The h Bar

12:01 AM

@ChrisWhite Are the LIGO rumors still just rumors?

@HDE226868 Someone told me that there is a mechanical transduction device attached to the LIGO mirrors. A few people have the authority to covertly inject test signals via these transducers. If this is done, nobody says anything until the signal is analyzed and the entire collaboration agrees that they are ready to submit a paper.

At that time, one of the special people stands up and says "just kidding".

ACuriousMind

that's what Chris also said

But he said this time the rumors were that they aren't kidding ;)

HDE 226868

@DanielSank Yeah, that was what I had heard.

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind I could be wrong, but I think Chris heard that from me while he was in Santa Barbara.

So this whole thing could be made up. I forget where I heard about it.

ACuriousMind

'fess up, @ChrisWhite, is DanielSank your source?

DanielSank

12:08 AM

@ACuriousMind Ooooooooh, an apostrophe in "'fess". I like it.

The lack of capitalization is a bold choice as well.

Oh, hey, do any of you guys understand what it means that a Lorentz distribution has no moments?

ACuriousMind

I think it just means that moments are, for generic probability distributions, not the right thing to look at.

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind That's a somewhat political answer.

:)

@ACuriousMind I guess one could ask what moments mean in the first place. I can't answer that, so maybe it shouldn't bother me that the Lorentz distribution doesn't have them.

New question:
Suppose I have a coin flipping process. If I get heads I get +1, and if I get tails I get 0. If I have a nearly fair coin, then after $N$ flips, the probability distribution for my score is approximately Gaussian with mean $pN$ where $p$ is the probability of getting heads.

However, in the limit that $p \rightarrow 0$, $N \rightarrow \infty$, $Np \rightarrow \rho$, the distribution is Poisson.

What's the deal with that? Why are Gaussian and Poisson distributions related in this way? Is there any intuition here or is this just a sort of 1+1=2 of probability distributions?

bolbteppa

@DanielSank I have been trying to understand moments for a long time, there is a cool link to the Laplace transform, and Taylor series, and means and variances and stuff, but I have no understanding really, especially not one that explains intuitively why the Lorentz/Cauchy distribution has no moments :(

@DanielSank e.g. stats.stackexchange.com/questions/102664/…

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank That's not a relation between Gaussian and Poisson, I think, that's just taking two different limits on the binomial distribution.

DanielSank

12:24 AM

@bolbteppa I do understand that moments are the taylor coefficients of the Laplace transform, but what's that mean?

@ACuriousMind Your sentence is confuse.

If A and B are both limits of C, aren't A and B "related"?

bolbteppa

I don't know, and I don't know how you see it linking to means, variances, and higher order moments in a nice way either beyond too-vague a handwave

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank I would not say that that is a generally sensible thing to say. I can give you functions $f(x)$ such that $\lim_{x\to 0} f(x) = a$ and $\lim_{x\to\infty} f(x) =b$, that does not imply any relation between $a$ and $b$.

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind Good point.

Very good point indeed.

ACuriousMind

Not that it forbids a relation, but the limit thing alone isn't an argument either way for me

dmckee

12:36 AM

@Slereah Heck, I just made my modern physics show that the light pressure energy density ratio in classical physics is the same as the ratio for a photon as part of a take-home test.

@AngusTheMan You're welcome to ask, but we click-signed a thingy that says we won't tell, so it doesn't do much good.

Slereah

They swore a terrible oath

demons will take them if they reveal it

Is he also banned from the chat

I see him here

Does he watch us silently

Peeking through the window

dmckee

@Slereah User names a avatars are not unique.

Slereah

Oh, it's a parody account

I see

user54412

@ACuriousMind I said there were multiple sources ;)

user54412

@HDE226868 If they weren't, you'd already know. Also I'm not the type to spend any time refreshing news agglomeration sites, so the world knows everything at least 24 hours before I do.

user54412

12:52 AM

@DanielSank More directly, doesn't Poisson itself approach Gaussian for large $\lambda$?

HDE 226868

@ChrisWhite Ah, right.

user54412

Ever since I learned about them I've always had this nagging intuition that just as Gaussian is a special distribution over the reals, Poisson is special over the semi-infinite line. But I've never been able to articulate what "special" means here, so maybe there's nothing to it.

Slereah

Have some French music

Partenaire Particulier - Partenaire Particulier (Clip Video)

►

Guys, is there a way to autosort bibliography in LaTeX by order of apparition?

user54412

Use a different class/package/.bst file?

Slereah

@ACuriousMind : Well I kinda write them in random order in the bibliography

Only then do I use them in references

So it would be nice if I could sort them by apparition or by name

ACuriousMind

1:03 AM

@Slereah It was a dumb remark because apparitions are ghosts, the correct word is appearance, just ignore me :P

Slereah

Ah

Damn English

John Duffield

ACuriosMind on ignore :P

ACuriousMind

@Slereah Catchy.

Slereah

@ACuriousMind Care to guess what decade this was made in

user54412

where would we be without Germans to keep our English correct?

4

ACuriousMind

1:05 AM

@Slereah Uh...I'd wager it is older than me.

Slereah

(The answer was "The 80's")

DanielSank

@ChrisWhite Well let's see. Poisson with mean $\lambda$ is $p(n) = e^{-\lambda}(\lambda^n/n!)$. Right?

Not seeing how that becomes a Gaussian.

Slereah

For large $\lambda$ it approaches $\frac{\lambda^n}{n!}$

Which is a term for the exponentials

So... no, not even close

ACuriousMind

You need to sum over n to get the exponential

DanielSank

@Slereah What happened to the $e^{-\lambda}$ factor?

0celo7

1:12 AM

@ACuriousMind How long?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Can you not, like, just look at his profile? :P

Slereah

Oh wait

0celo7

@ACuriousMind How do I do that

Slereah

The limit is 0, not 1

nvm

0celo7

WOW

That's a long ban...

I'm dying to find out what happened

I play some BF4 and JD gets banned

ACuriousMind

1:14 AM

@0celo7 Subsequent bans just get longer, it's no indication that it was something really bad.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Has be been banned on the main site before?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 I think so

0celo7

Ah

Carry on, then

ACuriousMind

BTW, @Slereah is correct that we get Gaussian distribution for large $\lambda$ from Poisson, one has to use Stirling's formula for the factorial.

0celo7

ACM is a statistics master too

Slereah

1:17 AM

Oh right

Good old Stirling

0celo7

There is literally nothing he can't do

Slereah

Stirling is neat but I never remember the formula

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Not by far, but binomial, Gaussian and Poisson are one the distributions one always encounters.

Slereah

$n! \approx e^n \times $ some other shit

DanielSank

It's $\ln n! \approx n \ln n - n$.

Slereah

1:18 AM

In physics it is basically all we do

at least in theoretical physics

Wait, what is Boltzmann

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind $\lambda$ large compared to what?

ACuriousMind

Wait, let me find the exercise sheet where we did this

DanielSank

It seems unlikely that a distribution with all constant cumulants can magically turn into a distribution where the cumulants are all zero (except for the first and second) just by having a larger mean.

Slereah

Is it me

user54412

roe.ac.uk/japwww/teaching/astrostats/astrostats2012_part2.pdf

ACuriousMind

1:24 AM

math.wm.edu/~leemis/chart/UDR/PDFs/PoissonNormal.pdf

DanielSank

@ChrisWhite I see.

@ACuriousMind Interesting approach.

user54412

@DanielSank I actually had never heard of cumulants before. Looking them up, you're right it does seem strange.

user54412

That the cumulants of the limit distribution do not match the limit of the cumulants for the sequence of distributions is... yet another example of limits not commuting I think.

user54412

That's a 10^9 "billion" or a 10^12 "billion"? (great picture!) — Rolazaro Azeveires 26 mins ago

user54412

user54412

1:34 AM

So red countries say "billion" means $10^9$, blue say $10^{12}$.

user54412

Why though is this a thing?

user54412

As in, if all English speakers agree on the word, and I write a sentence in English, why does another language's use of the same string matter?

ACuriousMind

Because it is very confusing that my Billion is your trillion and your billion is my Milliarde?

And non-native speakers tend to translate their "billion" as billion, regardless whether they actually mean 10^9 or not?

0celo7

@DanielSank eating gay hating chicken

user54412

But there are other false friends that no one gets confused about. If I say "gross," are you going to ask if I mean groß or brutto?

Slereah

1:44 AM

The best words are the ones that mean totally opposite things depending on context

DanielSank

@ChrisWhite As usual, you are probably right about that.

ACuriousMind

@ChrisWhite No, because context. In the situation of "billion", there is no context to guide me, because 10^9 and 10^12 are both numbers.

user54412

I feel I didn't give any context with "gross" either -- just that it's English

user54412

I guess I just feel numbers have this particularly confounding nature to most people, compared to natural language

Slereah

It is amusing to think that some people feel like mathematicians are very good at counting

ACuriousMind

1:48 AM

Also, most people tend to think of their way to say numbers as "logical"

user54412

Also, only an astronomer would argue that 10^9 and 10^12 are confusingly close to one another ;)

Slereah

@ChrisWhite : What about a cosmologist

A factor of $10^{120}$ is an acceptable margin of error in cosmology

ACuriousMind

@ChrisWhite Okay, if you just ask me about the word and don't use it in a sentence, it seems that I need to rely on my knowledge that it's an English word and ignore the (not that similar sounding) groß. But look at it like this: The progession million-billion-trillion exists in both languages. It is hard to get used to the "millions" being the same but not the "billions" or "trillions". If you don't regularly talk about numbers, you are not going to have this memorized.

0celo7

2:15 AM

RIP productivity

ACuriousMind

2:36 AM

There is something weird at the answers to this question - user44430 answered twice, and the accepted answer is a reply to comments on their first answer. The second (accepted) answer is not really an answer to the question because of this, just an elaboration on the comments and contents of the first. What is the proper way of dealing with this, @dmckee @Qmechanic @DavidZ?

Note: Asking the user to edit one of them and delete the other isn't possible because they haven't been here in two years, and both answers are moderately highly upvoted.

dmckee

I could just merge the second answer into the first and delete the second, but we generally avoid messing with accepted answers. That said, the accepted answer doesn't answer the question asked, but (apparently) the questions the OP meant.

And the OP has also not been around since around the time that question was asked. Great.

ACuriousMind

Yeah. Right now, that reads like a forum thread whose timeline has been jumbled, not like a Q&A, but I can't really see what exactly should be done about it.

user54412

I had one thought while reading that thread, and at the end I see I turned that thought into a comment 3 years ago.

ACuriousMind

@ChrisWhite Wow, you're consistent with yourself across three years. Either impressive or a sign of stagnation ;)

skull petrol

3:08 AM

What do you @0celo7 think?

no_choice99

3:48 AM

hey people, what's up with this answer from anna v? It seems compltly off topic as if she replied to another question: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/19642/… what do you think? What should we do about it?

0celo7

4:17 AM

@skullpetrol I think my laptop is not powerful enough to play it and it looks like crap.

But I'll keep it.

I'm probably gonna play it anyway :P

Also Halle Berry making a cameo as a preset face

tfw overencumbered by 100 pounds

Stan Shunpike

4:44 AM

Can major chat rooms by frozen by mods?

ACuriousMind

@StanShunpike Yes, mods can freeze everything.

@no_choice99 Just flag it as not-an-answer (and leave a comment if you want to notify her it, but since the thing is almost three years old, that seems kinda pointless)

Stan Shunpike

@ACuriousMind hi! Long time no speak! :D

@ACuriousMind but why?

ACuriousMind

@StanShunpike Hiya, how are you?

Stan Shunpike

@ACuriousMind I am amazing. Life is great. School is a ton of fun and Im up to 113 songs now

@ACuriousMind the scifi chat got frozen

ACuriousMind

@StanShunpike Uh, e.g. to stop a debate that's gotten too heated?

Stan Shunpike

4:49 AM

Uh, cant u just suspend users?

Why shut down the room?

ACuriousMind

@StanShunpike Well, if there's like half a dozen people involved slinging accusations at each other, you'll want to freeze first and sort out the mess in peace

Besides, SciFi already has a new one

Stan Shunpike

I didnt realize discussions could spiral so much on SE lol

Then again, I usually only engage with civil users

ACuriousMind

That sounds like a wise decision ;)

0celo7

@ACuriousMind help

should I follow the people back to Sanctuary or go to Diamond city

and what do I do with all of this crap

@StanShunpike Absolutely brutal.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Don't have Fallout 4, you're on your own :P

0celo7

4:58 AM

@ACuriousMind D:

get it

ACuriousMind

Nope, I'm not convinced I really need it when I've got Skyrim and Fallout: NV to scratch my open-world sandbox itch.

And I'm kinda angry at Bethesda for always essentially just slightly improving the old formula instead of delivering something really new and interesting

0celo7

@ACuriousMind ur a nub

@ACuriousMind it does seem very fallout-y

story might actually be interesting this time around

But I'm not 100% convinced I should keep it.

It barely runs.

ACuriousMind

I wonder how large the budget for this one was.

0celo7

It's certainly more graphics intensive than Skyrim

Or GTA5

or BF4

I'm still amazed that Witcher 3 wouldn't run though!

ACuriousMind

Well, no surprise there, it's also newer than those :P

0celo7

5:08 AM

It will never be those, correct.

But that's a tautological statement.

It is not what it is not.

ACuriousMind

lol, that was a terrible typo

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Meh, GTA5 is April.

The others are old, correct...

I need a desktop.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 That's really a shame.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind At least I'm getting 60fps in Fallout on the lowest settings.

TW3 was 20fps.

Crazy.

I might try to mess with the Fallout settings

I can maybe get some medium settings @ 30fps

@ACuriousMind It can be alt-tabbed without self-destructing it or the computer

ACuriousMind

Wow. Now I must buy it ;)

0celo7

5:13 AM

uh

I take that back

ACuriousMind

lol

0celo7

It disappeared

Interestingly, the load times are better than Skyrim!

It's like my computer issues don't affect it

wait!

I opened it again in Steam and it came right back to where I was

this is Sorcery

Woo!

0celo7

5:35 AM

Oh my god @Slereah was right. You have to pick up everything.

0celo7

5:47 AM

That's an issue.

Stan Shunpike

7:28 AM

@0celo7 That guy was a bit brutal lol. Got something a bit more electronic?

Fermi paradox

11:33 AM

@ChrisWhite I see. Thank you for the response. I created a related question. Feel free to drop by and share your knowledge :)

0celo7

2:29 PM

Hello

Hello.

Hello

Hello.

Hi

Still Hello. :D

2:33 PM

:D

0celo7

And you people say I don't drop things

The Dark Side

4

Q: Did this twitter bot predict the Paris shootings 2 days before it happened?

A twitter bot under the handle PZFeed Ebooks posted this tweet on November 11th, at 11:44 AM. Note the date carefully, that's November 11th, 2015. It reads: BREAKING: Death toll from Paris terror attack rises to at least 120 with 270 others injured And yet, there are some news articles...

!!!

Note that the tweet doesn't mention any date. It would have "correctly" predicted any medium-scale terror attack between now and the heat death of the universe. That's a very long time with (unfortunately likely) a lot of terror attacks. It's bound to get close sometime. Saying something vague once that randomly turns out to be true is not a prediction. Consistently and repeatedly saying very detailed things that turn out to be true significantly more often than would be expected randomly, that's a prediction. If someone really had "The Gift", you would expect them to be right all the … — Jörg W Mittag 41 mins ago

^ One of the times when I learnt something positive from Skeptics.SE !!

0celo7

@HDE226868 Why no Nigerian flag? More people hurt than in Paris...

The Dark Side

^

0celo7

Funny that I didn't see that attack plastered all over CNN

skill patrol

2:40 PM

srsly?

0celo7

The Dark Side

@0celo7 You see, one advantage of a black avatar is - it could stand for either of those!

0celo7

I guess the attack in Nigeria was a blood puddle.

skill patrol

executing hostages one at a time

HDE 226868

@0celo7 (Sigh). Wait a while for the chat gravatar to update. I changed it back to normal until I can think of something.

0celo7

2:48 PM

@HDE226868 I don't think I care either way, but it would be nice to know why terror attack in Paris = flag, but terror attack in Nigeria = no flag. And if you say "I didn't know about the one in Nigera," well that's very telling of our media...

alarge

@0celo7 Wait, what happened in Nigeria? Also given that they suffer regular attacks from Boko Haram and folks, I can see why it might not be considered front page news any more. This goes for Kenya and Lebanon as well, both of which also had major terrorist attacks in the past couple of days.

skill patrol

CNN: Hostages texting that they are being killed 1-by-1. Begging for police raid.

Tweeted by AnneBayefsky on November 13, 2015 at 10:55 PM

0celo7

@alarge Exactly.

So because they have them all the time somehow France is more deserving of support?

skill patrol

what a text message...

0celo7

(I'm not saying you're saying that, @alarge .)

HDE 226868

2:50 PM

@alarge . . . Yeah. That would make sense. Although I don't know much about the situation there, besides information about certain specific attacks.

skill patrol

@0celo7 I think it is a race thing

0celo7

@skillpatrol Let me tell you one thing. I despise race baiting.

alarge

@0celo7 What I am saying is that if suicide bombers are a weekly occurence in say Iraq, it's not surprising they don't make the news any more. Paris on the other hand is not regularly attacked. Obviously it also hits closer to home to the people writing the news, both culturally and geographically.

0celo7

@alarge Of course, I'm not going to argue with that.

HDE 226868

@0celo7 "I didn't know about the one in Nigeria" was going to be my response, and yes, it's quite telling of the media to some extent (see @alarge's point), but I'm not as aware of foreign news as I was. I only found out about the Paris attacks through chat, although I probably would have seen the news later.

skill patrol

2:54 PM

@0celo7 I'm seriously not baiting. Just look at the spelling "terror attack in Nigeria"

0celo7

@skillpatrol ...What?

HDE 226868

@skillpatrol ?

skill patrol

the world is not a literate as you guys think

0celo7

Nigeria

The Federal Republic of Nigeria, commonly referred to as Nigeria /naɪˈdʒɪəriə/, is a federal constitutional republic in West Africa, bordering Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. It comprises 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Abuja is located. Nigeria is officially a democratic secular country. Modern-day Nigeria has been the site of numerous kingdoms and tribal states for millennia. The modern state originated from British colonial rule beginning in the 19th...

What?

alarge

Despite Googling, the only piece of news of interest I can find from Nigeria in the last couple of days seems to be vanguardngr.com/2015/11/… (which I doubt is a real news site). Is @0celo7 trolling again?

skill patrol

2:59 PM

@0celo7 the bold type letters mean what? to an illiterate

@0celo7 put away the F word please :-)

0celo7

@alarge It was from last year, I misread.

Regardless, I'm sure I could find some terror attack in some non-western country. My point stands.

@skillpatrol No.

alarge

@0celo7 Well given that you seem to confuse countries and dates, I'd hardly be blaming the news media here.

0celo7

List of terrorist incidents, 2015

This is a timeline of terrorist incidents which took place in 2015, including attacks by violent non-state actors for political or other unknown motives. == List guidelinesEdit == Casualties figures in this list are the total casualties of the incident including immediate casualties and later casualties (such as people who succumbed to their wounds long after the attacks occurred). The casualties listed are the victims, perpetrator casualties are listed separately (e.g. (+1 perpetrator) indicate that along the victims of the attack, one perpetrator was also killed/injured). Casualty totals may...

@alarge I confused countries?

HDE 226868

@0celo7 I notice that the attacks with the most deaths are all Boko Haram or ISIS. And those have the most deaths by far. At the same time, I'd be willing to bet that there have been more ISIS attacks, with a higher total death toll. Not all incidents are equal. While I'm not trying to write off even a single attack, I'm just putting some things in perspective.

0celo7

@HDE226868 Yeah, this does not include the multi hundred death massacres that ISIS conducts.

alarge

3:07 PM

@0celo7 Well at this point I'm confused as to what your point even was. There were indeed terrorist attacks happening ~at the same time as the Paris one in Kenya and in Lebanon. These were features in the news the same way they always are: mentioned on the front page but as they are sadly rather common, they might not have made top news. For some reason you went on about Nigeria.

0celo7

@HDE226868 Well, the Paris attacks where ISIS too. (Maybe?)

HDE 226868

@0celo7 Well, yeah, they're trying to expand a war.

@0celo7 They've claimed responsibility; there's not a lot of evidence to back that up. In any case, I was trying to use that to support my point.

alarge

As for Boko Haram's acts in Nigeria, they've been featured heavily before with the bring back our girls etc.

0celo7

@alarge Yes.

@alarge Click the Skeptics post.

I misread the date and thought it was recent.

Well, the post is, but the terror attack wasn't. Hence the confusion.

Now I'm off to shower and breakfast.

@skillpatrol This is not the first time you've tried to pull shit like this. I suggest you never do it again if you want to talk to me...

skill patrol

What?

0celo7

3:12 PM

@skillpatrol Race baiting.

skill patrol

get real

0celo7

It has nothing to do with Nigeria or the people's skin. @alarge got it right.

They're far away geographically and culturally.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 While there is a point to be made about the differing responses to incidents depending on country and victims, I think the combative tone is not constructive at all because it comes across as you saying France doesn't deserve the support they receive. (Not saying you actually believe that, but the point should be that others, too, deserve attention, not that the recent attacks don't)

5

skill patrol

^

ACuriousMind

@skillpatrol And I've honestly no idea what you were trying to do there. Don't imply things, say them or don't say them.

3

And if it's a discussion about race you want to have, please don't say it because that's the sort of inflammatory topic the SciFi chat was frozen for.

0celo7

3:16 PM

@ACuriousMind I agree, but then again I don't think this is very combative.

@ACuriousMind Oooh, when did this happen?

skill patrol

2

Q: Putting it all behind us - Renaming the Chatroom

As everyone must be aware by now, there have been a LOT of problems recently in our primary chatroom, Mos Eisley, culminating in the room being frozen and some of our most active users being temporarily suspended. Other people have already posted on meta about why this came about and what kind of...

discussion chat

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Look at their meta, few days ago. Apparently they were unable to have a civil discussion even after repeated intervention and Shog9 just got fed up with them and froze the entire thing

skill patrol

chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/198/mos-eisley

ACuriousMind

Also, high-rep users banned for a week, drama all around

skill patrol

@ACuriousMind Chris White and I had a perfectly calm and rational discussion about race and color, I don't see why 0celo7 can't?

ACuriousMind

3:30 PM

@skillpatrol Not sure what kind of answer to that you're looking for, or why it's addressed to me.

skill patrol

just an observation pal

nothing else :-)

ACuriousMind

3

Q: Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline

The Elevator Pitch This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine the user who will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to grab their attention. It should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. Make every... word... count. Here are some creative exam...

discussion top-7

What is this?

And why did someone feel the need to bump it with a trivial formatting edit after years?

skill patrol

Marketing :D

ACuriousMind

Also, those answers are all bad :P

skill patrol

True dat

Einstein asks, Schrödinger answers?

Physics Meta

3:44 PM

0

Q: Use this userscript when you share a link

I see that there are many links in comments that don't have link text, therefore hard for me to know if the link is worth to click. For example, this link: Entropy and the principle of least action You are hesitate to click on that, right? You are feeling to wasting time if you click on that, ar...

discussion comments hyperlinks

0celo7

3:54 PM

I think my comment @alarge got me a suspension.

Oh well.

@skillpatrol I'm sure we can have a conversation, but the way you seemed to be insinuating things, it would not be productive.

skill patrol

and you call me "race baiting" :(

come on this is Raider nation

we had the first minorities at QB and head coach

0celo7

Then explain what you meant by your Nigeria comment.

skill patrol

and the first woman ever in head office

if you don't wanna roll with da nation that's your choice, just don't call me a race baiter pal...I wear my Raider colors proud

0celo7

So you're not going to explain what you meant

You have no clue what race baiting means.

skill patrol

Talk:Race baiting

== Howard Dean Comment == I wonder if Howard Dean's recent remarks depicting Republicans as a "white, christian party" would be a form of race baiting. On the face of it, there's a certain truth to his statement, but the implication that lies behind his words is that republicans are a narrow, elitist, close-minded group of people. In a sense, he disparages republicans and at the same time clumps all white christians into a monolithic group. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.136.231.97 (talk) June 21, 2005 == Second definition == I moved this second definition of "race baiting" fr...

Slereah

4:03 PM

It is when you put a carrot at the end of the track so your horse runs faster

skill patrol

like grey hound dog racing :P

Slereah

Except horses

And the horse is called Sugarcube

and he is a pretty pony

0celo7

wow the SFF chat is still frozen

why

skill patrol

ask Shog9

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 they've got a new one. The old one won't get unfrozen.

0celo7

4:10 PM

@ACuriousMind o.o

Why

Loong

@0celo7 Flags are the path to the dark side. Flags lead to Mods. Mods lead to CMs. CMs lead to suffering.

2

skill patrol

yup, they get flag happy in the math room too

Slereah

Can we send Duffield to the math room

I'm sure he has opinions on math

0celo7

Fallout crashed

skill patrol

radiation?

Slereah

4:16 PM

yeah it's still fairly buggy

Physics Meta

0

Q: Should "biased views and crackpottery" comments be deleted?

For example, the comments in this answer: Entropy and the principle of least action. As they are viewed as biased views and crackpottery, should we delete them? Should I flag them if I meet?

discussion scope comments

Bass

@ACuriousMind a question on this answer of yours: physics.stackexchange.com/a/130105/86781 is an axial vector like the magnetic field just in three dimensions a pseudovector, or also in higher dimensions?

0celo7

Should I give Jet to Mama Murphy, @Slereah

Slereah

I didn't

And Codsworth liked that?

So it was good for me I s'ppose

Codsworth is a proper gentleman

He says no to drugs

0celo7

Is there anything in Lexington?

Bass

4:25 PM

@ACuriousMind I'm asking because I think the magnetic field lives in $\Lambda^2\mathbb{R}^n$ and not in $\Lambda^{n-1}\mathbb{R}^n$, but that means it's a pseudovector only in $\mathbb{R}^3$.

ACuriousMind

@Bass "axial vector" and "pseudovector" mean the same. However, when going to higher dimensions, you need to think carefully whether your object is really defined as a pseudovector or is a bivector in $\Lambda^2$. For instance, angular momentum is a bivector (as evident from the definition $\vec r \times \vec p$, which is $\star(r\wedge p)$). That's a pseudovector in 3D, but not in higher dimensions.

@Bass Correct, the magnetic field is really living in $\Lambda^2$ and is only a pseudovector in 3D.

Slereah

The terminology for forms is a bit muddy :p

Too many words

The magnetic field is a pseudoscalar in 2D!

ACuriousMind

@Slereah One problem is that the mathematically more natural objects are forms, but the objects we always tend to work with are vector fields.

@Slereah Yes

Bass

@ACuriousMind ok cool

Slereah

I remember a whole article about how the cross product was Bad

Because "Bivectors aren't vectors!"

Which seems a bit weird considering that you can always apply the hodge star to make it one :p

ACuriousMind

4:30 PM

@Slereah I think it is kinda bad because e.g. you tend to think of angular momentum as being "about an axis", the one defined by $\vec r \times \vec p$. But is it really about a plane of rotation, and that, not the axis viewpoint, is what generalizes

Bass

@ACuriousMind does that correspond to the six-dimensional representation of $SO(4)$? I mean, is it correct to say a four-dimensional bivector transforms in the six-dimensional representation of $SO(4)$?

Slereah

yeah but as far as the evil of physics use of math goes, it's pretty mild

ACuriousMind

@Bass Yes, that's what the field strength tensor $F$ does, for instance.

Bass

ok thanks!

ACuriousMind

@Slereah I tend to think this is different from the usual "physicists don't care much about math" because it's really a different concept whether you think of the axis or the plane as the fundamental geometrical objects

But I also know that I'm, as so often, in a minority to think that :P

AngusTheMan

4:37 PM

anyone have any experience in stochastic penalty function techniques? i.e Monte Carlo with a penalty function rather than a barrier method?

0celo7

OH GOD THE GHOULS

AngusTheMan

Penalty method

Penalty methods are a certain class of algorithms for solving constrained optimization problems. A penalty method replaces a constrained optimization problem by a series of unconstrained problems whose solutions ideally converge to the solution of the original constrained problem. The unconstrained problems are formed by adding a term, called a penalty function, to the objective function that consists of a penalty parameter multiplied by a measure of violation of the constraints. The measure of violation is nonzero when the constraints are violated and is zero in the region where constraints are...

Slereah

Ghouls aren't too bad

Well

Except

THE GLOWING ONES

Watch out for those

Also apparently now ghouls act like zombies

Which is a bit weird

0celo7

What do you mean

dmckee

@ACuriousMind (In re complaints about some terrorist action getting more press than others) There is also a question about where the people who don't hear about the attacks in Lebanon get their news.

I talked to one guy who was complaining that "they" never covered "those things" and I asked where he got his news.

Slereah

4:39 PM

@0celo7 Well often they lie down as if dead

dmckee

One major US network. No news papers, no news magazines, no on-line sources.

Slereah

And then wake up to attack you

Like zombies in movies

Except ghouls are supposed to be more feral creatures

dmckee

Yeah, well, if you also listened to BBC world service or something you'd hear more!

@AngusTheMan TeX does something related to make layout decisions, so I've tried diddle the penalty rates to avoid two unwanted outcomes at once. Delicate business, that.

alarge

@AngusTheMan Sure. Just add a penalty and then take that into account when you do something with the distibution. I suppose more typical use cases are when you want say one process to sample one area of the phase space and another in another area, and then combine the histrograms. Like say in umbrella sampling.

ACuriousMind

@dmckee Not a US-specific phenomenon, many people do live in a filter bubble. Which is difficult to avoid, because we are creatures of habit and tend to stick to what we know, read the things we've always read and watch the things we've always watched.

dmckee

4:46 PM

Yeah. And the internet era has made it all the more tempting because there is so much to chose from. You can never sort through all of it even if you didn't care to have a life.

Just off-load that hassle on someone else and read the dribble that they approve of and voila! you're "informed".

I get it.

But you have to see enough of what the people who hold 'wrong' opinions are saying and writing to understand their arguments or you are not engaging in reasoned disagreement but thoughtless dogmatism.

And you have to hear it from the horses mouth lest you mistake a strawman for their real argument, which I think is happening a lot right now.

ACuriousMind

@dmckee Well, in a way you've always done that with newspapers and other things - you trust that the journalists you read will make an effort to inform you about relevant things in an objective way.

It's just becoming increasingly obvious that opinion and information are not easily separated at all.

Physics Meta

0

Q: Does the question count inculde duplicates?

At the time of writing this there where 64,202 questions according to the figure given on the questions-newest tab. What does this number represent, is it the total number of questions on the website, the total number of unique questions (i.e. so that duplicates aren't included), does it include ...

support design

Slereah

Hm

CTCs in wormholes are non-contractible

But is there a cover without CTCs?

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