« first day (2571 days earlier)      last day (2745 days later) » 

19:23
What does it mean by " $P(X=\infty)$ " , where $X:\Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{N} \cup \{\infty \}$
@LittleRookie Same as it would with any natural number in place of $\infty$
@AlessandroCodenotti Hi
Oh, so a random variable can take a value that is infinite?
It means what it means.
19:30
@LittleRookie only in this context
because the codomain is $\Bbb N \cup \{\infty\}$
I see, why would the codomain be $\mathbb{N} \cup \{\infty \}$ instead of $\mathbb{N}$ ?
@LittleRookie Because you defined to be that
Hi @Alessandro
what is the set $\{ \infty \}$ ? It's my first time seeing it.
@LittleRookie For the purposes here, $\infty$ is more or less just a symbol for some element which is not itself a natural number
19:35
I have a couple of abstract algebra questions that are giving me an headache, can I bug you with them? @Tobias
@AlessandroCodenotti Sure, may as well warm up for when the teaching starts
What's a Haar measure
it says $P(X=\infty) = 1- P(X<\infty)$
Kunen, in a set theory book, writes that "it is a (fairly easy) abstract algebra question to determine which abelian groups are the additive group of a field", but I'm not finding it fairly easy at all
Does $\infty$ refers to a number that is bigger than any natural number here?
19:38
@AlessandroCodenotti Woops, read that as multiplicative rather than additive
@LittleRookie Well, not a number, but they may well mean for it to be an added element with that property
@LittleRookie just treat it as any other symbol
@AlessandroCodenotti The additive group is the same as the one for a suitable vector spaces, which is easy to describe
But why it is then stated that $P(X=\infty) = 1-P(X<\infty)$ ?
huh, that was weird.
for a few minutes, my browser kept redirecting me to the area51 SE whenever I tried to go to a chat page.
Oh that's what it is
19:44
Mine too
Same here @semi
@AlessandroCodenotti I'm interested in an abelian group that isn't the additive group of a field
ah, so must've been something global.
3
Q: All chat.SE links redirected to Area 51

Kenny LauAll chat.SE links redirected to Area 51 starting from the last minute... bug? (Just click any chat.SE links)

3
Q: Going to chat.stackexchange.com takes me to Area 51?

AshIf I type chat.stackexchange.com into my browser, it resolves as area51.stackexchange.com. The same happens if I click the chat link from the dropdown on a site, as well. This just started within the last couple of minutes. I'm using Chrome, if that matters any.

$\Bbb Z$ @LeakyNun
19:45
5
A: Going to chat.stackexchange.com takes me to Area 51?

HaneyI broke it. I just unbroke it. Sorry!

@LeakyNun if $infty$ is just a symbol, why is $P(X=\infty) = 1-P(X<\infty)$ ?
That's probably the best short answer I've seen.
@LittleRookie because the complement of $\{\infty\}$ under the codomain is every finite number
Though I guess you could shorten it to: "Oops-Fixed-Sorry!"
@LittleRookie You had not said anything about that until now. But yes, that means that for this purpose, $\infty$ is an element which is greater than all naturals
19:46
@TobiasKildetoft scroll up
So $\Bbb Z$ no, $\Bbb Q$ yes, $\Bbb Z_2^2$ yes, $\Bbb R^3$ maybe
Not anything whose multiplication operation is continuous
I see, thanks.
@AkivaWeinberger the final one sure, assuming choice
@TobiasKildetoft how? oh, it is isomorphic to $\Bbb R$ under choice
Right
because it's isomorphic to $\Bbb R$ as an additive group then
19:48
@AkivaWeinberger I got sniped
@TobiasKildetoft hmm, I agree but I'm missing the easy description
Yeah. Under choice, $\Bbb R$ and $\Bbb C$ are isomorphic groups.
(Which is weird)
@AlessandroCodenotti So it is a direct sum of a suitable number of copies of either cyclic groups all of the same prime order, or it is a direct sum of some number of copies of the rationals
@AlessandroCodenotti What about $\Bbb Q^2$?
(The next question is how many nonisomorphic fields are there with additive group $\Bbb R$ by the way)
19:50
@AkivaWeinberger same as $\Bbb C \cap \Bbb Q^2$ which should be a field
True. $\Bbb Q^3$?
/kju kjubd/
@AkivaWeinberger what's the question?
Is it the additive group of a field
@AkivaWeinberger hey, the two /ju/ are from the same source, and hey, someone who can speak IPA!
"How can a stick that is r units long be cut into four pieces to form a rectangle with the greatest possible area? Since it is a rectangle, there will be two pieces of length a and two pieces of length b. The constraint can be expressed as 2a+2b=r or 2a+2b−r = 0; we wish to maximize ab, the area of the rectangle. The Lagrangian multiplier problem, then, is expressed as ab−λ(2a+2b−r)."
What is the "problem" in the last phrase, expressed in a complete sentence?
19:51
@AlessandroCodenotti Hmm, I think there are infinitely many fields with additive group isomorphic to the reals
@Hatshepsut function, probably
but really, using Lagrangian is overkill
@AkivaWeinberger both are from /y/ borrowed from French :p
im trying to understand lagrangian using this example
@AkivaWeinberger I am fairly certain all of the groups I described are the additive groups of fields
I think I can construcy countably many of them, I suspect there's either $2^{\aleph_0}$ or even $2^{2^{\aleph_0}}$
@TobiasKildetoft Right, but what field is $\Bbb Q^3$ the additive group of?
19:53
@AkivaWeinberger what do you mean?
1 min ago, by Tobias Kildetoft
@AlessandroCodenotti Hmm, I think there are infinitely many fields with additive group isomorphic to the reals
This statement doesn't make sense without further constraints
@LeakyNun It's easier when they're on my keyboard :P
@AkivaWeinberger Take your favorite extension of the rationals of degree $3$.
Are $\Bbb Q^2$ and the additive group of $\Bbb Q[\sqrt{2}]$ isomorphic? It feels weird
I mean, "doesn't make sense" -> "is a tautology"
19:54
@AlessandroCodenotti Why does that feel weird? The isomorphism is pretty direct
@AlessandroCodenotti yes it is, because people need to stop thinking about vectors as something carrying direction
@TobiasKildetoft Oh. Duh. Thanks.
In the Lagrangian multiplier problem, is the question "Maximize this function ab−λ(2a+2b−r)"?
@AkivaWeinberger oh, direct sum of $\Bbb Q$, 3 times, lol
/ˈkibɔɹd/
19:55
@AkivaWeinberger typical American rhotacism :p
I am a typical American.
I thought one would reduce the last syllable
I distinguish the vowels in price and prize, and I merge phrases such as Saturday and sadder day.
(And cot and caught.)
@AkivaWeinberger is "prize" more open?
@TobiasKildetoft in $\Bbb Q[\sqrt{2}]$ I can find $2$ elements $a$ and $b$ such that for all nonzero integers $c$ and $d$ $ac+bd$ isn't an integer, but there are no $2$ such elements in $\Bbb Q^2$
19:56
@LeakyNun Yeah
My internet is acting weird tonight, I sent a message twice
@AlessandroCodenotti And why is that weird?
@LeakyNun anyway, so that lagrangian function, what do you do with it? maximize it by manipulating a and b?
pr/ʌɪ/ce and pr/aɪ/ze, roughly
@AlessandroCodenotti alternative definitions of integer?
I mean, $a=(1,0)$ and $b=(0,1)$ if you only consider $(x,0)$ as integers
@AkivaWeinberger because of the voicing?
19:59
Oh, nevermind, I see the isomorphism and why it works now
I was being dumb
@LeakyNun i dont think that's the reason; spider/tiger
@AlessandroCodenotti just use vector space ^^
@Hatshepsut which one is more open?
@LeakyNun tiger
@Hatshepsut interesting
@LeakyNun Yeah, though I'm suffering a minor existential crisis because I just realized I've been raising the vowel in "spider" (and not "rider") all this time
20:01
@Hatshepsut pronounce sider and cider @AkivaWeinberger
and "tiger"
Oh shit sniped
I promise I wasn't looking at Hatshepsut's comment :P
My idea to construct fields with additive group $\Bbb R$ was to take uncountable extension of $\Bbb Q$ and then for each $n$ construct one which has exactly $n$ independent numbers without a square root
@LeakyNun Hm… different for some reason? Though I mean 'sider' isn't a real word I don't think
Or maybe it is
"Slider" definitely is, though, and I don't rhyme it with "spider" or "cider"
@LeakyNun yeah i have that split
20:04
all these years of learning English and hearing American accents I never noticed such a random split
although my Hong Kong accent has that split, on different words
@AlessandroCodenotti I was just thinking of taking rational functions on the reals, since these still have the same dimension over the rationals as the reals themselves
And doing this in various number of variables
can someone give me a list of simple words for me to see which words I pronounce which way
Rational functions means the field of fractions of $\Bbb R[X]$, right?
@AlessandroCodenotti Yeah
20:07
@Hatshepsut no, I'm not asking for a list of splits
I'm talking about this specific split
Canadian raising is an allophonic rule of phonology in many dialects of North American English that changes the pronunciation of diphthongs with open-vowel starting points. Most commonly, the shift affects or , or both, when they are pronounced before voiceless consonants (therefore, in words like price and clout, respectively, but not in prize and cloud). In North American English, /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ usually begin in an open vowel [ä~a], but through raising they shift to [ɐ], [ʌ], or sometimes even [ɜ] or [ə]. Canadian English often has raising in words with both (height, life, psych, type, etc....
Nice one, it should work
(The fact that $\Bbb R[X]$ and $\Bbb R$ are isomorphic as additive groups is much weirder than $\Bbb C$ and $\Bbb R$ in my opinion)
words that I pronounce with a more closed vowel include nice, height, life, type
@LeakyNun Wow. Also weird that both lists there put "tidy" under "always raised"… I never raise it. I think.
@AkivaWeinberger you might be confused by the word "raised"
hint: it doesn't mean open
No I pronounce tidy like the vowel in "wide"
Not like the vowel in "white"
20:10
I also don't raise "tidy"
Tiger is raised for me
not for me
I have no idea what's going on
although "tight" is raised for me
20:11
I'm having a hard time knowing what accent I'm using
This is the weirdest thing. How could I have not known how I talk
I apologize to anyone in the chat whose conversation on abstract algebra I've derailed
@Hatshepsut I think you're suppose to find its partial derivatives
LoL
Let's talk about abstract linguistics
Pronunciation Features of Hong Kong English

[aɪ]

The diphthong [aɪ] is usually replaced by [ʌɪ].
e.g. light, mice, rite, site, tight, twice
Those are all raised for me as well
Wait are you saying "Canadian raising" exists in Hong Kong?
20:15
I have a great proposal for a better than English international language, its only problem is the uncountable alphabet
@AkivaWeinberger I think it's just before unvoiced consonants
@AkivaWeinberger this is strange
Do you hear a difference?
This is British Accent... Looks like it isn't unique to Canadian?
> As a native of East Yorkshire, England, this difference has always interested me. In that area, we have the same difference in diphthong-length between, say, 'site' and 'side' as in RP English. But in WEST Yorkshire, they're both pronounced long.
3
A: Whence came the different varieties of long /i/?

David GarnerAs a native of East Yorkshire, England, this difference has always interested me. In that area, we have the same difference in diphthong-length between, say, 'site' and 'side' as in RP English. But in WEST Yorkshire, they're both pronounced long. I'd always thought that it was semantically uni...

I kinda hear a difference in vowel quality, but mostly in vowel length
@AkivaWeinberger this is strange
Because I pronounce [aɪ] in side, wide, ride, and I
As do I
…As do /aɪ/
But that follows the "rule" with the voicings
I don't want to discourage you, but I'm afraid making sense of the mess that English pronunciation is is not a task mankind is ready for
20:23
Language be weird.
English in particular.
I think today's xkcd is just messing with us
Pretty sure that's the joke, yes.
@AlessandroCodenotti We need a language with no vowels, so there's no chance of them moving around and changing!
(pretty sure)
@AkivaWeinberger there is a language with only two vowels
Also relevant:
20:25
Oh weeird
I mean
So vowels, plural, are relatively modern.
We can't ever know for sure, I assume
2 days ago, by Leaky Nun
Our reconstructed Proto-Indo-European only had one vowel
@Semiclassical In this language family, at least.
2 days ago, by Leaky Nun
(it is the hypothetical ancestor of the Indo-European languages including Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and English)
@Semiclassical "relatively"
talking about something like 2kBC (really rough estimate)
20:26
Right.
@Semiclassical And it's possible whatever came before PIE had lots of vowels, and they just all got lost somehow
@AkivaWeinberger "Equinox (solstice in British English)" is genius
Oh, they're opposites of each other, aren't they @AlessandroCodenotti
I only realized this just now
They're 3 months apart
I'm not sure what should count as 'modern' when it comes to language tbh.
20:27
@Semiclassical I've seen estimates like 10k BC
The Germanic branch of languages has an abnormally large vowel inventory, I've heard.
Though I'm not sure anyone else does either.
@AkivaWeinberger just English, I've heard
Language, by its very nature, isn't something we can have archeological data on.
Proto-Germanic is mainly /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/
i-mutation (umlaut) gave us two mores
20:28
@LeakyNun Really? How much does, say, Swedish have
Dutch has a lot I think
We combine like o and e to get oe
Best one can have is writing, and I imagine that's both rare and not really relevant.
We cut the consonants in Italian, our alphabet has 21 letters
No need for j,k,w,x and y
20:29
1 min ago, by Leaky Nun
@Semiclassical I've seen estimates like 10k BC
no, not 10k BC. more like 100k BC.
I mean Norwegian has AEIOUÆØÅ (as I write this I realize I forget what Swedish does)
Interesting. In that sense, 2kBC really would be modern.
So even without spelling irregularities that's 8
It does seem like a question that will remain mysterious: How and when did human language arise?
@AkivaWeinbergerSwedish has å, but not æ and ø
they have ä and ö instead of those
20:31
> The large inventory of vowel qualities is a later development, due to a combination of Germanic umlaut and the tendency in many Germanic languages for pairs of long/short vowels of originally identical quality to develop distinct qualities, with the length distinction sometimes eventually lost. Proto-Germanic had only five distinct vowel qualities, although there were more actual vowel phonemes because length and possibly nasality were phonemic.
In modern German, long-short vowel pairs still exist but are also distinct in quality.
@Semiclassical You can try looking it up online, but everything kinda looks like "We have no idea" + more words
That it happened is plainly evident. But the research tools seem just so limited and speculative.
(similarly to German)
@AkivaWeinberger Also, y is considered a vowel in the Nordic countries
Spanish (like Italian EDIT: no) has five. Well, you can also form some diphthongs out of those five, I don't know if those count
@akiva Ignoramus et ignoramibus
20:32
@TobiasKildetoft umlauted /u/ (i.e. /y/)?
@AkivaWeinberger Italian has 7
@TobiasKildetoft Really? I knew about Finnish (completely different language family), not the others
open/close e, open/close o
bene vs beve
@LeakyNun No, none of the Nordic countries have ü
(@AlessandroCodenotti can confirm)
@AkivaWeinberger according to wikipedia u,i,e,o all have 2 different pronunciation in Italian
20:33
Hm weird
I think I heard somewhere Arabic has three.
I don't think any Danish vowels have less than two ways to pronounce it
/a/ /e/ /u/
I'm glad we're focusing on vowels, because there are some languages in the Caucasus that totally have us beat on consonants.
Like 60 consonants or something.
9 mins ago, by Leaky Nun
@AkivaWeinberger there is a language with only two vowels
That's from there isn't it
yes, many consonants and 2 vowels
20:35
That just seems unnecessary
@AkivaWeinberger Arabic definitely has "i"
hijab
jihad
islaam
Here. Also the "h" is completely silent in Italian, it took me a lot of time to learn how to read the English "h" at the beginning of a word and I still mess it up now and then
wait, where is /e/?
20:36
@LeakyNun Oh, I see, turns out it was
Modern Standard Arabic has /a/ /i/ /u/, plus vowel length
(long and short)
and of course tons of regional variation
@AkivaWeinberger i see
Inuktitut has the same vowel inventory IIRC
@AkivaWeinberger yes, confirmed
and then Japanese has only a e i o u, just like Spanish
Is it possible to teach children to reliably distinguish all vowels of the IPA?
Guess: no
(Side note, I don't actually know how to write down most of the vowel sounds I make)
(in the IPA)
Danish has 32 vowels :o
20:40
WHAT
@AkivaWeinberger in which language?
@LeakyNun I would not be surprised to know we have that many vowel sounds :)
> The vowel system is unstable, and the contemporary spoken language is experiencing a merger of several of these phonemes. The following vowel pairs may be merged:
etc
@LeakyNun English.
32 vowels, and 0 diphthongs.
Where are you gettin 32
20:42
@AkivaWeinberger eh, long and short, sorry
Oh
Well that's 30 using the above chart (/a/ and /upside-down v/ don't have variable lengths)
But still, wow
I have no idea which of those correspond to which sounds
@TobiasKildetoft the position in the trapezium is supposed to tell you the position of your tongue
> Unstressed [ɪ, ʊ, ə, ɐ] are not shown.
Damn
@LeakyNun I am not sure how much I feel like trying out all the vowel sounds to see where my tongue is when :)
20:46
> /syns sønˀs sœns/ synes, synds, søns
IPA recognizes 39 vowels (ignoring length etc) so Danish is not even half
Well that's three
@AkivaWeinberger are those three the words with those sounds? Because the first one can be pronounces in two ways depending on the meaning
Danish only has 21 phonemes, even including length
And the second one is not a word on its own
20:49
@TobiasKildetoft ('seems', 'sin's', 'son's')
OK I thought I knew how to pronounce IPA but this passage broke me
(The text sample on the bottom of the page)
@LeakyNun Yeah, the second one only becomes a word as part of a composite (and the first one would probably be pronounced in only one of the two ways except in very rare cases)
In any case, I'm sorry, Tobias, but I will not learn Danish any time soon.
@AkivaWeinberger Not a very useful language to learn anyway
@TobiasKildetoft how is your name pronounced?
20:53
Send us a Vocaroo link
@TobiasKildetoft so the "d" is silent?
Yes, though it would have been pronounced differently without the "d" there
Effectively, the d is pronounced as another l
interesting
I usually pronounce the d when I introduce myself to people who don't speak Danish, as it is much easier for them
20:58
fwiw Danish has one of the most irregular spelling systems
It was kinda funny last time I gave a talk, since that was in Sweden, and the chair pronounced my name correctly, except he pronounced the k in my last name as one would in Swedish, where it is more like an "sh"
Yeah, we like us some irregularities and strange and isolated special cases
@TobiasKildetoft like the "ch" sound in German "ich"?
@LeakyNun Sortof, but not exactly
Also, how precisely it is pronounced is somewhat regional
(and don't get me started in the Swedish pronunciation of "sj" and the endings "tion" and "sion")
@TobiasKildetoft ok, I won't get you started
 
1 hour later…
22:27
Blargh
Does Blargh mean yes?
(): Blargh?
(): See Blargh means yes.
@Faust7 In Polish, "tak" means "yes". In Indonesian, "tak" means "no".
Unhelpful: "Are you speaking Polish?" "Tak."
Paradox: "Are you speaking Indonesian?" "Tak."
=)
that makes me happy and i learned two things thank you
Also look up the flags of Poland and Indonesia
Poland:
@AkivaWeinberger You seem to be a polyglot.
22:40
Polands great they invented the toilet seat you know?
They're the same but upside-down!
@WillHunting I know some languages. Polish and Indonesian are not among them.
I just know this fun fact
I only know English reasonably well.
Took the French to put a hole in it; but whos perfect?
Morning @TedShifrin
Good afternoon, Faust.
Excited for September?
I talked to my adviser today
less worried
22:49
Um ... Should I be? Oh, and ...
No point worrying, so long as you work hard.
Yeah he said that
was trying to get idea what grads i needed to get into the masters program
took him awhile to explains that its not "just" about grades
and he said i could defer the honours project off till the winter semester if i dont know what i want to do so ima do that and try and contact that other prof in September and see if we can work out an agreement to do something in dif geo
23:31
@Faust7 I didn't know you are a math student.
@WillHunting not a particularly good one
but i am at UVIC in canada
Any chance someone could quickly help me take a matrix derivative?
what size is it?
lets just say yes
It's quick
but I don't know too much about linear algebra calculus
link /post
We all have to start somewhere
23:45
$\frac{\partial }{\partial \mathbf{y}}\left[ \left(\mathbf{x}\cdot \mathbf{y} \right ) \cdot \mathbf{z} \right ]$
where none of the matrices are the same size
so just taking out y would yield $\mathbf{x} \cdot \mathbf{z}$ which are not compatible sizes
x is compatible with y
and their product with z
but not x and z
your notation is alittle confusing
ohh hang on
y doesn't get replaced with a scalar $1$ does it?
It gets replaced with a matrix of $1$'s the shape of y, right?
Well y is eitheir a vector a matrix by definition
and the derivative is with respect to the second variable
not the derivative of the y matrix
23:49
Yeah
It's the derivative of the expression
with respect to the y matrix
normally with given values you'd calculate the dot product then take the derivative of the sum
Yes, which is achievable by simply making y a matrix of ones in the shape of y, correct?
for example $ y * y^2$ the derivative of this with respect to y is $3y^2 $ not $1* 2y$
Because then the dot product would yield the sum of all of the contents of x
so im not seeing how you can take the derivative of one of the matrices terms before calculating the dot product?
23:52
You can symbolically
It simply depends on the order in which the dot product is presented
Like the derivative of the expression with respect to z
is just $(\mathbf{x\cdot y})$
Ic, im afraid you need someone more adept in there understanding of what you are doing
i'll see if my newfound hypothesis works in the program
^^
sorry i couldnt help
It's cool
you helped more than you know ;)
Im glad lol, gotta move a computer brb

« first day (2571 days earlier)      last day (2745 days later) »