« first day (479 days earlier)      last day (4541 days later) » 

3:04 PM
@Asaf: I've only been jury. Somebody still needs to drop the guillotine.
 
Are you talking about closures or deletions?
 
Closures.
 
There are a few deletions too.
 
For a number of the deletions, the first vote was mine.
 
Oh. We need Henning or Tuberculosis...
 
3:06 PM
t.b. is enjoying himself somewhere in Austria, so we wait...
 
Hi 'Evening, @JM and @Asaf
 
Howdy Srivatsan.
 
Hey Sri.
 
Awesome. I only have 2 more closing votes today!
 
- what's the limit?
 
3:09 PM
This could be the FAQ. However, the nice proofs are in this, so...
@Srivatsan The allowance per day is 24 close votes.
 
@JM He can't be serious. Cast 22 close votes already?
 
Yes, I have been busy :-)
Check in the Review page, the Close tab for votes from today.
 
@Srivatsan He's always been obsessing over using up his daily allowance...
@AsafKaragila He still needs some rep for 10k. :)
 
No...
You should be able to get the Review page with 125 points or so.
And there is a Close tab there to review questions which are voted for closure.
 
Ah. A new development I guess.
 
3:14 PM
Evening all.
 
Hey Henning.
 
Hey Henning.
There are a bunch of deletion votes waiting for you ;-)
 
English lesson: "We regard MO as a sister site, not just «some other» place on the internet." -- what's the apt clause there?
 
"your mother's" :-P
 
"We regard MO as a sister site, not just some other place on the Internet." is fine.
 
3:20 PM
I have a funny feeling, like a preposition is missing around the «...».
 
Nope, it's okay. :)
"It's not just some other place." is perfectly grammatical itself.
 
Ok, strange (about my feeling ;))... Thanks, JM. =)
 
Evening? It's 7:30! :-)
@AsafKaragila speaking of insults... ;-)
 
@robjohn We are speaking of insults?
 
@robjohn That doesn't sound so bad. "Yo mama...", on the other hand...
 
3:29 PM
@AsafKaragila Earlier in the evening, there was a discussion of insults, which were not really insults, but cross-language malfunctions.
 
Perhaps it may have even been yesterday sometime.
Anyway, off to the park with Lilly. bbl
 
Instead of FA-question, we need a FA-topic. Would cover derangements and recontres numbers (e.g., math.stackexchange.com/q/14477 and math.stackexchange.com/q/83380).
 
@Srivatsan Doesn't cover derangements, etc?
 
We are not talking about tags. I am saying that this particular set of questions comes up quite often.
 
3:33 PM
@robjohn Do you think Srivatsan is deranged?
 
Ah, okay.
@AsafKaragila It takes one to know one, so I would know...
 
@robjohn I know ;-)
 
Not sure what to think about the victorcide campaign. The questions are closed; does them being visible do harm?
 
Ok, I am going to do a little research on derangements and recontres numbers in SE.
Out for now.
 
They remind us of darker times... They remind us of things we do not want to remember. It is the bane of mankind, to forever be haunted by the things he wants to forget.
 
3:37 PM
[cue: intro to Toccata and Fugue in D minor]
 
If f:A->B maps a basis of A onto a basis of B, and the preimage of a basis element in B is a basis element in A, does that enough to conclude the map is continuous?
 
Preimage of an open set = preimage of union of basic sets = union of preimages of basic sets = open.
Am I missing something?
 
Oh, of course. Preimage is homomorphism of boolean algebras (P(B)->P(A))...
 
That user just wasted 50 rep for nothing. =)
 
It's his rep to spend. ;)
Unfortunately Matt was a bit sloppy with part c.
 
3:51 PM
@JM None of the current questions on derangements strikes me as satisfactory. Next week I might write a CW question that attempts to collect together all the known identities and stuff, plus links to proofs. Sounds good?
We can make that faq instead.
 
@Srivatsan Yeah, it's a bit scattered. I also had an answer where I showed that the exponential partial sum and the incomplete gamma integral are the same. I'm looking for it now...
 
How can this be accepted? :( math.stackexchange.com/q/85768/13425
 
QED
1/0 isn't infinity
Why is the question downvoted?
 
Er, I downvoted the question. You're right, I removed my vote.
I downvoted because the question does carry a mistake.
 
QED
would be useful to comment too then
I didn't notice any mistake
 
3:59 PM
Well, one sided limits. It's already commented on.
 
@Srivatsan found it
That's related to part of the answer by Mike in the Rencontres question.
 
@Srivatsan That does seem to confuse people often. There ought to be some nice named standard principle about one-sided limits at poles that one could just cite.
 
This is frustrating. Can someone help me bookmark today's conversation?
"Please click the two messages that define the start and the end of the conversation." -- I don't know how to click =)
 
Which lines are the ends?
 
4:16 PM
But I would like to know how I should be doing this. =) Teach a man to fish and all that...
 
You already have the bookmarking prompt here, no?
 
Yes. The thing is, I am not able to "click" a message so that I can select a range of messages.
 
When your mouse cursor's over a line you want to select, there should be dotted lines above and below. Then you click.
Do that for both ends. When you're done, the prompt should ask for a title.
 
Er, nothing happens?! =) // There's those dotted lines. But no response on clicking.
I think I will try it with a real mouse. These laptop keyboards can be irritating.
 
QED
I posted an answer for the limits thing.
despite 1/0 = infinity being accepted already.
 
4:23 PM
@Sri: Huh. I got up to the name prompt. All the conversations within the selection range ought to turn slate blue when you've done that.
 
QED
I think it's simple and clear but I am often wrong when I think so
 
No, as I said, I cannot do it here (and I am a bit frustrated, so I am giving up for now). I will try again on my desktop machine and see what happens. Thanks @JM.
 
Originally I thought that bookmarks only appear on my "chat profile page" (or how should I call it). I noticed only later that if I click on the room info, there is a conversation tab.
As I am looking through them, I guess I should delete a few of them. (Those ones which are of interest for me, but not useful for other people.)
 
They look all fine to me...
It's not like we're already inudated with bookmarked conversations.
 
QED
any comments on whether or not that is readable?
I guess it's fine, just a lot of things said in that question were wrong or misleading and I didn't want to add to that
That 'lim' thing really abuses the '=' symbol in a horrible way
No wonder people have such basic trouble with limits, asymptotics and even how equality works
 
4:32 PM
@QED I concede that it's abuse, but the adjective is a bit much...
 
@QED You might want to emphasize that cos x -> 0 but is positive as x -> pi/2 from below. Without it, it looks incomplete to me.
 
QED
People forget to prove things like if lim.. a = x and lim.. a = y then x = y -- because of the bizarre misuse of =
@Srivatsan, I did say "since both functions are positive in this neighborhood", do you think I should bold it or something?
or maybe since 'sin' and 'cos' are both positive in ...
oops
 
Well, you're right. You have mentioned it. (But I missed it.)
And it's not right to call it a neighborhood, is it?
 
I think it might be clearer to write, e.g., pi/2 - delta < x < pi/2 instead of the two conditions x < pi/2 and |x - pi/2| < delta.
 
QED
I was just thinking about epsilon balls, maybe I used the wrong work
 
4:36 PM
What Dylan said.
 
And I do think skolemization is a bit heavy for this answer =)
 
QED
yeah, neighborhood is wrong: thanks for pointing that out
 
@Sri: I needed to pause for a few seconds at that word... :)
 
I had to look that word up.
 
QED
I don't know how else I can say "\delta_2(1/y)" - In fact I have no clue how normal people get through analysis courses
 
4:38 PM
Hah. QED, would you happen to have seen A Radical Approach to Real Analysis by Bressoud?
 
I thought it was kind of understood... Until someone points it out. =)
 
@QED But this is the sort of rigour that the thread was missing, so good on you for providing it.
 
QED
@JM, not seen that but I like the title
 
@QED If you can, get the book yourself or borrow from a library. An alternate route might be more pleasing for you. (I loved it, FYI.)
 
Now I remember: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skolem–Noether_theorem
This is what came to mind at first.
 
QED
4:41 PM
Well it starts out by talking about the "crisis of Fourier series" and I'm still (a few years since I learned it) wonder when these things actually converge so this does look interesting
 
There's a bit of machinery, but from my reading of you, you should still do nicely with the book... :)
 
@JM Bit of machinery? What kind of machinery?
 
QED
@Dylan, thanks!
 
@Srivatsan Let me check the book again...
 
Don't inconvenience yourself, JM; I thought you might remember it off your head. Let's just I am not too keen anyway... =)
(I am interested in knowing. I will look it up in Amazon later...)
"For subjectivity consider the positivity of the derivative of tan." -- what does "subjectivity" mean here? @QED
 
4:46 PM
@Sri: On second thought... as long as you have some familiarity with infinite series, you should do fine. :)
What I love about the book the most, though, is its treatment of \epsilon-\delta.
...and a neat discussion of "continuous but nowhere differentiable" functions.
 
QED
@Srivatsan haha I meant to say "surjectivity" silly me
thanks
 
I am not sure what argument you have in mind. I would just say: if f is continuous in [a,b] (with a<b) and f(x) -> -infty as x -> a+ and f(x) -> +infty as x -> b-, then f is surjective by IVT.
 
QED
I was thinking about how to prove injectivity for some reason...
not sure why I made so many mistakes
So NASA is putting another rover on mars
I wonder if they will be able to figure out what those dark streaks were
 
@QED What are they trying to find now?
 
QED
I'm not sure, but there was some recent excitement about dark streaks forming in the sands that might be water
I'm curious about whether this new rover will be looking into that or something else
 
5:01 PM
Intriguing...
 
QED
ah here we go
 
QED
> The landing site contains a rock type that is very dense and very bright colored; it is unlike any rock type previously investigated on Mars. It may be an ancient playa lake deposit, and it will likely be the mission's first target in checking for the presence of organic molecules
@Srivatsan, that bugs me sometimes too: People post "comments" that happen to completely solve the question - it stops the person from accepting them!
 
FWIW: I post comments when I feel what I've written is helpful, but not up to my internal standards for a proper answer.
 
As I aptly demonstrated just now, I have no standards. =)
 
5:05 PM
@Srivatsan Well, methinks it should now be safe to flesh out Chris's answer a bit...
 
@JM The problem with that, JM, is this dilemma whether I should post the answer as a normal answer or a CW one.
It's not like I want to forgo points if I am going to do some work.
 
If you added to Chris's words and work, then I don't see why you should waive credit.
 
Also, it's kind of disappointing to find that the question is not unanswered after all.
 
A verbatim copy of the comment should be CW, I'd say. But if you've given a few extras, you should get some upvote love...
 
Ok, I will flesh out the answer.
 
5:09 PM
Maybe delete the CW one and post the fleshed out version as a usual answer. :)
 
This time, it's fine. I will just add it on top of the answer.
 
5:40 PM
@JM On second thought, I added a new answer =)
Greed is ok, right? =)
 
Great. :) Unfortunately I can only give you an IOU for now.
 
:)
Thanks...
So, someone upvoted my deleted answer. What happens to those upvotes? They lose it for nothing?
It might even be you. =)
 
I haven't. I've been out of votes hours ago.
 
ok =)
 
(I always have a vote backlog)
 
5:53 PM
iyengar posts another question: math.stackexchange.com/questions/85827
 
QED
Would like to know more about Tamagawa numbers
 
That actually looks way better than his previous questions. Still needs some polish with the writing, but still better.
 
Can we close this question in the light of tb's comment?
 
@JM How do you know that the Google bot likes to read posts? :-).
 
@JonasTeuwen From my limited interaction with him, he's quite curious about things. And nosey too...
 
6:05 PM
Heh, "nosy"... :D
@Srivatsan Okay, jury+executioner needed...
 
Um, ok.
@JM Thanks. Perhaps @Jonas can pitch in.
 
Yes! Where?
I want to be the executioner!
 
@JM I am surprised that this is the first time I am writing that word. =)
 
@JonasTeuwen Not yet; two more jury members still needed.
 
Hmm...
Oh well, I've played jury now.
 
6:09 PM
I can't quite tell the difference between this and iyengar's newest question. More likely, this is because I'm starting to get sleepy...
 
@JM I could never tell them apart. ;)
 
hey guys, quick noob question. can I say a matrix is inversible because it's determinant != 0?
 
Yes, if the determinant isn't zero, it's invertible.
(The relevant theorem has an "if and only if".)
 
awesome, thanks guys
 
If the matrix is over a field, that is.
 
6:15 PM
Yes, thanks Henning.
 
This iyengar...
 
QED
how does one prove that? Can it be a corollary of cayleys theorem?
 
oh its called field in english? nice
in my language its called "body"
is body something in math?
 
QED
no it can't come from Cayley-Hamilton: It could be from 1/det * adjugate
 
"corpus"?
 
6:35 PM
@Clash Koerper ?
 
@JM What does YF mean in his second comment here? Do you see a deleted answer?
 
IIRC der Koerper? (I always have problems with remembering articles.)
 
@MartinSleziak yeah its called körper in german and "corpo" in portuguese, and both mean body in english
 
@Srivatsan Yuval has a deleted answer there.
 
You're from Portugal?
 
6:36 PM
@JM Detailed one? Why would he delete it?
 
@Srivatsan Quite long. I don't feel like stepping through it now, though... sorry.
 
I feel like telling him "Oh, I am interested!" :(
@JM No, I wouldn't put you through it, JM.
 
@Srivatsan Then you should ping him in the comments.
 
What's with so many upvotes to that answer? :-/
Now I know why people write easy papers for a living. =)
 
Why are you complaining about getting upvotes.
 
6:40 PM
Not complaining, of course. I am just amused. =)
 
You see, if I understand an answer, I can upvote it (I know that it's correct.)
If someone posts an answer which is two pages long and uses two theorems I never heard about before... should I upvote an answer which I do not understand?
 
@MartinSleziak Well, I guess you are right. I would upvote a correct (let's add "good" too =)) answer. But being on the receiving end, it feels... different.
 
@MartinSleziak im from brazil
but im living in germany
 
Interesting.
 
@Clash Aha, that explains a lot.
 
6:42 PM
That's why you knew both of them.
I remember that I had in my hands German translation of some book, the translator was obviously not a mathematician. E.g. he used "Feld" instead of "Koerper".
But I can't recall the name of the book at the moment.
 
Is koerper a technical word? I know feld is the same as field.
 
I believe in German you call it Koerper, not Feld: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6rper_%28Algebra%29
But I might be wrong.
 
Oh, I can relate to the translator now =) // Although, he knows German but not math, and vice versa for me.
 
If the English use "field", the Germans use "Körper".
 
yeah it's called körper here
 
6:48 PM
 
can you call a field a "corpus" in english?
 
@JM Nice. Conversely, Germans used "Feld" for "field" (as in "Galoisfeld", something which is nowadays widely considered an anglicism but actually appears e. g. in Witt's works).
So it seems like older terminology then.
 
Ah, I'm beat. See you guys later.
 
QED
haha
yeah
@Jonas, I think the strange notation which hijacks the = symbol is the root of the problem
It makes the accepted answer appear reasonable
 
I almost died reading this greeting: math.stackexchange.com/questions/80156/…
 
QED
8:12 PM
hello
 
8:28 PM
@JonasTeuwen Hope that post is corrected or deleted soon.
I am even thinking of flagging the mods to delete the post...
 
Yeah. Me too.
 
You agree with the first sentence or the second?
 
The first. I didn't see the second when I wrote the first. But I do agree if you do so.
 
QED
huh
mods shouldn't delete wrong answers
bad habit to get into censoring stuff like that
 
@QED Well, if there's a clear right and wrong, what's the issue with censoring?
 
8:33 PM
How about bad accepted answers?
 
QED
that's true
 
@JonasTeuwen I think that is the main problem here. That answer is forever going to appear at the top of the thread just because the OP clicked the green tick mark.
[And surely the OP would've accepted the answer because (1.) the numerous errors there would not have been noticed then, (2.) this was the only answer then.]
The last comment here is too funny: math.stackexchange.com/q/85483/13425 . What does schooler mean?
 
QED
in general though, people don't seem to be able to replace "lim .. = ..." or "f(...) = ..O(..)" with their definitions
it's very odd - because what the heck are they doing?
I suppose I know the answer to that: geometric visualization
 
@QED Are you saying people only have an intuitive idea of how these things work, not backed up with rigorous bits?
Not sure if I understood you correctly.
 
QED
I think it is too often the case
and I think part of the reason is because they get the = symbol involved
if you know that lim A = x and lim A = y it's not necessarily the case that x = y. You have to prove that.
oops
 
8:46 PM
Hausdorff to the rescue?
 
QED
(I think the other part is people not used to replacing things with definitions and not having experience with quantifiers)
Hausdorff?
 
Yes.
The uniqueness of the limits follows from the fact that those topological spaces are Hausdorff.
 
QED
ah
I didn't know that: I think I only used limits in the real and complex cases
never general sets
 
You will learn it soon :-).
 
@QED If you would like a small prelude... Remember that sequences have limits. Also functions have limits at a given point. Is there a reason to give the same name to both these things? Does this idea generalise beyond the two examples I mentioned?
 
QED
8:57 PM
yes
 
Well, I am just raising some questions, not giving answers =). As Jonas said, you will learn these soon...
The keyword to look for is topological space.
 
Well, yeah, but then you need generalised sequences in the general case...
 
9:18 PM
Nets?
 
Indeed. Or filters.
 
What's the deal about limits misusing the equals sign? In my experience, one is not allowed to use the \lim notation at all unless one knows that limits are unique for the topological space in question.
 
IIRC Engelking uses the notation \lim x for the set of all limits of the given sequence/net.
I.e. L\in\lim x_n means L is a limit of x_n.
 
9:33 PM
Okay, that's news to me.
Meaning that if you happen to be in a space where limits are unique, you need to look at the context of the \lim to find out what its type is?
 
The two propositions in this answer I've copied from Enelking: math.stackexchange.com/q/80020/8297
 
Nets = fun.
 
BTW Henning I've recently found out that you're pretty active wikipedian. (I've noticed that you've edited one of the articles I have on my watchlist.)
I guess some of your edits are related to the things discussed here at MSE.
 
Especially when they are internals... One could even say that such net is an inter-net.
 
@MartinSleziak I used to be a fairly active wikipedian a handful of years ago, reloading watchlists several times a day and getting involved in editorial arguments, etc. Nowadays I just fix problems when I come across them for another reason.
 
9:38 PM
@AsafKaragila The terminology was not Kelley's invention, though. Kelley had wanted to call such an object a way. However, nets have subnets, which Kelley would have dubbed subways. Norman Steenrod talked him out of it. After some prodding by Kelley, Steenrod suggested the term net as a substitute for way.
 
@MartinSleziak So \lim as a set combined with f(A) for {f(x)|x in A}. Wow -- the possibilities for obfuscation are endless.
 
The quote is from Megginson's book on Banach spaces.
 
Hah. Nice.
 
@HenningMakholm To me this way seems quite reasonable if someone really needs to work with the non-Hausdorff case.
 
I'm just shaking my head as a computer scientist. We'd be lynched if we defined a programming language with a semantics that ambiguous.
 
9:42 PM
@AsafKaragila How do you like the latest xkcd?
 
It's nice. Stop asking me already.
Or I'll feed you to the wood chipper.
I used all my closing votes for today :-)
 
@AsafKaragila I didn't ask you before.
 
Yeah, but other people have.
 
How would I know?
 
You wouldn't.
 
9:55 PM
Good evening.
Just returned from 1000 km of driving.
@QED: If you're still interested in the answer to the philosophy question that supposedly will give me full marks, here it is
 
Well, you went to get the puppy, no?
 
You had puppyburger?
 
Yes : ) she's just decided to nap on my foot : )
Drooly little thing.
 
Aw... =)
 
I am not a big fan of dogs.
They are over-friendly.
They remain kids forever.
Cats, on the other hand, they are awesome.
 
QED
10:06 PM
@Matt, that's wrong
 
Is it true that all cat lovers are dog haters and vice versa?
 
QED
anyway well donegettin good marks
 
Perhaps Matt likes cats...
 
QED
@Srivatsan, well I have a cat and I don't want a dog because I'd have to pick up it's crap
 
@Srivatsan No, we have 3 cats. I like all animals. Much better than humans.
 
QED
10:07 PM
why people would want to do that every day baffles me
 
@QED Curious typo. Who picks up god's crap? =)
 
QED
You're good at spotting my mistakes :)
 
Cleaning up kitty litter box is the same.
 
QED
oh
 
Anyway, I don't want to turn this into an argument.
 
QED
10:09 PM
you can train a cat to dig holes in the garden
 
@QED Enlighten me : ) Please.
 
@Matt I kind of knew this. (See my comment posted two comments before yours.)
 
QED
this is really not the sort of thing you have to worry about turning into some vicious argument
 
@Srivatsan I assumed you had forgotten : ) Sorry.
 
I have my neighbour's cat
I don't have to do anything and he comes to sleep and get petted
win win
 
10:11 PM
Hehe.
The cats don't look too pleased.
 
because they're being invaded by your new puppy ?
 
No, she's lovely and well-behaved. They're just scared for no reason, like they're scared from the vacuum cleaner for no reason : D
@QED: Now, wil you tell me what's wrong with my answer?
 
QED
oh
 
I'm supposed to give a 30-minute talk and I already have 2.5 pages of definitions, and I'm not even halfway yet. Very tempted to use Beamer or just talk through everything instead of writing on the board...
 
QED
godels incompleteness theorem only works if you're starting with a consistent theory
if you have a false hypothesis you can prove everything
 
10:17 PM
But theory here would mean second order logic, isn't that consistent?
 
QED
the hypothesis that it is decidable is false
 
To prove it assume it was decidable and then produce a contradiction? By using the incompleteness theorem? My brain goes funny.
 
QED
I didn't understand that
do you want a proof that second order logic is undecidable?
 
Yes.
 
QED
cannot find the paper but church proved first order logic with equality is undecidable and second order logic contains that
 
10:30 PM
@ZhenLin What is the audience for this talk? Can you get away with just presenting the intuitive sense of the definitions and skip the details such that you can get to the good stuff quickly? "Read the paper for details" is a powerful rhetorical tool.
 
@Henning: It's an expository talk, "Bicartesian closed categories and logic". Unfortunately, I promised in the abstract that no knowledge of category theory or logic will be assumed...
 
That's a brave promise.
 
Indeed, as I've just realised.
 
You will have to make copious use of "it can be shown" and "it turns out that there's a sensible definition that makes everything work here, such that (insert simple example)"
 
Oh, I'm not proving anything. The point of the talk is to make the definitions and draw attention to certain parallels...
Hm, I just realised I don't really need to talk about functors and adjoints. So I'll cheat and unfold the definition of adjunction into the definition for exponential objects...
 
10:38 PM
You can only do so much in 30 minutes. If you try to make anyone understand the details of more than one definition they didn't know when they walked into the room, you'll break your neck.
 
Hmmm... quite possibly. I'm hoping that the audience will have seen these concepts before and that I'm just reminding them...
 
@Zhen: Do you have a quick proof that in Spec(A) a set is closed if and only if it is a finite union of sets of the form
 
But there's that promise in the abstract. You might want to make a virtue of necessity and not show any auxiliary definitions at all. Just sketch one or two simple examples, and assert that they generalize to the full whatever.
 
Spec(A)\{p | f in p} for some f in A
 
Good night!
 
10:46 PM
@Asaf: Those sets are the basic open sets. Are you sure you have the right question?
 
Yeah.
If you have Atiyah-MacDonald I can point you to the question as well.
 
Atiyah-Macdonald is known to have misprints...
 
Or you may have a counterexample for me?
 
Let k be any infinite field, A = k[x, y], and consider any proper closed subset with infinitely many points...
or actually
Let k be any infinite field, A = k[x], and consider any finite closed subset.
Every set of the form Spec(A) \ {p | f \in p } is empty or infinite, so there's no hope of this being true.
 
Huh. It seems that the question was copied from A-M wrong :-)
The book says that every open and compact set is a finite union.
What is interesting is that I do not yet have a clear visual interpretation of the Zariski topology, but I certainly cannot see it as a topology on R or C or whatever.
 
10:58 PM
It's not really a topology in the geometric sense. It's just a set-theoretic trick. :p
 
Which is why I am able to generate a visual interpretation in my mind.
I mean, I can see forcing posets and generic sets. I cannot see a parabola and a dot in a 2d space, though.
 
Well, then that's just as well, isn't it? The Zariski topology doesn't say very much about the geometry of an algebraic variety. It's just there so that we can define more complicated gadgets which do say something interesting.
 

« first day (479 days earlier)      last day (4541 days later) »