Mathematics - 2012-07-01 (page 4 of 4)

BenjaLim

23:00

I will tell you some things too

user19161

@BenjaLim Yeah if you come here to visit you can drop me a mail too!

BenjaLim

I will :d

user19161

I did not do too well for my undergrad because of you know what, but I think most of the courses were pretty disorganised so I lost interest.

BenjaLim

I thought NUS was a good uni?

user19161

@BenjaLim What makes you think so?

BenjaLim

23:02

I dunno....

people are always like oh NUS is a good uni bla bla bla

user19161

@BenjaLim You should know by now how deceptive things are in the world.

user19161

This ranking, that ranking.

user19161

Doesn't mean anything to me.

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim What is NUS?

BenjaLim

@PeterTamaroff National University of Singapore

@JasperLoy @PeterTamaroff At the end of the day, it is how much you learn

Grades are like artificial and empty, trivial

You get happy for like 5 seconds and then it goes away

everything goes back to normal

Peter Tamaroff

23:05

@BenjaLim You live in Singapore? I didn't know!

user19161

@BenjaLim Your sup said exams are for idiots.

user19161

My prof said 90 per cent of research is trivial.

BenjaLim

exactly.

@JasperLoy Tell him to go away.

No such thing as trivial research

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim I thought you were in Australia.

BenjaLim

@PeterTamaroff Yes I am.

@PeterTamaroff I meant his prof was talking nonsense

@PeterTamaroff Sigh, results results results

@JasperLoy do you have facebook

Peter Tamaroff

23:07

@BenjaLim What one earth are Markov Chains?

BenjaLim

I don't do probability, don't know

user19161

@BenjaLim Nope, I am on no sites on the internet except SE.

BenjaLim

shit it's so cold I can't even type properly

Eugene

@PeterTamaroff they are bike chains made in russia by the markov company

BenjaLim

@JasperLoy oh ok.

@Eugene hey

user19161

23:08

@Eugene Amazing!

BenjaLim

How come malaysians are always like "oh NUS is good bla bla bla"

Eugene

@BenjaLim it's ranked very highly

user19161

@BenjaLim Because their unis are supposedly worse?

BenjaLim

@Eugene But @JasperLoy said the rankings are nothing

user19161

@Eugene I have a lot of Malaysian friends in uni, one of them was Kay Jin whom I asked if you knew.

BenjaLim

23:09

look at ENS or École Normale Supérieure

I kinda agree

their rankings are nowhere close to princeton or havard

Eugene

@BenjaLim i dunno. NUS is ranked very highly in reality

user19161

Unis are ranked according to many criteria.

user19161

Some criteria may not be relevant to individuals.

BenjaLim

or even ANU

user19161

Also, the people doing the ranking may not know what they are doing.

BenjaLim

23:10

@Eugene For me ENS is top 5 in the world

@JasperLoy EXACTLY.

Eugene

feel free to see this ranking

@BenjaLim ? why?

Peter Tamaroff

Doesn't the archimedean property follow by the fact $\Bbb N$ has no upper bound?

BenjaLim

@PeterTamaroff Well yes

user19161

@ben Sometimes I feel that if there is a next life I would go to Cambridge and take the three year course there.

BenjaLim

@JasperLoy That is escapism.

concentrate on the now.

user19161

23:12

@BenjaLim I'm just telling you what I really wanted to do in this life.

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim I usually prove it that way, but Rudin is proving it differently.

BenjaLim

@PeterTamaroff Suppose there is $\epsilon > 0$ such that for all $n$, $1/n \geq \epsilon$

Eugene

@PeterTamaroff waa, waa, rudin is doing it differently

BenjaLim

then this means for all $n$ that $1/\epsilon \geq n$

Peter Tamaroff

@Eugene I thought his proofs were supposed to be slick and inspiring!

BenjaLim

23:13

meaning that $\Bbb{N}$ is bounded, contradiction

Eugene

@PeterTamaroff his proof are slick. the intuition is never there though

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim Yeah, that's how I roll!

user19161

It would be nice to take all the courses in 1A, 1B and pure math 2D courses there @ben. Look at the list of courses in Cam and you know it's superb.

BenjaLim

@Eugene I disagree.

Eugene

@BenjaLim and i disagree with you

BenjaLim

23:13

@PeterTamaroff I would tell you it is probably not a good idea to look at rudin first.

@JasperLoy Not necessarily.

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim I have looked in many places already. What do you mean?

BenjaLim

@JasperLoy One always has the tendency to think that the grass is always greener on the other side.

@PeterTamaroff Rudin doesn't offer a lot of intuition

It's like here's all this stuff I dump on you and then go do the rest.

user19161

@BenjaLim I mean Cam.

BenjaLim

@PeterTamaroff I was only able to do chapter 2 of Rudin after looking at Munkres' chapter 2

user19161

@BenjaLim That is also true.

BenjaLim

23:15

Everything was so clear for me after that

@JasperLoy Yes I know you're talking about cambridge university

@JasperLoy Like now I am in ANU

a lot of things here like grades and stuff are artificially pumped up

user19161

@BenjaLim Rudin deals mostly with metric spaces. He is not writing a book about point set topology itself you must know.

BenjaLim

@JasperLoy That's why I talked about chapter 2 of Rudin.

Eugene

@PeterTamaroff rudin is usually a book that makes more sense after you know the stuff than during

user19161

@ben If you go to where I studied you will find that many people come in and give wrong theorems and wrong proofs. I got really sick and tired.

BenjaLim

@JasperLoy Are you for real??????????????????????????????????????????

Peter Tamaroff

23:16

@Eugene I will give it a shot. I think there are many things I know, but not formally.

user19161

@BenjaLim I mean everyone makes the occasional mistake, but I feel many of them don't even give a damn about what they utter.

BenjaLim

@JasperLoy Kinda feels like that for my analysis course.

The lecturer for several calculus wrote f'(x)

I'm like what is f'(x)??

user19161

@BenjaLim Of course there are some very good teachers there too.

Eugene

@PeterTamaroff sometimes he'll use a function to prove a theorem and you won't know why he chose the function. then you'll see that he chose it because it proves the theorem.

BenjaLim

And he actually meant the partial derivative of a function with respect to some other variable

and after that I didn't go to a single lecture

I think for analysis I only went to 5 lectures the whole sem

user19161

23:18

And hey you know why they can give wrong proofs there? Cos most of the students are too weak to even know what the hell is going on.

BenjaLim

@PeterTamaroff Exactly look at what @Eugene wrote above.

That's why I said it's prob not a good idea to look at it first time.

Look at Abbott's understanding analysis

there is an exercise in there on how to prove Arzelà - Ascoli for $C[0,1]$ @PeterTamaroff

Great thing is

user19161

The students who do math here are those who cannot get into medicine or engineering. So we get the worst instead of the best.

BenjaLim

The proof generalises very easily for an arbitrary compact space $X$ because when $X$ is compact you have a countable basis/ is separable. @PeterTamaroff @Eugene

Peter Tamaroff

@Eugene I see. And what ohter book do you reccommend? Apostol?

Eugene

@PeterTamaroff man up and read rudin! that's what i did. if you can finish all the exercises you'll cream real analysis

@PeterTamaroff because of that i've read no other book than rudin

user19161

23:24

@PeterTamaroff I actually prefer rudin to apostol. Apostol does not treat stokes theorem in the new edition I think.

Peter Tamaroff

@Eugene Hahaha but I'm not wimping out, it is you guys that are being a little "bitchy" about is proofs!

user19161

@PeterTamaroff For advanced calculus, other than Rudin, also try Folland, Fitzpatrick, pugh, browder or protter with varying titles.

Eugene

@PeterTamaroff i'm not. i'm being straight. this is what rudin is like.

just suck it up and read it

Peter Tamaroff

@Eugene I will!!!

user19161

@Eugene You know rudin's proof on l'hospital is the shortest ever

Peter Tamaroff

23:26

And I will give alternate proofs to his, if I can!

Eugene

@JasperLoy i wouldn't know that since i've never read every single proof of l'hospital ever...

user19161

@Eugene You are being very naughty today sir.

BenjaLim

@Eugene It is not l'hospital

It's l'hôpital

low-pee-tal

Eugene

@BenjaLim i'm spelling it exactly like how jasper spelt it

@JasperLoy i'm rather sleep deprived and all this ping-ing keeps on getting me up!

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim I thought the same when I was an ignorant.

BenjaLim

23:28

@PeterTamaroff don't go to apostol

Peter Tamaroff

The "s" is mute in French.

BenjaLim

go to stephen abbott's understanding analysis

user19161

@BenjaLim That looks terrible to me.

Eugene

@BenjaLim also read this it is spelt l'hospital as well

Peter Tamaroff

L'Hôpital and L'Hospital are the same.

BenjaLim

23:28

@JasperLoy I learned analysis from there.

no that's not right

user19161

@BenjaLim Then there is strichartz way of analysis also terrible to me

BenjaLim

huh?

The guy's name is Gee-yom de low-pee-tal

that's how you pronounce it

Eugene

well i'm hitting the hay now. i've got 4 piles of freaking calc papers to grade and i hate the world right now. bye all

BenjaLim

and btw there is no l'hospital

it's for stupid people that speak english

Eugene

@BenjaLim read the wiki page sir

BenjaLim

23:30

@Eugene bye

user19161

@Eugene night

BenjaLim

@Eugene it's retarded

user19161

i think i will type like this as it is much faster

user19161

without capitals and punctuation

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim Hahahahaha

BenjaLim

23:31

star that

user19161

@BenjaLim yeah like us

BenjaLim

C'est pour ceux qui peuvent seulement parler l'anglais.

user19161

@BenjaLim i will make you see stars dude

user19161

i think i have pissed off many people in various chat rooms

user19161

@ben Do you wear glasses?

BenjaLim

23:36

@JasperLoy how come?

user19161

@BenjaLim Just curious what you look like, nothing important.

BenjaLim

My glasses are completely black and super thick.

user19161

Hey I wear those Peter Parker specs too, Spiderman in case you dunno.

BenjaLim

@JasperLoy That's a picture of me

@JacobSchlather hey

user19161

@BenjaLim Done.

BenjaLim

23:40

what da ya think, my glasses thick enough?

Now you show a picture (or at least by email) @JasperLoy

@PeterTamaroff

@JasperLoy islam.stackexchange.com/questions/312/…

user19161

@BenjaLim Not that I don't want to, but I currently have none, and I am not lying. I will when I take one. I took one a while ago but it is deleted.

user19161

@BenjaLim I think your glasses look like mine!

BenjaLim

ha

Peter Tamaroff

@BenjaLim What?

BenjaLim

sawv the pic>

Peter Tamaroff

23:42

@BenjaLim Nah. Missed it. I was reading RudiN!

user19161

@BenjaLim I have come up with a unifying theory for atheism, Buddhism and Christianity. Essentially all the faiths in the world.

BenjaLim

I gotta go guys

bye all

@JM I mix with a lot of cebuanos :D

user19161

@BenjaLim See ya.

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$Mathematics$ Mathematics