Mathematics - 2018-07-30 (page 3 of 3)

Fargle

23:00

@EricSilva Even in translation. Lots of good Spanish works.

MatheinBoulomenos

@EricSilva hmm, I already started with Italian a bit (I'm horrible at it though)

Daminark

Morocco you could get by with two languages, Arabic and French, though they're trying to replace French with English, and then you have a number of folk who speak Berber

Eric Silva

just do both my dude

Ted Shifrin

I'm not well-read in Spanish lit (I've read a bit in translation), but I'm not of that opinion. I'm very into French lit.

Daminark

Honestly Morocco's sorta back and forth with languages

MatheinBoulomenos

23:01

isn't learning languages for fun a thing that you do in college in the US? here you have to know two foreign languages before you enter university and a lot of my friends picked up some languages at university since there's so much stuff available.

Ted Shifrin

I'd love to go to Morocco (for the scenery and the food), except for the fact that I've heard that the culture is extremely anti-gay.

Eric Silva

@TedShifrin a lot of great french writers, but imo there are like a few writers from SA i would put above any french writer hands down

Fargle

If I had to pick a second language to learn in earnest, it would probably be French. It's aesthetically pleasing and Romance, so my previous study of Latin may (very marginally) be of some benefit.

Ted Shifrin

ah, good point, contrasting SA with Spain, @EricSilva.

Daminark

If you go all the way down to the Sahara, there used to be Spanish since it was colonized by Spain for a while, and also if you go far enough up North you'll see some. Most of Morocco is French, that's kinda the sophisticated language, along with standard Arabic. Then there's the Moroccan dialect which is mutually incomprehensible with most dialects of Arabic

Ted Shifrin

23:01

it's of some benefit, and, hi @Fargle

Fargle

Hi @Ted

Eric Silva

@TedShifrin I unfortunately do not know much about european spanish lit, I've only read Quixote and not much else

Fargle

Quixote is a hilarious book

Eric Silva

it's like real good

Fargle

Cervantes cooks up the hottest takes in it.

MatheinBoulomenos

23:03

among the peope I know there are ones who started learning French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese here at university

Eric Silva

there's a lot of really good lusophone lit but only hispanophones read it unfortunately

p sad

Daminark

And then you have Berber which is kinda, some folk in the south speak it. There it's less heteregeneous you're gonna find a lot more anti-Arabic sentiment as a result of a few centuries of attempted suppression (my dad refused to learn it on principle for so long, now he regrets it for religious reasons). Then you have people who live in the Atlas mountains and up north who speak a different kind of Berber, not too familiar with them. Now Berber is an official language so that may grow

@Ted I'm not sure how that'll go there. It's one of those things where, say, "gay" is a very standard (and nasty) insult used even by adults everywhere, and for religious reasons the country is generally opposed to it, though I'm not sure what that translates to for a gay tourist there

Ted Shifrin

Eric: Would you take (literally) a minute to double-check that I'm right with my protest to Michael Hoppe here? Ordinarily people with tons of rep don't make silly mistakes.

Demonark: I think it's one of those countries where you go to jail with the key thrown away if you're caught "being gay."

[if not worse ...]

MatheinBoulomenos

@TedShifrin I've seen a user with a gold badge in group theory make a mistake (and defending it in the comments) that revealed that he had some fundamental misunderstandings about group presentations

Ted Shifrin

wow

I mean ... we all make mistakes. But usually if someone reasonably expert questions it, we think it through and say "damn, I'm sorry I was stooopid."

Fargle

23:09

Group presentations? That's where one person does all the work and you awkwardly show a Powerpoint to the class, right?

Ted Shifrin

smacks Fargle

Fargle

Ah, yeah, you're right, sorry.

PowerPoint*

MatheinBoulomenos

@TedShifrin he deleted it after a few hours iirc

Ted Shifrin

I try to be adult and apologize when I screw up.

Fargle

I usually err on the side of not participating if I'm worried I'll get something wrong--however, I know that's not a perfect solution, because most mistakes are made while someone is certain they're right.

MatheinBoulomenos

23:11

he said something like "if you have a group with a presentation $\langle a,b \mid a^3, \dots\rangle$ (where $\dots$ are some other relations), then you don't have to check that $a \neq 1$, because we wrote $a^3$ as a relation and not $a$"

Eric Silva

@TedShifrin at a glance i think youre correct but lemme grab a pen

Ted Shifrin

My logic is, I think, unassailable in the first place that the derivative brings in a $ds/dt$ in the given equation. But his later claim is off as I said.

oh yikes @Mathein.

The word problem rears its common head.

Daminark

So I haven't quite done any research on this but just from having lived there it kinda feels like one of those things where being gay is technically illegal and I think every now and then they sorta arrest someone for it and it's a big thing on TV and all, but that there are gay scenes which aren't too secret, and they're less likely to do that to tourists. Though trust your research more than me, it's not something I've given much thought to

Fargle

May wind up being safer than America for LGBT folk in the not-too-distant future.

Eric Silva

i hope we dont degrade too much :(

Ted Shifrin

23:15

I'm dubious about that one, @Fargle. But I'm also not totally sure on how many generations it'll take to undo the Trumpian damage.

The whole world is shifting supremacist and populist.

Fargle

I am as well.

Daminark

Eh, wouldn't go that far, it's still something which is technically illegal and a lot of the population would probably be opposed to legalizing it

Fargle

I suppose I meant de facto rather than de jure

Eric Silva

@TedShifrin I agree unless im stupid which ill always leave open as a possibility

Fargle

Even then, I was being more rhetorical than I was being truly analytical

Ted Shifrin

23:17

Thanks, Eric. I don't think you're stooopid.

I understand, @Fargle.

MatheinBoulomenos

here we're currently debating introducing unisex bathrooms since some queer people feel unhappy with choosing a gender when they go to the bathroom

I mean at our university

Ted Shifrin

Mathein: It can be a real issue for trans people in transition ...

Eric Silva

i dont understand the opposition to this kind of thing because it seems like a no brainer to me

Fargle

@TedShifrin This is the aspect of things that seriously troubles me. How quickly we forget the damage nationalism can do, merely because it's now our nationalism.

Same, @EricSilva

Ted Shifrin

It's attacking old white str8 society, Eric, of course.

Eric Silva

23:19

see the thing is im cool w attacking that i guess

Ted Shifrin

ich auch

Fargle

word

MatheinBoulomenos

yeah I don't have any problem with that either

Eric Silva

@Fargle part of being an ubernationalist is being super vague and nihilistically angry so it's not like they forget they just actually are self-destructive

Fargle

@EricSilva Well, yes, but I mostly speak of the people who aren't necessarily ubernationalist, or support such without being aware of it.

Eric Silva

23:22

i getcha

groupthink is stronger than basically anything i guess

Fargle

There's that apocryphal quote about "when fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag and bearing a cross" or whatever.

Eric Silva

that's like basically definitional lol

Fargle

Agreed.

Eric Silva

sad

Fargle

I think the point is that it's easy to associate fascism with specifically Nazi ideology, and by that proxy, things of an occult nature, or a vague neoclassicist mentality, or things like that. Or you could take a further step back from any notion of critical thought and believe that fascism is synonymous with socialism...the American misconceptions of it are endless, and they oppose "fascism" the named term more than they oppose the idea.

Hence "antifa is the real fascists" and so on.

MatheinBoulomenos

23:28

I heard that Obama introduced Obamacare, that was called communism which I think is really funny

Eric Silva

king neolib gets called a commie

v weird

MatheinBoulomenos

I guess Germany is communist by American standards

Eric Silva

@MatheinBoulomenos in public discourse? yes.

Fargle

Yes, actually.

Ted Shifrin

not American. By the standards of ignorami.

Fargle

23:29

I've had multiple acquaintances try to tell me that Germany is a failing socialist dystopia.

Eric Silva

@TedShifrin tbh not that different as categories

Fargle

@TedShifrin Er, yes, modulo this statement. You're right.

MatheinBoulomenos

@Fargle lmao

Ted Shifrin

A significant portion of Americans, Eric, but not a majority and certainly not all.

OK, I have neighbors coming over for cocktails and nibbles, so I have to go get things ready.

Back to math, all :P

Eric Silva

sure but a significant enough portion to have made growing up as a latin american in the US kind of trashy

Fargle

23:30

Of course, one of these people calls himself a "conservative socialist", so I can be reasonably certain he doesn't have any sort of consistent ideological basis.

@Ted Have fun!

Eric Silva

@TedShifrin have a good nibble

Ted Shifrin

I'll save you some eggplant caviar, EricS.

Eric Silva

oooh yummy

@Fargle i always kind of conceptualize fascism as being one side of a coin the obverse of which is liberalism

Fargle

I'd have to agree.

Eric Silva

at least fascism as a historically situated reactionary movement that has arisen out of the failure of liberalism to prevent certain crises

the two are connected sort of inexorably

MatheinBoulomenos

23:33

@Ted enjoy

Fargle

Fascism also depends upon the classical liberal tendency toward tolerance of political opinions.

Daminark

Lol, yeah getting back to math probably isn't a bad idea

So, what's your favorite elliptic curve?

Fargle

y = x

MatheinBoulomenos

does it have to exist?

The Frey curve is pretty cool

Eric Silva

@Fargle sure, the conditions of liberalism I think are necessary to inoculate 'fascism' as it has existed, so i think youre right on here

Daminark

23:35

Lmao

MatheinBoulomenos

"Unisex-Toilets is what our sick, freakish government invented to ruin culture. Who else would make women use urinals but a bunch of freaks. It's the tyranny of the minorities. Its about social engeneering standard human nature out of existence. This will cause cultural degradation and the collape of humanity"

Fargle

@EricS I'd love to talk more about this in the future, but I think Ted was right to pull us back toward math.

Eric Silva

but also there's a component about economic conditions that if i talk about to long i start ranting about marx

so i should stop

Daminark

Well, that's one answer, then what's your favorite real elliptic curve?

(Real in the sense of existing, not $\mathbb{R}$)

Eric Silva

@MatheinBoulomenos dude down w culture lets go full speed of head collapse of humanity woot woot

tbh idek what an elliptic curve is

isnt it like a y^2 = x^3 kinda guy

MatheinBoulomenos

23:37

take an order $R$ in an imaginary quadratic number field, then $\Bbb C/R$ is an elliptic curve over $\Bbb C$ with complex multiplication from $R$

@EricSilva you can put them in the form $y^2$ equals some cubic in x yeah, but you want the cubic on RHS to have distinct roots

is that too general?

Eric Silva

u lost me bruv

im a PDE

u gotta go slow on the algebra

MatheinBoulomenos

$y^2=x^3$ is not an elliptic curves, because $x^3$ has multiple roots

e.g. $y^2=x(x+1)(x-1)$ is fine though

Daminark

Take a PDE of the form y^2 = x^3 + ax^2 + bx + c

4

Eric Silva

gotcha

@Daminark dont play this game w me boi

MatheinBoulomenos

geometrically this is a smoothness condition

we don't want cusps or self-intersections

Eric Silva

23:39

yeah i thought so

dont those guys have groups defined on them or some shit

MatheinBoulomenos

yeah, the group structure is very geometric

Daminark

Yup, take the line through P and Q, that'll hit the curve at a third point, then reflect

Eric Silva

cool

i read all this at some point but all math is gone from my brain hole

MatheinBoulomenos

@Daminark I like $y^2=x^3-n^2x$ where $n \in \Bbb N$

you can show that the structure of the group law over $\Bbb Q$ of that thing is directly related to the congruent number problem

Congruent number

In mathematics, a congruent number is a positive integer that is the area of a right triangle with three rational number sides. A more general definition includes all positive rational numbers with this property.The sequence of integer congruent numbers starts with 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 37, 38, 39, 41, 45, 46, 47, … (sequence A003273 in the OEIS) For example, 5 is a congruent number because it is the area of a (20/3, 3/2, 41/6) triangle. Similarly, 6 is a congruent number because it is the area of a (3,4,5) triangle. 3 is not a congruent number. If q is...

this is a great answer that explains how to use elliptic curves to solve one of those facebook math questions: quora.com/…

loch

23:55

one fun thing to do is just add some points arbitrarily, get some crazy looking fractions and amuse yourself with the fact that you just found a crazy looking rational solution to an equation

MatheinBoulomenos

I never did contest math myself, but a friend showed me a contest number theory questions where you had to show that there are infinitely many rational solutions to some equation and asked me how to do it and it was basically a no-brainer with elliptic curves

you had to convert it a bit, but you had an obvious rational point and when you added that to itself, one of the coordinates got bigger (that wasn't hard to show), so it has infinite order

not sure how they expected high school students to do that though

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