stuff.
 
Grr. Well, neither did any of our grad students taking the algebra qual, but it's a totally standard undergraduate exercise (albeit slightly advanced).
Heya Mr. @Pedro
 
To be fair to me, I haven't thought about it even in the tiniest bit./
 
I would think Pete could give you definitive answer(s).
 
8:11 PM
He can for many things.
 
I was pretty pissed off, @Mike (not at you, yet).
 
You're not pissed off at me? That's new, but I'm not complaining.
 
@TedShifrin Give him a call! =D
 
I would hope @Pedro knows how to do it.
I said yet, @Mike. Don't gloat.
 
@TedShifrin Oh, I can think about it. I cannot say I remember the proof. It was probably given during my uni's linear algebra lectures.
 
8:13 PM
You should figure it out for yourself, not "remember" it from lectures :P
 
I posted a question a while back about a reference in one of Stasheff's papers, but didn't get a response. I wonder if I should just email stasheff.
 
I haven't seen Stasheff active in a while. He's about 20 years older than I am, @Mike, so ...
 
I suspect he's probably forgotten...
 
@TedShifrin Well, yes. That's why I said "I can think about it."
 
@Mike: I was close. He was born two days ago in '36, so just 79.
 
8:14 PM
Wow. He's older than me.
 
Everyone's older than you, @Mike, except for Balarka and crowd.
 
Pedro's in Balarka's crowd, then :)
 
No.
 
Well, you gave two categories: people older than me, and Balarka + crowd.
So there's only one possibility...
Oh, no, I'm wrong.
Whoops.
 
Uh huh.
Well, I should go back to grading papers and starting to clean out junk ...
 
8:18 PM
I should try to understand connections better.
it's hard going, unfortunately
 
And you keep ignoring my notes :D
 
Mm, maybe I should add those to my growing pile of references.
 
@TedShifrin Mind if I beg of you an opinion?
 
I told you before that some concrete experience with such things actually helps when you get to all the abstraction.
@Arkamis: Mike and Pedro will tell you I never have opinions. :D
 
Well then, your opinion on the use of the royal "we" in mathematical writing should be easy to suss out.
 
8:19 PM
We all use it.
 
I'm torn on it -- specifically when it comes to homework assignments.
I get it in journal writing, etc.
But I still feel like an asshole when I turn in homework with lots of "we now observe that..." etc.
 
It doesn't bother me to read it in homework assignments. Saying "next I do this, then I do that" sounds not so good.
You can say, "The gentle reader may observe that ..."
 
@TedShifrin See, the trouble we were having was with wedging $\mathfrak g_E$-valued 1-forms, since there's some Lie bracket garbage in there, too. We needed to figure out why it was the right action... Nobody really bothers to explain or define.
 
Oh, that's in some version of my lectures, @Mike, and certainly in Chern's Characteristic classes appendix to Complex Manifolds w/o Potential Theory (yes, you're missing the appendix -- I told you).
I guess I can save one of my two copies of Chern for you. :D
It's certainly in Kobayashi-Nomizu, too.
 
probably, but I'd have to be able to penetrate it first :)
good point, though. I think I left it at home.
When we go back for poker night maybe I'll trawl for it with my friend.
 
8:24 PM
Basically, up to a worrisome sign/constant convention for higher-degree forms, @Mike, you expect $[\omega,\eta](v,w) = [\omega(v),\eta(w)]-[\omega(w),\eta(v)]$.
That's why there are $1/2$'s running around when you do matrix structure equations in terms of the Lie algebra stuff.
Of course, there always questions about 1/2 when you do wedge in the first place. I personally prefer to have $dx\wedge dy$ give signed area and not half of it.
Heya bananas
Well, since I'm overrun with responses, I'll go grade. BBIAB.
 
sure... the actual context is writing down the curvature of $A+a$, $a \in \Omega^1(\mathfrak g_E)$. The computation goes ahead and ends up giving $(d_A+a)^2 = d_A^2 + d_Aa + a \wedge a$. The first two terms make sense... but to get the last term you need to define how $a$ acts on higher things, which nobody ever does.
@TedShifrin I was writing and thinking.
during lecture Manolescu was having trouble with some of this stuff, incl. $1/2$ conventions, so I don't feel too bad :)
 
8:40 PM
Heya @MichaelA
 
Hi @MikeM
 
Hi @Daniel
 
@iwriteonbananas How do you write on bananas?
 
@MikeMiller Hi Mike.
 
How are things, @MichaelAlbanese?
 
8:50 PM
Not bad. How about you?
 
Alright, alright. Just workin'.
 
Do you know much about the Nijenhuis tensor?
 
@MikeMiller Does this count as a proof? Suppose you have 2 diagnolizable operators which commute, $A$ and $B$. Let $\lvert \psi \rangle$ be an eigenvector of $B$ with eigenvalue $\psi$, then
$$ B A \lvert \psi \rangle = A B \lvert \psi \rangle = \psi A \lvert \psi \rangle$$
 
@TedShifrin Because he was migrating a question to MO.
 
Thus $A \lvert \psi \rangle$ is an eigenvector of $B$ as well.
So, $A$ maps the eigenvector of $B$ to themselves and so $\lvert \psi \rangle$ is also an eigenbasis for $A$. Since $A$ and $B$ have the same eigenbasis, they must be simultaneously diagonalizable.
 
9:14 PM
@MichaelAlbanese I don't, but my colleague 4 feet from me does
 
Yeah, @robjohn, I sorta finally figured that out. Thanks :)
Hi @MichaelA
@Mike: You have to define the induced action of the connection on sections of $E\otimes\Omega^j$ given its action on sections of $E$.
So, if $Ds$ is known (as an $E$-valued $1$-form), then $D(s\otimes \phi) = Ds\wedge\phi + s\otimes d\phi$.
 
@MikeMiller: Maybe your colleague knows the answer to my question.
Hi @TedShifrin.
You may know the answer too.
 
It's more likely that a young me would have :P
 
Given an almost complex manifold (X, J), there is the associated Nijenhuis tensor. In the presence of a hermitian metric h, I'm pretty sure one can obtain a (1, 2)-form \eta. I'm wondering whether there is some (2, 0)-form \phi which can be constructed from $J$ and $h$ such that the (1, 2)-part of d\phi is precisely \eta.
 
:19590393 is that more than estimating $F_n=\frac{\phi^n-(-1/\phi)^n}{\sqrt5}$?
 
9:24 PM
@MichaelA: Off the top of my head, I think you may be confusing tensor types with $(p,q)$ types. I'd have to see more details and rethink things.
 
@Ted I know that's how one extends the actions of connections. $a$ is not a connection. It's an element of $\Omega^1(\mathfrak g_E)$.
 
OK, @Mike. When you talked about extending actions, I thought that's what you meant.
 
@robjohn that limit requires some care for computing it. Of course, it's not hard. I chose things that way to get a cool result. :-)
 
Connections are an affine space for that, but its not canonically a connection without first picking a 'base' connection.
 
Mike, $d+a$ is the connection, so they're equivalent.
 
9:26 PM
One needs to write down what one considers the trivial connection first.
 
@Chris'ssis okay. :-)
 
I know that the Nijenhuis tensor is a map TM\otimes TM -> TM, but it is skew symmetric and one can use the isomorphism (TM, J) -> (T^{1,0}M, i) to get a (1, 2)-form (I think).
 
@MichaelA: I'm dubious, but I'll listen when you get it all figured out.
 
@Ted Anyway, one still needs to know how $a$ acts on $\Omega^1(E)$ (ie, one needs to know why $aa=a \wedge a$) to calculate the curvature of $A+a$.
 
I told you the action, @Mike. It's trivial on the $E$ part, and it wedges with the form part.
Wedge done with Lie bracket, if you prefer, as we discussed earlier.
 
9:30 PM
Yes, @Ted, I know what the action is. I don't know why. :)
 
But you'll sort it out. I have faith in you, and I'll go back to grading students who think that when three vectors are given to be linearly independent, you say that each vector individually is "linearly independent." Sigh.
 
Because what I wrote above is definition and it induces your action :P
Bubye for now. :)
 
@MichaelAlbanese Do you have ChatJax installed?
 
No. I'm trying to figure it out now.
 
9:43 PM
@MichaelA My colleague says "Well, if Ted Shifrin is dubious, I'll leave it be for now."
 
@MikeMiller Fair enough.
 
@MichaelAlbanese If you have trouble with the installation page, ping me.
 
@robjohn: I clicked 'start ChatJax' which makes that page render, but not this one.
 
@MichaelAlbanese Ah, you need to install the bookmark in your browser's bookmark bar. Drag the link to your bookmark bar in your browser.
@MichaelAlbanese then click on it when you are on this page.
 
Ah, that's it. Sorry, I thought the bookmark step was just for convenience.
 
9:48 PM
@MichaelAlbanese Yeah, these javascript links need to be run on the page you want them to modify. As you saw, running it on the installation page just made that page render :-)
 
Cool. Thanks for your help. I will definitely be using it in the future.
 
@MichaelAlbanese It makes a big difference when reading LaTeX in chat.
 
I just found that $\displaystyle \sin{\left(\frac{\pi}5\right)}=\sqrt{\frac{5-\sqrt5}8}$. I can safely say that the multiple-angle formula is extremely exhausting to work with on an hour of sleep
Speaking of sleep, I'm gonna go take a nap.
 
Trig identities are one of the least interesting things in math to me.
 
@teadawg1337 $\cos(\pi/5)$ is much simpler.
 
9:53 PM
A wise plan @teadawg1337.
 
@robjohn that limit is wrong, I missed something there, that is $F_{p-1}$ in front of $n$.
 
@Chris'ssis Okay... I haven't had a chance to look at it yet.
 
@robjohn I just wanted to add this detail since otherwise we get a mess.
 
I have a question, from some notes I was reading: is $\Bbb{R}\times(\Bbb{R}\times\Bbb{R})=\Bbb{R}^3$? (where $\times$ is the cartesian product).
I'd say no, because elements of $\Bbb{R}^3$ are tripes of real $\{x,y,z\}$ while the elements of $\Bbb{R}\times(\Bbb{R}\times\Bbb{R})$ are a pair in which the first element is a real number and the second is another pair of reals: $\{x,\{y,z\}\}$. Does that make sense?
 
@Alessandro If you define addition and multiplication on your pair of a real plus ordered pair, then I'd guess that the two are isomorphic. but I'm certainly not sure.
I mean if you define addition and multiplication the right way
 
10:03 PM
All I was trying to do was find a "simpler" form for $\Gamma(\frac35)$... It involves using the multiple-angle formula twice. The multiple-angle formula, by the way, is $\displaystyle \sum_{n=0}^k\binom{k}{n}\cos^nx\sin^{k-n}x\sin{\left[\frac{\pi(k-n)}2\right]}$
 
"500 hands are shaked at a meeting. How many people were at this meeting ?"
 
There's other ways to do it, that's just the one I'm most familiar with
Anyways, off to go napping
One last thing. @robjohn $\displaystyle \cos\left(\frac{\pi}5\right)=\frac{1+\sqrt5}4$?
 
10:32 PM
@DanielFischer Could I ask you something about an algorithm?
@DanielFischer Consider two sets $D=\{ d_1, d_2, \dots, d_n\}$ and $E=\{ e_1, e_2, \dots, e_m \}$ and consider an other variable $K \geq 0$.
Show that we can answer in time $O((n+m) \lg (n+m))$ the following question:
Is there is a pair of numbers $a,b$ where $a \in D, b \in E$ such that $|a-b| \leq K$?

The algorithm should answer the above question with <<YES>> or <<NO>>.
Describe the algorithm, show its correctness and show that its time complexity is $O((n+m) \lg (n+m))$.
@DanielFischer I wrote this algorithm:
Algorithm(D,E,K){
found=0;
for (i=1; i<=n; i++){
A[i]=D[i];
}
for (i=1; i<=m; i++){
A[n+i]=E[i];
}
HeapSort(A);
j=1;
p=2;
while (j<=n+m and p<=n+m and found==0){
if (abs(A[j]-A[p]) <= K) found=1;
j++;
p=j+1;
}
if (found==0) printf("NO\n");
else printf("YES\n");
}
 
@evinda When you sort the array A, you lose the information from which set each element comes. Since you want one element of each, you must not lose that information. Keep the sets (arrays) separate. Of course, sorting each is a good idea.
 
@teadawg1337 Yea thats the correct value
 
Yes, @teadawg, you should get such formulas using deMoivre's formula (rather than repeated use of angle-sum formulas). You would enjoy learning that. And it's easier to do $\sin(2\pi/5)$ using just the quadratic formula. :)
 
Ahh, power naps are the best
 
Oh, didn't mean to wake you up, @teadawg.
 
10:40 PM
@Ted You didn't, I just finished taking a power nap a few minutes ago
 
Ah, you saw my pleasure earlier at your having got into calculus? Was it a tough fight?
@Mike: Your colleague shouldn't be so lazy. I haven't thought about Nijenhuis tensors since grad school. :P
 
@TedShifrin Did you catch my attempted proof of you question about simultaneously diagonalizable operators?
 
nope, @Kevin. Did you ping me?
 
I did not. I think I only pinged Mike.
 
Hrumph.
I don't see it anywhere obvious.
 
10:44 PM
Evening, people.
 
@TedShifrin Sorry! You seemed busy. I doubt its entirely correct, but I think maybe it goes in the right direction.
 
How are we doing tonight?
 
heya @Lord.
 
Doing well, @Lord_Farin computing some integrals as usual (for homework this time though)
 
Oh, ugh at the quantum mechanics notation, @Kevin.
 
10:45 PM
Haha sorry @Ted I don't know the math notation
 
@KevinDriscoll What kind of integrals?
 
@Ted Yes I did, and no. All I had to do was wait a few days to have my high school math courses put into the online registration system (dunno why it didn't happen when I first submitted my transcript)
 
@Kevin: You've only done the first baby step. You've shown that any $\psi$-eigenvector of $B$ is mapped by $A$ into another $\psi$-eigenvector of $B$.
Oh, I was going to give you points for asserting yourself politely and showing off your knowledge, @teadawg :P
BTW, @Kevin: I always thought of $\psi$ as wave function notation (i.e., eigenfunction, not eigenvalue).
 
Well, I did have to go to the main campus and have the admissions office submit a request on my behalf
 
LOL, ok @teadawg. I still don't know how good you are. But I encourage our best students to skip some classes which they really already know. They just have to be able to demonstrate that they do. So be polite but aggressive as you get to the college/university level if you really do know stuff.
The flip side is that a lot of students believe they know stuff and they really do not.
 
10:49 PM
@TedShifrin Isn't there a "skip classes / exam only" path in the US, Ted?
I heavily used that option in the Netherlands.
 
@TedShifrin It is considered expected that the eigenvalues of any eigenvector should be denoted by whatever is inside $\lvert \rangle$
 
We do allow some "course challenges" at certain levels, but not at all, @Lord. But I'm willing to let students prove to me what they know. When I was associate head of our department for 8 years, I didn't have that many students who could prove it. But students who make it through my multivariable math class (which is highly proof-based) doing A work skip our "intro to proofs" class without a problem.
I understand, @Kevin, but I always thought $\psi$ meant the function itself. I guess that must be chemists' notation :D
 
So, $\langle x \lvert \psi \rangle = \psi(x)$ is how one would write the wavefunction. Almost never as a bare $\psi$ unless you first say you're suppressing the arguments of the function
 
But mathematicians always refer to a function as $f$ or $\psi$; it's only its values that are $f(x)$, $\psi(x)$, etc.
I'm complaining, therefore, that $\psi$ should not be the eigenvalue associated to the eigenfunction $\psi$. !!!
 
Yea, I always have trouble getting used to that. We abuse that kind of notation all the time
 
10:52 PM
No wonder I could never have been a physicist :D
 
e.g. writing the Fourier Transform of $\psi(x)$ as $\psi(k)$ (no tilde)
 
@TedShifrin Hm, that's interesting, but if few are capable enough to qualify, it might be understandable.
 
Ugh. I give up.
 
Do I understand correctly that there is some kind of compulsory degree of attendance?
 
Well, the more advanced the student, the more likely they are capable to qualify, @Lord. My biggest problem was with students who were placed into precalculus, who'd already taken high school calculus and who therefore were confident they knew algebra and trig. They didn't.
In low-level courses we may have attendance policies, @Lord. Not typically in upper-level. But I've found that students who miss more than one or two classes a semester in my upper-level courses tend to do very badly.
 
10:55 PM
@TedShifrin Understandable; it takes a base level to realise what you don't know.
 
American society (i.e., parents) these days teaches kids that they are perfect and know everything. :D
 
Anyway @TedShifrin I'll take my baby step. I have no idea what's left to show though. If $A$ maps the eigenbasis of $B$ into itself, why does that set not also form an eigenbasis for $A$?
 
@TedShifrin This may correlate with the observations of some of my friends who went to the US, noting that the higher-level classes there are much harder than in NL as well.
Basically, I consider it to be way too easy to obtain a Dutch degree.
 
No, @Kevin, the basis may not be the right one. So you need to argue, first of all, that if you restrict $A$ to an invariant subspace (namely the $B$-eigenspace for $\psi$) that that operator must still be diagonalizable.
 
@TedShifrin I scent that revolting misguidance in Dutch society as well.
 
10:57 PM
I don't know, @Lord. It depends where they went. My impression has been that calculus in Europe is generally proof-based, whereas in the US it is uniformly engineering-style, except for our theoretical, proof-based courses, which fewer than $\epsilon$ of the students take.
 
@Lord_Farin There may be selection bias. Students who would travel from Netherlands to the US for university probably are going to many of the higher-tier universities, whereas those who say in the Netherlands may go to any level of Dutch school
 
Uh huh @Kevin
I sent a brilliant student to Utrecht to do a math-physics program there (about 10 years ago). But he had taken all sorts of graduate courses here as a sophomore and junior (2nd, 3rd year) before he went.
 
@TedShifrin Yes, in the second undergraduate year, $\epsilon$-$\delta$ based real analysis is one of the cornerstones.
 
I guess my problem is the opposite; I'm not confident about what I know about anything, even if I ace all of the tests without studying
 
well, @teadawg, keep in touch with me :)
 
10:59 PM
@TedShifrin Oh, whoa whoa, does the B-eigenspace not have to be the entire space?
 
Of course not, @Kevin. The operator will have a set of eigenvalues.
 
@KevinDriscoll That's probably true.
 
@DanielFischer I tried it again:
 
@TedShifrin I will :P
 
Algorithm(D,E,K){
found=0;
HeapSort(D);
HeapSort(E);
i=1;
j=1;
while (i<=n and found==0){
if (abs(D[i]-E[j])<=K) found=1;
else j++;
if (j==m+1){
i++;
j=1;
}
}
if (found==0) printf("NO\n");
else printf("YES\n");
}


Could you tell me if it is right? :) @DanielFischer
 
11:00 PM
Of course, as far as undergraduate stuff goes, I only experienced Utrecht. That said, Utrecht generally goes as the best Dutch maths university, together with Leiden.
 
@TedShifrin I think maybe that's my quantum mechanics bias showing. All the operators I can think of span the whole Hilbert space. Or possibly if the Hilbert space is a Cartesian product of complete spaces, then they span one of the factors.
@Lord_Farin And here I thought Leiden was in Germany. Netherlands clearly needs to improve their PR machine.
 
No, no, @Kevin. The proof you gave only applies to a single eigenspace of $B$, one at a time.
 
@KevinDriscoll At least you know that the Netherlands are not a German province :P.
 
or is it The Netherlands is ... ? :D
 
@evinda That works, but has the wrong time complexity. You need to use that the arrays are sorted to achieve the required time complexity.
 
11:05 PM
Anyhow, @Lord, that student did well at Utrecht, ended up with a Ph.D. in probability/statistics at Stanford (although I'd tried to groom him for geometry), but ultimately decided to work for Yahoo. :)
 
@TedShifrin The siren call of the corporate life :).
 
Okay @TedShifrin I think its clear that I've moved too far out of my element. I'm not comprehending even your facially simple statements (an operator can have more than one eigenspace???)
 
(I fell for it too.)
 
I'm going to community college this semester, but I'm going to a 4-year institution to get a Bachelor's after I get my Associate's degree. My dream is to go to Berkeley for grad school
 
That's fine, @Lord. I don't think many of us really want to be academics.
@Kevin: Consider the matrix $\begin{bmatrix} 2&0\\0&3\end{bmatrix}$?
 
11:08 PM
@TedShifrin I think it's a tough collision with reality for most who try.
What are your experiences in this regard? What motivated you to pursue an academic career?
 
I knew from the end of high school and all through college that I loved teaching, @Lord, and, ostensibly, there was evidence I was good at it. :)
 
@TedShifrin Eigenvectors $\{0,1\}$ and $\{1,0\}$ span all of $\mathbb{R}^2$?
 
@teadawg: Berkeley is a big, anonymous place, but if you're very strong, you can do it. (I went there. :) )
Yes, @Kevin, but an eigenspace is specifically associated to one eigenvalue.
 
@teadawg1337 yep, $\phi/2$
 
@teadawg: You may have to spend 3 years at a good 4-year school to be competitive, but let's see what happens.
 
11:11 PM
@TedShifrin Nice. I like teaching as well, but I'd certainly die of boredom if I wouldn't do it at university level.
In the end, it turned out that I'm not capable of the longer-term focus required to do proper cutting-edge mathematical research.
 
Yeah, @Lord, college level, at least. I've enjoyed undergraduate teaching far more than graduate. Graduate students for the most part sit there like mute lumps. (I've taught several dozen grad courses.)
hides from mean ogre @Pedro
 
@TedShifrin Wait, what?
 
LOL
 
Also, I am curious about the bike problem. You never told me much more about it.
 
just teasing, sir @Pedro
well, you never solved it, @Pedro :)
 
11:13 PM
@TedShifrin Yes, students' curiosity is one of the main motivators.
 
What was the question?
 
LOL
 
Something about which was front and back, right?
 
Which direction was it headed? ...
A more challenging question is this: If I give you parametric equations for the back wheel, find the path of the front wheel :P
That's a good question for @Kevin, BTW.
 
@Ted what question?
 
11:15 PM
Hey @Pedro, I'm curious to hear about your experiences as a moderator.
How has it been so far?
 
@TedShifrin Anything to prove that my low high school GPA is a fluke (can't get far with a 2.7)
 
This one, @Kevin.
@teadawg: Just make sure you do well in junior college and college. Your high school GPA becomes irrelevant.
 
Also, @Ted does my proof then work if we assume that $B$ has non-degenerate eigenvalues
 
@DanielFischer So do we have to look only at the differences $|d_1-e_1|, |d_2-e_1|, |d_3-e_1| $ and so on, since $e_1$ is the smallest element of the set E and so if $|d_i-e_j| \leq K$ for some $1 \leq i \leq n, 1 \leq j \leq m$, it will also be $|d_i-e_1| \leq K$, or am I wrong?
 
You mean multiplicity $1$ for each, @Kevin? Well, then it's immediate. The eigenbases are the same for both.
 
11:16 PM
@TedShifrin I plan on doing so, family issues and emotional stresses did a number on me Junior and Senior year
 
@Ted Excellent, an important special case conquered. Small victories, etc etc.
 
@teadawg: Things happen. Just be sure to excel in junior college, even if you're in boring classes.
LOL @Kevin.
 
@Pedro :P
 
11:17 PM
@teadawg: I already sent you plenty of harder calculus stuff to work on :P
 
I'm absolutely serious.
 
@TedShifrin Interesting. When I was teaching, I enjoyed teaching the upper division courses better than the massive calculus courses. However, I didn't teach any graduate courses, so I don't know about those.
 
You don't believe me, for starters, @Pedro :D
 
@DanielFischer Or do we only have to look at $|d_1-e_1|$ ?
 
@TedShifrin I'm absolutely mesmerized at the word "dégénéré". Four tildes.
 
11:18 PM
@robjohn: Only as a postdoc at MIT did I do massive lectures. I loved the two I did there. At UGA all my calculus classes have been 35 or so.
no, @Pedro, accents aigus :)
 
@teadawg1337 I agree with Ted. Also, it's certainly possible to come back from that. My GPA sophomore year of undergrad was like a 2.0 because I had a breakdown due to stress from personal issues. Despite that, I managed to get into a tier 2 PhD program, so it's not the end of the road, for sure.
 
@PedroTamaroff Were you prepared? Has it scarred your soul beyond repair?
 
@Kevin @teadawg: As long as you explain such things in your letter/statement of purpose, sure, but I hope teadawg will stay on an even keel through college :)
 
@TedShifrin At UCLA, the beginning calculus courses had about 300
 
@Lord_Farin It is an interesting thing to do.
 
11:19 PM
@robjohn, yes. At MIT I did multivariable calc two springs in a row for 350 or so. I loved it.
 
I enjoy participating in meta a bit more. Sometimes, at least...
 
@evinda No, you need to look at more pairs. Any pair $(d_k, e_r)$ could be the unique close enough pair.
 
@TedShifrin Oh, we call them "tildes" in Spanish.
 
I almost miss you, @Pedro, but I'm scarcer, too, with the next 6-7 months being hell.
ñ is a tilde, @Pedro
 
@TedShifrin Yes, we call that a tilde too.
 
11:20 PM
@PedroTamaroff I noticed your posts against witch hunts :).
 
@TedShifrin I liked the student interaction in the smaller courses. The huge classes seemed very impersonal
 
I guess Pedro doesn't like being a witch ? :)
 
@TedShifrin Here.
 
@TedShifrin So theres a bike travelling along a path and you're going to give me parametric equation for, say, the center of mass of the back wheel and you want to know the trajectory of the front wheel?
 
@robjohn, yes, I realize. But I got a fair amount of interaction in those MIT classes. I enjoyed it, and a lot of them did too.
 
11:21 PM
@TedShifrin I could not gauge the course for everyone involved... I got blank stares no matter where I aimed a lecture.
 
Yes, @Kevin. Think of the wheels as point wheels. :)
 
@Pedro What do you like most about it?
 
I was bored out of my mind taking Calculus in high school, lol. The only thing that's kept me sane since then has been doing independent math work. I'm still amazed that I've been able to teach myself three semesters of Calc and two semesters of analysis in the past four months
 
@TedShifrin Point-like wheels. A reasonable assumption. I like it.
 
I'm fairly confident, but I won't get complacent
 
11:22 PM
When I switched to French for one lecture, I had a lot of angry students, @robjohn, but the motivation was a silly one ... to get votes for "The Big Screw" at MIT (you can google it — I won it :) )
@teadawg: And, if you're doing well but are bored, I promise to give you something challenging to think about.
 
@Lord_Farin I'm not sure.
 
@teadawg: Don't overestimate the thoroughness with which you've really learned all that.
 
@TedShifrin I think I need more information. For example, say the back wheel travels in a line at constant speed, the front wheel could be doing the same thing, or it could be rotating with constant angular speed about the point of contact on the back wheel.
 
@DanielFischer Could you give me a hint how we could do this? :/
 
@Kevin: The latter only if the rear wheel is fixed.
 
11:25 PM
@TedShifrin I'm not overestimating anything. I'll only know how well I taught myself once I take an equivalent college course
 
@TedShifrin Oh, is this like a real bike where the wheels are only able to rotate about 1 axis?
 
@TedShifrin I see you won in 1981, but it doesn't mention your charity.
 
@evinda If you know that $e_i < d_j - K$, can you have $\lvert d_r - e_i\rvert \leqslant K$ for any $r > j$?
 
@Kevin: a real bike where the front wheel turns and the rear wheel has no choice but to follow, yes.
Yeah, @robjohn, and, honestly, I don't remember what it was.
 
@TedShifrin Ah okay, that makes it easier. I was imagining that your bike was perhaps skidding on ice and so the only constraint was that the bike doesn't fall apart.
 
11:26 PM
no, no, @Kevin, no skidding. Wheels roll without slipping, as usual.
 
@TedShifrin Well you were gonna give me the trajectory! I'm only used to assuming rolling without slipping when you don't know the trajectory because that's the only reasonable assumption which will let you compute it.
 
@robjohn UCLA's classes are, j believe, capped at 210. That's what it was capped at for everything I've taught.
 
I give it to you abstractly, @Kevin, and, using it, you must solve for the trajectory of the front wheel.
 
I'm not confident at all with my knowledge of vector calculus, it's definitely a subject that's better to learn in a classroom setting than independently
 
Sadly, @teadawg, most people teaching that don't know it as well as they should :(
That's my specialty, @teadawg :D
 
11:29 PM
Well, I was fine with everything up until vector fields and the like.
Hmm, where was the tipping point....
 
@TedShifrin So what do you say to people like me, who consider this 3D-specific stuff mostly an erratic mess of explicit calculations?
 
Even coming to terms with the gradient vector is hard for students, conceptually, @teadawg. When you get to that stuff, I'll give you some problems ;)
I say you're ungeometric and don't appreciate things non-formal, @Lord :D
 
@TedShifrin My first reflex is to take that as a compliment :D.
 
LOL, I knew you would, and I meant every word I said.
OK, I'm off to finish cooking dinner. ... And then grading papers.
 
Haha :).
 
11:32 PM
Ah yes, I really struggled with surface integrals
 
Enjoy @Ted.
 
@teadawg: At some point, you might want to watch the videos of my multivariable/linear algebra course.
Bubye, @Lord. As always, a pleasure.
 
@Ted I'll probably be sleeping when you return, so enjoy your evening :).
The feeling is entirely reciprocal.
 
Thanks, @Lord. Schlaf gut :)
 
@KevinDriscoll How do you approach the problem?
 
11:34 PM
@DanielFischer So, isn't it like that?
    Algorithm(D,E,K){
      found=0;
      HeapSort(D);
      HeapSort(E);
      i=1;
      j=1;
      while (i<=n and found==0){
              if (abs(D[i]-E[j])<=K) found=1;
              else  i++;
      }
      if (found==0) printf("NO\n");
      else printf("YES\n");
 }
 
Thanks @Ted.
 
@TedShifrin I will, I'll make sure to binge-watch them when I get bored this semester
 
@Pedro: He doesn't know the original problem with the graph I posted.
 
I guess it is a pursuit problem?
 
LOL @persecution. PURSUIT :D
Bubye.
 
11:35 PM
@Ted cya
 
Pedro is the one with the persecution problem @Ted
 
Hello @Mike.
How are you doing?
 
@MikeMiller When I taught in 1986-1988, there were classes of 300 for calculus. My class was in Franz Hall, just to the east of MS.
 
Hmm.... Perhaps part of the issue is using Stewart's Calculus: ET (7E) to learn vector calculus
 
Iff a number $n$ is divisible by $3$, then the sum of its digits is also divisible by $3$.

Proof:

We know $n \mod 3 = 0$. By the basis representation theorem, $n$ can be re-written as $n_k10^k + n_{k-1}10^{k-1} + \cdots + 10n_1 + n_0 \equiv 0 \mod 3$. By the modular arithmetic addition rule, we can take $n_k10^k \mod 3 + n_{k-1}10^{k-1} \mod 3 + \cdots + 10n_1 \mod 3 + n_0 \mod 3$. But then we just get $n_k + n_{k-1} + \cdots + n_1 + n_0$, since $10 \mod 3 \equiv 1$.

Now suppose that the sum of the digits was divisible by 3. How can I prove that the representation in base $10$ is divisib
 
11:40 PM
@evinda You're never changing j in that.
 
@TedShifrin @PedroTamaroff I guess since the back wheel can't turn and the bike is rigid, any force applied ot the back wheel which results in some curvature of the path is due to the front wheel turning. Since the back wheel is rolling without slipping, the torque on the bike about the center of mass must be 0. So then the forces on the front and back wheels are the same. So then you just have to solve newton's 2nd using the derived force as a function of time from the back wheel's path.
 
@DanielFischer I did it like that because I thought that if $|d_1-e_1| \leq K \Rightarrow |d_1-e_2| \leq K$. Isn't it like that?
 
@KevinDriscoll You can be disappointed: I don't know what Newton's second law says.
 
:O
F=ma
 
@Pedro I am very disappointed. $\vec{F} = m \vec{a} = m \frac{d^2}{dt^2} \vec{x}$
 
11:43 PM
I do remember that $F=ma$.
 
@skullpatrol @PedroTamaroff VECTOR ARROWS!!! You MUST include vector arrows for full points.
 
@KevinDriscoll If someone did that to you at least once, I am sorry. No one deserves that.
 
Now since Ted is giving us the path parametrically and not necessarily as a function of time, we may have to do some chain rule nonsense to massage the data. But that's not so hard.
@PedroTamaroff We do it for all our introductory courses. You may not realize how many students don't understand the difference between $F = ma$ and $\vec{F} = m \vec{a}$
 
Off to bed. Goodnight all.
 
11:46 PM
@KevinDriscoll I don't see any difference.
 
Later pal @Lord_Farin
 
Unless you make it clear what you mean by $F$ and $\vec F$.
 
@Pedro Well there no consistent way to interpret $F = ma$ because $m$ is a scalar but $a$ is a vector but you're notating them the same way
 
@KevinDriscoll They're just letters.
 
@PedroTamaroff They represent physical quantities, though
 
11:48 PM
I thought that force is implied to be a vector
 
If you write $m$ in a physics class, everyone is going to assume you mean mass
 
Like speed and velocity
 
Unless its VERY clear from context that you mean something else
@teadawg1337 Force is a vector. But does $F$ represent $\vec{F}$ or $\lvert \vec{F} \rvert$?
 
Hmm, that's a good point @Kevin
 
@evinda No, it isn't like that.
 
11:49 PM
@skullpatrol Speed is a scalar quantity, though
IIRC
 
Once you get to the upper level it's clear which you mean from context. But at the introductory level we force the students to always write the arrows so that their notation is as clear as possible and doesn't lead to mental confusion.
 
@DanielFischer Because of the fact that we could also have negative numbers?
 
@KevinDriscoll Nah. Mathematicians don't need to do that.
 
@DanielFischer Do what?
 
@KevinDriscoll Use $\vec{x}$.
 
11:52 PM
We can say "directed" numbers :D
 
If I'm required to write that way for a course, then I will do so. I prefer to write just $F=ma$ because I know that $F$ and $a$ are both vectors
 
@evinda Whether $e_i$ and $d_j$ can be negative or not doesn't matter.
 
Speed is the magnitude of a velocity vector, direction is irrelevant
 
@DanielFischer but...but...but how are you going to differentiate between vecotrs and scalars???
:-(
 
I can differentiate between scalar and vector quantities mentally, it's very easy for me to tell when a quantity has a directional component
 
11:56 PM
vecotrs @KevinDriscoll
 
@DanielFischer Could you explain me why? I am confused now... :/
 
@KevinDriscoll Context. You know what what is, don't you?
 
@DanielFischer Ya in practice that's what we often do. But when we don't do it in class we get people trying ot do things like $F_g = G \frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}$
 
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