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00:03
are you teaching something now?
Nah, I've been off academia for quite a while...
...and it was chemistry I was teaching. not math. :)
I know :) awesome math knowledge you have there for a chemist
otherwise, too, of course, hope you got my meaning
I tend to take my hobbies seriously... :D
apparently!
and no worries, I always said that I learned more math from the Internet than from my entire stay in the university...
00:07
I guess I learned the most from spending three years in the library, more or less
:) The Internet became my library. Thankfully a lot of people are willing to share their papers when asked nicely...
very true. on the other hand, being the son of a librarian (non-math) I like to have real books in my hands (math and non-math). I don't like reading on the computer so much
I know the feeling. I used to read on the screen, but nowadays I need to have them printed out if I have to stare at them for more than an hour...
which of your parents was the librarian?
my mother.
I assume you have a huge bookcase in your house? :D
00:12
I wouldn't call it huge, that's why I have so many books in boxes in the cellar :)
Oh my. A cellar, eh? So you have to actually dust things off for old books?
Yes, but I managed to organize the books in such a way that I rarely need to do that
that is, the books I need are in my office and those which I rarely touch are downstairs
I've only managed to expand my dead-tree library just recently. Thankfully the used-book stores here are selling Springer books for about a fifth of the usual price...
original ones, or the chinese versions?
I found a couple grad books in a bookstore, but never seen any since
00:16
Original ones. I know, right?
I don't exactly understand how they manage to sell those things cheap... even if they're slightly used.
incredible.
Apart from a few dings on the flyleaves, they're practically perfect.
that would be paradise for me, but maybe I would go broke anyway from buying all those books, so...
:D I bought this one recently, for about 6 Euros...
wooow, congrats!
00:21
On the other hand, probably the only other "inconvenience" (if you could call it that) is that those stores don't sort their books.
So it takes quite a while to dig through their shelves...
which makes the whole experience even better! ...unless you're looking for something specifically
but at their prices, I don't mind at all...
Well, I do keep a wishlist around every time I visit... in the hopes that stuff I'm looking for suddenly pop up.
...and I have to jostle with people looking for novels. Somehow those tend to be more expensive than technical books...
We don't have that many good used books stores for technical books around here. For novels and classics, yes but they're also a minority. Undergrad stuff is possible to find, but as soon as you're looking for more, you have to use an online seller or the university book stores
I'm guessing most people actually keep their books, that's why. ;)
Probably :)
oh, Bill Johnson answered Asaf's crosspost. Nice counterexample!
00:31
Topology. Oh boy... :D
Sort of an acquired taste, I guess
Somehow I can't get past "intuitive topology"... maybe someday I'll get around to studying it.
00:49
I had better be getting ready for work. See you guys.
See you @J.M. nice talking to you, as always!
 
1 hour later…
02:19
Looks as if I missed the party.
What's with the colored backgrounds on some questions? I hadn't noticed them before.
Do you mean the blue highlight on the front page? That happens when you subscribe to specific tags.
Hmm. I don't believe I've ever subscribed.
I'll have to check.
Thanks.
02:35
or rather, when you set certain tags as your "favorites"
@robjohn ^
 
2 hours later…
04:42
sidepanel of mse keeps having the "negative probabilities" question from theoreticalpysics.se, looks pretty cool
 
1 hour later…
05:46
Hmm. I marked a favorite question. Perhaps that did it.
I have 9 pages of favorites. I haven't noticed any of them being colored on the front page...
It seems that (calculus) is listed as a "frequented" tag for me, and that is the tag that is being highlighted.
That explains why I don't remember setting a favorite tag or anything.
06:15
Great! Thanks. I will now disable the guessing.
Much better :-)
06:38
@JM I believe in your words that was 8 EUR couple of days ago ))
was it 10 on the last week?
@robjohn: 23-39?
yep
@Gortaur: I forget what time zone are you in. what is the time there?
its GMT +1: 8-41 now
or +2 (I'm confused with a summer/winter time)
Is Daylight Savings Time observed there?
yes (in Holland) and no (in Russia, our president changed it this year). but I'm in Holland
If so, and the choices are +1 and +2, then now it would be +2
We are -8 and -7 and now it is -7
06:46
I'm also married, so I have no choice as well :-p
We change back to -8 on Nov 6
to be honest, I know that I should add an hour to my zone in the summer
just usually forget to do it
I remember that we're 1 hr from London, so that's why my arithmetic works like that
 
6 hours later…
12:18
I guess the silence here will last until robjohn will wake up
12:46
Well, it's just that I was cleaning the apartment with my girlfriend, and whatnot.
13:27
at the weekday??
 
2 hours later…
15:00
I walked the dog before returning.
@Gortaur I woke up about 5 hours ago, but things here were quiet so I looked into some questions.
anon helped me get rid of the blue boxes around some of the questions.
Tomorrow is a holiday, so it's kinda like Friday.
@AsafKaragila what holiday?
We don't get that one here.
definitely not a day off.
Interesting. It is one of the three major holidays.
15:09
The holidays at this time of year are either local (Thanksgiving) or religious (Hanukkah or Christmas), and those are a couple of the major ones here.
Funny. Hanukkah is not even a biblical holiday.
Yeah, but neither is Christmas...
How many religious holidays appear in the new testament?
I can't think of any.
While in the old testament there are more than several holidays.
The three actual holidays, Passover-Shavu'ot-Sukkot; Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana; Purim, and I think that a couple of very minor holidays as well.
15:15
Ah, Sukkot is Passover?
No.
These are the three major holidays.
I am reading up on it now.
Pardon my ignorance.
Oh, it's fine.
I didn't think that Passover was celebrated a half a year differently.
So of course the two were not the same.
15:21
We do celebrate Passover, but there is no vacation holiday for it.
Why would you celebrate Passover?
Celebrate is probably not the right idea, but it happens around Lent.
So we do note it.
It is a Jewish holiday here.
That is what I meant.
Sukkot may be observed here, but it is not a celebration that I have heard of.
I see. Well, I am going to take a shower.
15:27
Not like Passover, or Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, etc
I do a lot of good math thought in the shower, I hope the same goes for you
I usually space out under the hot water. I sometimes have good math results while at it, we'll see. I am in fact working on something concrete, for a change, so it might be worth the shot :D
15:43
hmmm
holidays are good
C.O.
I have a question Regarding topology from the Book "Principles of Mathematical Analysis" by Rudin
In Example 2.21 the author say The segment (a,b) is not a open if we regard it as a subset of $R^2$ but a open subset in $R^1$
Drats. My idea didn't work.
what does he mean by taking (a,b) as segment in R^2??
Is it a vector??
It is a line segment in the plane.
Furthermore, (a,b) is an open interval in R.
Since R can be considered a subset of R^2, we can consider (a,b) as a subset of R^2
How is he saying that it is not open
15:56
Yes. It is not open in R^2
It is open in R.
Can you please explain how it is not open in R^2
Open sets in R^2 contain balls around each point. A line segment does not contain any balls.
I am not able to get it I am a beginner in topology..
I got downvoted twice on a hint I made and neither one bothered to say why.
16:23
@robjohn which one?
downvote on the hint? you mean, flag?
@RamanaVenkata could you imagine open ball in R and open ball in R^2?
are they the same?
could you imagine an interval (a,b) which contain an open ball from R^2
(of non-zero radius)
I made a hint, but it was a hint, because it was a homework. It was not a complete answer.
and?
16:47
And it was actually wrong; I misread the question. oops.
17:13
Of course, my practice is to comment and let posters either correct or remove their posts. I downvote very infrequently. I guess others have different philosophies.
 
1 hour later…
18:19
how can the comment been downvoted? I've never seen it
18:51
I comment rather than downvote the answer, usually.
I don't remember if I have downvoted an answer yet.
19:37
@robjohn: You've upvoted 50 questions and 103 answers and have never downvoted.
20:20
(you can see these stats in your profile)
@anon I was on my way to look and got hijacked by a question.
That would be why I don't remember downvoting an answer.
or a question
@robjohn sorry for misunderstanding, I thought you put a hint in a comment rather than in an answer
I would rather comment to correct a mistake.
And was surprised that the comment was downvoted
@Gortaur no problem at all. I am unclear sometimes.
20:29
The same situation annoys me, I only downvote when writing a comment what should be improved
Since there are more answers than questions, I guess my ratio of voting on answers vs questions is okay.
Well. Despite the downvote, my answer was still accepted.
However I am frequently downvoted without any comments
@Gortaur as you know, that annoys me.
@AsafKaragila take that, downvoter!
I'm curious, how this will improve my answer if they do not tell what they do not like
20:31
Yeah :D
@Gortaur: exactly!
Interesting. I am almost at 200 points in [cardinals], and I don't even have a bronze badge for it.
With the axiom of choice I am not too far behind as well.
I wonder if I can swing it with some really awesome answers and hit 400 before [cardinals] hit 100 questions (in which point badges will start to show up)
The downvotes I got today were balanced by the upvotes, but I did misread the question, so I deleted my answer with a 0 total.
Personally I downvoted 11 times. I thought, I did it much more
I have 2344 upvotes, 18 down.
20:35
I got to use an identity that I discovered decades ago using partial fractions in an answer just now.
It deals with multiple forward differences of 1/k
I wonder if it has a common name. I have never seen it in literature.
Of course, I haven't gone searching for it.
I don't realy follow how you got (2) in the linked answer
@anon Use the Heaviside Method for computing partial fractions. Essentially what I said in the answer, multiply by one of the denominators (a+k) and set it to 0 (a=-k). all the other terms are nulled out by the factor of (a+k) and the coefficient of A_k is left.
@anon: I added a bit more description for (2) and added the reference to the Heaviside Method.
20:54
Okay, I get it now.
It's one of my favorite uses of partial fractions.
That identity turns up a lot when attempting to apply Euler's Transform for series acceleration.
I gave it a +1, but I wouldn't call it a combinatorial proof really
though neither would I call OPs derivation for a=0 a combinatorial proof
Hello all
sup
@robjohn: btw, that apps for MSE on android are crappy. mobile view of MSE crappy as well. no way (
21:09
Oh hell, be right back
@Gortaur oh, well. I guess I will just have to stick to my laptop for now.
Heh, karmic_mishap seems appropriately named. He shows up and then has to leave.
@anon I figure any proof is better than none. I would love to see a combinatoric proof of the identity.
as for a combinatoric proof, I don't know what the Beta function counts.
J.M. makes a comment to this effect.
Argh! Mac Os wants to update himself. Tell my wife I loved her.
It's reciprocal is very close to a binomial coefficient, but that is the thing the OP wants a proof for.
don't panic
that's more dangerous when windows 7 updates itself
Alas, poor Jacopo; I knew him well.
21:20
or skype
@robjohn I guess I have to buy Mac in order to understand that jokes
@Gortaur not really, I was simply misquoting Shakespeare.
thinking that perhaps Jacopo would be nothing but a skull by the time the update was over.
@robjohn: OP wasn't asking for what the Beta function itself counts (which doesn't even make sense because it takes non-integer values...), but rather the identity at the end of the first derivation in his question, which as he says suggests itself as amenable to combinatorial interpretation
Facebook says it is not required to give you a copy of some of your personal data as it could adversely affect the company's trade secrets and intellectual property.
...what does that mean?
I have a Facebook account only so that some of my friends can send me stuff.
21:28
I haven't touched any social networking acount (real one anyway) for years
I am not sure exactly. I was quoting from a ZDNet article
It seems to be a dodge so that Facebook doesn't need to tell you what it knows about you.
21:50
If A,B are two permutation matrices, is rank(A-B) the number of points where they differ? Also, shouldn't that be a bit like a kernel? I was expecting A^-1B to have something to do with it, but I don't see a connnection. Subtracting permutations sounds silly, but it seems closer to the idea.
I have an interesting Mario Kart question I'll post sometime (involves permutation matrices as well) :)
22:06
Hmm.
@anon: I was thinking about it, do you think that that great question of yours about aleph_1 should be tagged [axiom-of-choice] too?
I'll leave that as your call.
@Asaf ^
22:35
It went okay. Except iCal thought it would be nice to duplicate all my events.
I love writing proofs on this site for things that I don't know and have to come up with them on the spot. Especially when I am correct.
I'm watching Dexter and the guy doesn't make any sense. He says he doesn't have any feelings for people, but he still thinks there are 'wrong' acts and 'bad' people. That strikes me as un-psychopath-ish.
By the way, if f_k(x) are continuous, sup{f_k(x)} is continuous, right?
I like that too. Most of my most upvoted posts I started typing out before I even knew I had an answer. (But half the time I try that I realize I actually don't have an answer...)
@yunone: Hey, liked my answer?
22:51
Hey, yeah, I upvoted it, thanks for answering so quickly.
No problem.
I like how there are only 9 views to the question, and probably five of those counted from my user or something like that :D
Ha, and maybe another 3-4 are from me.
I'm not sure that you add views to your own questions.
I'll probably accept it soon, but I like to leave these things open for a while now.
Really?
I hadn't heard that, but maybe you're right.
If you accept it within the hour I will have four accepts just today.
I think it's a record for me, especially since two of the answers are from yesterday or so.
22:55
Will it push you over the 200 daily rep line? Anything to get you closer to the epic/legendary badges.
Hehe, well.. I have 150 rep. for today so far, while 45 of it is accepted answers, the Epic badge does not care.
Oh wait, one time I had like five accepts I think. I recall hitting 260 once, I think.
@yunone: I wouldn't accept it unless he changes the f''A to the reasonable f(A). Life is too short for bad notation :)
2
Oh shush! :-)
Ha, maybe you're right. I thought it looked weird, like a double derivative.
I'm willing to settle on f[A]
22:58
Deal.
@tb: is my answer correct, though? I'm just not 100% sure on that sup{} claim.
Btw, Theo, did you play Doom back when it came out?
not really, no, I prefer abstract squares shooting yellow blobs
you know I'm a kid of the eighties. We had evil red squares and good yellow triangles. nothing fancy as nowadays
Playing Doom in fullscreen on a 1280+ resolution is shooting abstract blobs.
Oh ok, I just saw the comments about Doom on some question a few days ago.
23:00
Where?
Were they made by me?
You're lucky though, the 80s seemed like the golden age of gaming.
I think Jyrki made them first, it was based on some users avatar.
IDDQD.
I've played the three Dooms recently. The first was awesome, especially if you consider the games available in 1993.
The third one is scary, even if you play with cheats. They just jump at you from outta nowhere!
Heh, I know as much. I never liked first person shooters. I loved to stay in the abstract
So do you actually find time for gaming nowadays?
23:04
Me?
yeah, I'm gaming the SE-engine :)
heh, both of you.
no, I had lots of fun with ambrosia games, kind of revivals of old things, but the last real game I played was Myst
I don't really play games, but from time to time I figure that slacking off completely and killing some demons/chickens/Nazis is worth just as much as doing nothing.
Those are my thoughts exactly from time to time, especially on Fridays.
23:09
Usually I just drink and sit aimlessly here, it's as good as a game.
Give me a few years, and I'll get to that point too.
Just be sure to become a set theorist too!
Ha, set theory is fun and all, but I'll leave that kind of stuff to you.
good idea! btw. what kind of games do you play, yunone?
I generally like shooters actually. Games like Half-Life and Battlefield. Are you familiar with them?
23:14
No, I'm not, unfortunately. I don't think I ever played a game from the last decade
old guy, you know :)
It's probably for the best. I've clocked 200+ hours on Battlefield, and all that time could have been better spent elsewhere.
well, but the mind has to rest from time to time, even if it is with the tension of shooting and battlefields, so I wouldn't worry too much
Yeah, getting some time off thinking (consciously anyway) is a good thing from time to time.
It's all about balance. But maybe 50 hours would be a better balance.
50 hours / week ?
23:18
Oh goodness no, maybe 50 hours every 3 months or something.
ah, okay, but that's nothing
think of all the hours guys like Asaf and me have wasted here :)
I like how I'm getting encouraged to get more gaming in here. I am okay with this.
Just remember it's guys like me who are very grateful for the hours people like you and Asaf have "wasted" here.
Heh.
Yeah, I wasted a lot of time here.
@AsafKaragila consider the piecewise linear functions: 0 for x<=0, 1 for x>=1/n and nx for 0<x<1/n.
Ah, but maybe it's time to get back to a little reading/battlefield. Nice talking with you guys.
23:21
@yunone: And I mean actually wasted. Not spent it writing answers or something. Just stared vacantly at the monitor while some monotonous music played in the background and beer was waiting in my hand to be lifted once more and give me a kiss of life.
Sorry, I was looking way back.
see you, @yunone, as long as you manage to keep it down to 50-100 hours every three months I wouldn't worry.
@rob: What do you mean?
@Asaf: I guess rob was thinking of pong
your question about the sup of continuous functions.
23:23
oh, wrong guess
Pat
Pat
I learned about Taylor's Expansion today
@Pat a very useful expansion.
Indeed, the power of integrating by parts!
Just wanted to pop back in, does the answer still work?
23:25
Which answer?
Mine?
Pat
Pat
I don't like integration by parts, it's always messy
but how did you get the Taylor expansion, then?
integration by parts is a really useful tool. Live with it :-)
Yeah, since there was some doubt about f being continuous.
Well, no. Go play your battlefield, I'll fix this in the meantime :-)
23:26
You're much too kind. Good bye again.
Again, I have nothing to do :P
Pat
Pat
I have nothing to do also
I need to scan questions, or else I have to get back to work.
@tb: There are at least two proofs that don't use integration by parts!
Oh. 24k rep. I guess you knew :P
@Jacopo: I know that there are many ways to do it, but I always liked doing it by integrating by parts the most. That's how I understood it first...
23:35
I think I have a solution.
Since we have U_i shrinking towards A, and f_i[A]=0, f_i[X\U_i]=1, we can take f(x)=max{f_i(x) | x in U_i}; 1 if x not in any U_i.
@robjohn: Will the above function be continuous?
@AsafKaragila How are the U_i shrinking to A? This looks a lot like the counterexample I gave. Maybe I'm not getting the whole picture.
proving Tieze extension?
No...
Some equivalence between definitions of a perfectly normal space.
A = \bigcap U_i, and U_k \subseteq U_m for k>m
how is perfectly normal different from normal?
All closed sets are G-delta.
A=(-\infty,0], U_k=[1/k,\infty) and the f_k's I gave. Does that miss the mark? or the complement on the U_k.
23:47
Say what?
Let A = (-\infty,0], U_k = (-\infty,1/k) and the f_k I gave earlier.
Okay...
So f(x) = 0 for x<=0, and x otherwise
Seems pretty continuous to me.
You usually need some equicontinuity to get a continuous limit
In mathematical analysis, a family of functions is equicontinuous if all the functions are continuous and they have equal variation over a given neighbourhood, in a precise sense described herein. In particular, the concept applies to countable families, and thus sequences of functions. The equicontinuity appears in the formulation of Ascoli's theorem, which states that a subset of C(X), the space of continuous functions on a compact Hausdorff space X, is compact if and only if it is closed, pointwise bounded and equicontinuous. As a corollary, a sequence in C(X) is uniformly convergent i...
Wow. I didn't know that was going to happen.
Heh. Nice.
I didn't expect a sort of Spanish Inquisition...
23:53
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!
Our main weapon is fear, and a ruthless devotion to the Pope...
Amongst our weaponry are diverse elements such as surprise, fear, ruthless devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms!
Anyway, I'm not taking a limit here.
but you are in a sense since the sup of your functions is increasing
23:55
I'm taking maximum on f_i(x) such that x in U_i now.
@asaf: Can't you just sum your functions up: set f(x) = \sum 2^(-i) f_i ?
as you include more functions in the sup
Hm. I can. It's a good idea.
Perhaps I don't know the entirety of what you are trying to show.
Yes. It is an excellent idea :-D
Why didn't I think of that...
Aww, seems I won't be hitting 200 today after all.

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