Starred posts | chat.stackexchange.com

quid

Feb 16, 2020 12:33

@amWhy yes, the issue is a bit tricky. In that we all send away users for no reason other than that it is a necessary consequence of some law, the ramifications of which are unclear to me.

Martin Sleziak

Jan 4, 2020 06:03

Happy New Year! Guten Rutsch!

Martin Sleziak

Dec 24, 2019 06:38

Happy Holidays!

quid

Nov 3, 2019 12:27

@MartinSleziak How do you keep track of this?

user21820

Oct 15, 2019 22:43

Garden-path sentence

A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning. "Garden path" refers to the saying "to be led down [or up] the garden path", meaning to be deceived, tricked, or seduced. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Fowler describes such sentences as unwittingly laying a "false scent".Such a sentence leads the reader toward a seemingly familiar meaning that is actually not the one intended. It is a...

Yemon Choi

Sep 8, 2019 14:06

In the present context, another down-side of using this construction is that "the main reason it was not..." suggests that this is going to start a new clause, as in "the main reason it was not crowded yesterday is that ..."

Yemon Choi

Sep 8, 2019 14:04

@quid I think the phrase is legitimate, but these days that construction sounds slightly archaic. It could still be useful for emphasis and effect, in an opinion column or a speech or a novel, but I think the more usual word order will avoid potential confusion

quid

Sep 8, 2019 13:35

Since there might be other things to remark, the main question is regarding the word order in "the main reason it was not", which deviates from the more usual "it was not the main reason". I believe to have seen this used for emphasis.

quid

Sep 8, 2019 13:32

Hello @Yemon, as a native speaker what would you think of this phrase: "The vote might have contributed to your problem, but the main reason it was not."

Martin Sleziak

Aug 30, 2019 14:31

Just a minor addition - for the tag-wikis on meta, I consider a useful thing to include some links to frequently asked questions on the topic; both links to the local per-site-meta and to Meta Stack Exchange.

user21820

Aug 28, 2019 11:02

The Hardest Mandelbrot Zoom Ever In 2014,10^198 : New record - 350 000 000 iterations

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quid

Aug 21, 2019 22:13

room topic changed to whatever, quid: Musings and chat about math, SE and more. All welcome. At times, posting songs with "time" in the title. (no tags)

Aloizio Macedo

Aug 13, 2019 15:56

Iron & Wine - Time After Time

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quid

Aug 13, 2019 15:36

Daft Punk - One More Time (Official Video)

Martin Sleziak

Aug 6, 2019 04:52

Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time (Official Video)

quid

Jul 20, 2019 09:18

@Isa I am a joke. I thought this would suffice.

Martin Sleziak

Jun 9, 2019 09:31

As a side note, two or three times in the past I have in fact considered whether to suggest to some user to change their parent user in chat - just to have possibility to still use chat in case something happens.

quid

Apr 21, 2019 23:02

@MartinSleziak yes, but not too much came of it. Mostly a "it's not that useful anyway" (not an exact quote, but a paraphrase)

Andrews

Apr 8, 2019 12:52

What should we call an expert majoring in mathematical physics? We call one majoring in math a mathematician, one majoring in algebra an algebraist, one majoring in geometry a geometrist, but mathematical physics is a branch of (applied) mathematics, so "mathematical physicist" might be a little weird.

Xander Henderson

Mar 27, 2019 18:24

@user334732 Fractal geometry is the study of the geometry of fractals. :)

Martin Sleziak

Dec 20, 2018 20:34

"It's not my star though." That sounded like something from The Little Prince.

Alexander Gruber

Dec 6, 2018 22:15

@user21820 well you need to have a head to wear a hat

Alexander Gruber

Dec 4, 2018 23:51

white trim looks pretty good too, can't decide

Alexander Gruber

Dec 4, 2018 23:43

hmmm

Alexander Gruber

Dec 4, 2018 23:20

@amWhy yeah-- wouldn't wanna end up like this imgur.com/a/2aZg1cn

user21820

Dec 3, 2018 04:21

@amWhy Worse still when a supposedly brand new contest problem is actually plagiarized from some high-school mathematical journal that is popular in one country. The regularity with which such things happen is what made me leave the contest math scene.

quid

Nov 30, 2018 17:45

@CaptainAmerica16 it's mine.

quid

Nov 29, 2018 18:12

@Mason well if somebody was reading chat while crossing the road I guess it's already risky enough anyway.

quid

Nov 28, 2018 23:26

I think it's a different view. But I definitely agree that some, like you for example, know the type of new questions and users we have at the moment much better than I.

amWhy

Nov 28, 2018 23:06

are expected to show any user with a diamond. When I see a mod here in the way that Daniel Fischer was here, and Jyrki was here, I'll be the first to defer. But < 1/2 hour per day presence does not any good moderator make.

amWhy

Nov 28, 2018 23:04

@quid I think it's reached the tipping point. And mods aren't here as regularly as users who try to address those that they can; and they flounder too often when it comes to the actions taken by users who know this site, and are here more regularly, take action, undermining their actions, all the while thinking they know best. When they're here a fraction of the time that those users who show real dedication to the site, with no diamond, no rep for reward, no auto-demanded respect users

amWhy

Nov 28, 2018 19:00

@quid Thanks for adding your thoughts. I think what befuddles me most is trying to get rid of low-quality questions which have upvoted answers by very tenacious answerers who fight tooth-and-nail when it comes to the deletion of the low quality question(s) they've answered.

quid

Nov 28, 2018 18:41

Hello @amWhy I was not much around today. It seems it got a fair bit of attention the question. I do believe that the amount of low-hanging fruit on the site is detrimental to higher hanging fruit being searched for.

amWhy

Nov 27, 2018 22:19

Sorry, @quid, I mean on the issue raised in the meta post I link above. I'm not concerned just about this one question which prompted the meta question, but I think the perception that this site is overloaded is valid: too many low quality questions getting too many low quality answers, and overloaded moderators trying to moderate an ineffective site, (not of their making), leaving lots of folks burnt out.

amWhy

Nov 27, 2018 21:13

Excellent question on meta that needs more attention

quid

Nov 16, 2018 11:45

On the issue raised, it is on our radar. It's good to flag things as you see them. Often somebody takes notice of a flag earlier than it is "handled;" there can be various rasons for this. A main one is that we leave some things intentionally open to give other mods time to see it too ("handled" flags have drastically less visibility).

Xander Henderson

Nov 7, 2018 02:01

Though I would not say that I have ever attacked him, nor encouraged people to downvote his work on the basis that it was he who produced it.

Rushabh Mehta

Nov 6, 2018 23:45

@BillDubuque While I don't consider @XanderHenderson to be an angel, you seem to be quite incapable of taking criticism. Sure, you may be older than most of us, but that doesn't invalidate feedback.

Xander Henderson

Nov 6, 2018 22:27

@BillDubuque Your perception of organized downvoting from CRUDE might be more to the point.

Xander Henderson

Nov 6, 2018 22:18

Those readers / students are, with a certain probability, going to downvote some of your answers on the grounds that those answers are not useful to them. For whatever reason.

Xander Henderson

Nov 6, 2018 22:17

No matter how great you are as a writer or instructor, you should expect there to be a subset of your readers / students who don't find your approach useful, and who might even actively hate you (hyperbole aside).

Xander Henderson

Nov 6, 2018 22:16

However, I learned long ago that what works for one student may be toxic to another.

Carl Mummert

Nov 6, 2018 19:33

@quid: or professional mathematicians - eminent mathematicians may or may not represent the norm of the profession, and we do have a large number of professional mathematicians who we could look at

quid

Nov 6, 2018 19:00

@BillDubuque I'd say the issue is that some of your answers read a bit like pseudo-code. But, arguably that's fine for a network that started around a site for programming. But it's just not what most mathematicians are used to.

amWhy

Nov 6, 2018 18:46

@AlexanderGruber Pink on purple! I insist!

Carl Mummert

Nov 6, 2018 18:35

@Bill Dubuque: I don't think that most people on this channel need any info about the usual standards for mathematical exposition.

quid

Nov 6, 2018 17:32

53 mins ago, by Bill Dubuque

@CarlMummert PS, I don't know what fields you read professionally, but in my area (number theory and algebra) it is not at all unusual to see arguments written very concisely - as in some of my answers. If students don't gradually gain the skills to reason in mathematical (vs. natural) language then they will face great obstacles when reading research literature.

Carl Mummert

Nov 6, 2018 17:31

@BillDubuque: you linked to this screenshot i.sstatic.net/KXntQ.png . While it is true that it uses logical notation, the post is overall structured in sentence form, and moreover is virtually identical (modulo not actually using LaTex) to the way it would appear in a journal article.

Xander Henderson

Nov 6, 2018 16:48

@BillDubuque Whatever you say, sir.

Xander Henderson

Nov 6, 2018 16:45

@CarlMummert I was agreeing with you. I was grumbling that @BillDubuque was, again, blaming the readers for not understanding his words.