Mathematics - 2012-07-23 (page 3 of 6)

well, what i'm reading say it is from Xiamen specifically, which was romanized as Amoy

the Portugese got their tea from Macao, and spread the Manadarin form of the name of the beverage..so we have tea and thé in English and French, and chy and chai in Portuguese and Russian

hi

@DavidWheeler what do you work as?

@BenjaLim absolutely nothing

job?

11:18 AM

none to speak of

family?

user19161

@BenjaLim That's a little intrusive.

i was married...my wife died

oh I'm sorry.....

@DavidWheeler Didn't mean to sound

...intrusive.....

@J.M. KOmusta

I need a hit squad...

11:19 AM

@J.M. I find philipinos really friendly

@BenjaLim It's kumusta. :) Well, ayos naman.

@FrankScience Good to hear.

@J.M. I have never met people more friendly than pinoys

Not plastic, artificial

user19161

@BenjaLim I thought it was seplt filipinos usually?

@JasperLoy You're right. (And it's "spelt". ;))

yes

11:21 AM

i usually hear them describe themselves as pinoy

@DavidWheeler That'd be the colloquial term.

@J.M. What is taka sa pinas?

sort of like "yankee" for "american"?

@BenjaLim It's Visayan; "you" would be the closest translation.

@DavidWheeler Precisely.

@J.M. Oh.....

what is the translation?

11:23 AM

@BenjaLim so roughly, "you guys in the Philippines"

@J.M. I want to ask a question on the main site

but the language is tagalog, yes?

@JasperLoy His handwriting is somewhat hard to figure out.

oh visayan...duh

user19161

@FrankScience OK. Get someone to help you then, if it is not too private.

11:26 AM

@DavidWheeler No, it's a dialect. "Filipino" is indeed the main language, though it borrows heavily from the Tagalog dialect, with a little bit of everything else thrown in...

@J.M. You pinged the wrong person

@BenjaLim Yes, the lines shifted... :D

user19161

@J.M. Another victim of the moving target!

pinging me will do NO GOOD...i have sound turned off, and assume the orange letters are a mistake

"what is deep maths"...what does that MEAN?

Ping @DavidWheeler, ping @DavidWheeler.

11:28 AM

allo @Gigili

you know how to push my buttons

@Ben, that question seems rather too soft...

I know

@J.M. But I often can say when a concept is deep or not to me

I have trouble conveying that across to laypeople

@DavidWheeler I sorta kinda miss being mostly ping-immune myself...

@Gigili since we're talking languages...what's the difference between Persian and Farsi?

@BenjaLim "I know it when I see it." ;)

11:30 AM

@BenjaLim can u haz give example?

user19161

Deep maths? Is there such a thing???

@J.M. Yes exactly.

user19161

There is only deep water.

@DavidWheeler Like when I tell them how galois theory shows there's no general formula for a quintic

I tell them how awesome it is and stuff

and tbh

daily life is actually mundane @DavidWheeler

user19161

@BenjaLim The amazing thing is that although abstract algebra books prove that, almost all don't expose the solution to the cubic or quartic at all.

11:32 AM

ok

The thing is, "deep" means different things to different people... there's some overlap, of course, but there are things that are deep for Mr. Z, but "trivial" for Mr. W.

to me, the fundamental isomorphism theorem is "deep"...it goes beyond the individual incarnations it pops up as....and says something almost inexpressible about structure itself

ok..........

user19161

There is a small little dover book by Edwin Clark which shows the solution to cubic and quartic equations though.

@JasperLoy I'm not sure why the cubic solution isn't displayed that much myself. The algebra isn't that tedious...

(but the quartic, yes, it's a PITA.)

11:34 AM

@DavidWheeler But the feeling of deep when you see it you know it

that is very hard to convey to most people

stuck in their daily mundane lives

user19161

@J.M. Well, my hypothesis is this. Usually some great man writes a great text, and for the next 9000 years everyone copies the contents but write things their own ways, so the content of most math texts don't change much over time, only the writing style.

i forget most of it...there's 2 clever substitutions, and you get a quadratic in cubes

I mean how trivial is it if you're studying international law......

More trivial than the trivial solution to FLT

@DavidWheeler After you've seen the depth

daily life is like trivial....

@BenjaLim have you read "A Mathematician's Apology" by G.H. Hardy?

ONE BIG YES

I feel like in daily life I don't fit in

and there's this almost superficial bit where I come on chat to talk to people I have never even seen face to face but talk because we have a common interest

11:37 AM

@DavidWheeler Well, depression is pretty much the straightforward generalization of completing the square, but the splitting idea is indeed clever.

user19161

What would happen I wonder if we lived forever?

@JasperLoy Oh, like this guy?

by "depression", do you mean getting rid of the squared term?

@JasperLoy According to the buddha you don't ask who shot the arrow when you've been wounded. You only look for a cure.

@DavidWheeler daily life.....

so mundane

user19161

@BenjaLim I know, though this does not relate to what I just said.

11:39 AM

@DavidWheeler Yes. "Depression" is "get rid of the $x^{n-1}$ term in a degree-$n$ polynomial".

@J.M. What do you do for a living?

i think there mathematics can be transcendent, sometimes. when you "see" the truth of something, like you've just become the owner of a brand-new idea, with that "new-idea smell"

transcendent @DavidWheeler ??????

@BenjaLim I'm a chemist. :)

@J.M. VAT?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????/

11:40 AM

@DavidWheeler Mastery of a new skill can be intoxicating. :)

yes, he probably works with vats, at times

@DavidWheeler transcendent?

@DavidWheeler what do you mean?

@DavidWheeler please explain

@DavidWheeler Well, not at my current job, but the two previous jobs, yes. :D

@DavidWheeler please

are you questioning why i used that word, or asking what it means?

11:41 AM

@DavidWheeler please explain what you mean?

@DavidWheeler what it means in that context

@DavidWheeler and why you used it

@BenjaLim "transcendent", or "vat"?

@J.M. transcendent

@J.M. I say vat for what like halmos

i'm using it as "up-lifting", like being on another plane of existence

user19161

@BenjaLim Just a suggestion, maybe you can make your messages longer to reduce the number of pings. :-)

@DavidWheeler to transcend the mundane plane of consciousness that is daily life

that is the path of the wise @DavidWheeler

Few reach the other shore, only the wise do @DavidWheeler

@DavidWheeler only the wise do

@DavidWheeler Remember that.

user19161

11:43 AM

I am not sure what the other shore really is @ben. Only Buddha knows.

@JasperLoy vat?

when something unexpected reveals its hidden face, and you know that it's not only true now...but ALWAYS....it's like a taste of immortality

3

@DavidWheeler OH GOD

OMG

user19161

There is no God to me, though there are gods.

@DavidWheeler That has to be the most rad thing I've heard in a while

11:44 AM

@DavidWheeler "You are now in possession of a truth that is FOREVER. Use it wisely."

user19161

@DavidWheeler That is what we call "epiphany".

@DavidWheeler math.stackexchange.com/users/5783/benjalim

favourite ones

read my quotations

David, you are now quotable. Congratulations. :D

why, thank you for the compliment

@DavidWheeler touch your feet :D :D

user19161

11:46 AM

@BenjaLim Sorry to disappoint, but I don't find that remarkable. :-)

@JasperLoy So singaporean.

one of my pet peeves is the way mathematical training is started...so much learning by rote

user19161

@BenjaLim No, I am not the typical one as mentioned. In fact like I said sometimes I feel I am not human.

especially kids...i feel quite strongly they should be encouraged to play

user19161

@DavidWheeler You mean like kids in elementary school.

user19161

11:48 AM

@DavidWheeler But they can't even play if they think that 1+1=3.

@JasperLoy That's true in the zero ring :D :D :D

instead they get a militaristic regimen that often instills a life-long fear

@DavidWheeler xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

mwahhhh @DavidWheeler

user19161

@BenjaLim ..................................

@JasperLoy PAWNED PINGAS

@DavidWheeler XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOOXOXOXOXOXOOXXOOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOOXOXOXO

11:49 AM

there was an experimental course...i'd have to look it up

@DavidWheeler LOVE YOU

it was a high-school geometry course, part of an experimental program

user19161

@BenjaLim I prefer the example where 1=-1 in F_2.

@DavidWheeler I'M HUNGRY

@DavidWheeler VERY

for almost half the course, they didn't even discuss geometry...but thinking

11:50 AM

@DavidWheeler HUNGRY

@DavidWheeler You've read Lockhart's Lament, I gather?

@DavidWheeler Hey

@DavidWheeler how come you are ignoring me

@DavidWheeler I feel so hurt

user19161

I am going for dinner now...

nevertheless, they still scored about as well as the national average on standardized test

@BenjaLim i am not ignoring you

@DavidWheeler you are not responding to me

11:51 AM

but the kicker was, when they tested the same students the following year

@BenjaLim i am, too

@BenjaLim he's writing something; it takes time.

they scored even higher

@BenjaLim what are you hungry for?

@DavidWheeler nothing

actually I'm semi maggot now

you are hungry for the null set?

no

11:54 AM

@J.M. why, yes i have

sigh

if only the laypeople understood

@DavidWheeler Well, you were channeling him somewhat... :D

@BenjaLim some people don't understand how math can be beautiful

@BenjaLim In my case, the teachers weren't of much help...

i mean, sure the physicists and chemists and economists find it all very useful but meh...that's not the point

11:56 AM

@DavidWheeler Umm, Umm, Persian includes Farsi and some other languages. I guess.

@DavidWheeler Yes, from a utilitarian perspective (for scientists/engineers), math is a convenient tool. But there aren't that many people who can think of it as something fun in itself, like art.

mathematics has beautiful ideas....these ideas are pretty much beyond words, but sometimes, you can almost bring them alive

@Gigili Ah, Farsi is one of the dialects of Persian. I had thought they were synonymous...

Umm, seems I am wrong.

> Farsi (Arabic form of PARSI) is the native name of our language and Persian is its English equivalent; as the native name of German language is 'Deutsch'

Oh, okay.

12:01 PM

@JasperLoy He explained his proof and finally said that he accepted my answer as the answer in next edition of CMath

to make an analogy with playing music: you have people like Segovia: classically trained, very virtuoso...but you also have people like Django Reinhardt who literally had to invent his own style

@J.M. proz.com/forum/linguistics/… if you're interested.

@Gigili Thanks.

@FrankScience Nice!

@Gigili interesting. so the speakers of Farsi would prefer that we non-speakers call it by the name we gave it, instead of the name they gave it.

2

from now on, i am going to insist that Hispanics stop calling me Americano. clearly, it's insulting.

(am i serious? who knows?)

You cannot be serious?

12:06 PM

oh, if only you had said "surely you cannot be serious"....

@DavidWheeler ...and don't call me "Shirley"!

let's move on shall we? @Gigili thank you for educating me.

@DavidWheeler Any time! I'm here to educate you!

@JM <---he speaks jive

@Gigili OK!!

(add extra exclamation points for emphasis if you deem it necessary)

12:31 PM

sun's up. mhm. looks ok, and the world survives into another day...

user19161

12:41 PM

@DavidWheeler Wow, very poetic.

not my words, unfortunately...it's the opening line to "Wondering Where the Lions Are" by Bruce Cockburn

user19161

1:01 PM

@J.M. Or Sirius!

user19161

1:13 PM

@FrankScience Was his proof wrong? Or did you just give him an alternative proof?

i am sirius. and stop calling me alpha centauri.

@DavidWheeler Should I send you texts instead?

sure.

@JasperLoy It's not his, but he claimed that it's right. I have another interpretation for the answer on that book, leading to another proof, which is somewhat different from his explanation.

user19161

@FrankScience Ah OK. So are you going to get any cookies from him?

1:17 PM

@JasperLoy What's cookie?

user19161

@FrankScience Just joking. Cookie just means cookie here, you know, like a biscuit.

@JasperLoy Oh, but why should he send cookie?

user19161

@FrankScience Because you pointed out something to him?

@JasperLoy Ok, got it. OX$1.00.

@JasperLoy It's an honor rather than money.

user19161

@FrankScience Is uni going to start soon for you?

1:21 PM

@JasperLoy What's uni?

user19161

@FrankScience university

@JasperLoy Which university? Definitely not Stanford, where Don Knuth lives.

user19161

@FrankScience I mean, I thought that you are waiting for classes to begin after the hols?

@JasperLoy And then?

user19161

@FrankScience Nothing. I've said everything already.

1:28 PM

Does anyone here use pari and know something about p-adic numbers?

user19161

@OldJohn I only know about Paris, pariah and Perrier.

@JasperLoy Probably wise - I am finding pari a bit confusing :(

user19161

@OldJohn Is it software for computing things?

@JasperLoy Pari = free (maybe open-source) symbolic calculator, very good for number theory stuff, and does p-adic calculations, but I am struggling to get more than one cube root of 1 using it :(

1:51 PM

Hmm - not sure I understand it, but "teichmuller" seems to be the thing.

I am sick of having this vague health problems 8-).

Zhen Lin

Living is a vague health problem!

Hi guys!

@ZhenLin True.

Zhen Lin

Consequences include eventual death!

That's the best part. Then you are healed completely!

3

1:56 PM

@JonasTeuwen You have my sympathies

CLarue

Death is certainly the natural state

my life has an initial and a terminal object

2

@OldJohn Thanks, but it is not really a problem, it is just very annoying :-).

The martingale stopping theorem... The martingal death theorem?

It ceases to change, hence it must have deceased.

if the buddhists are right, and these are the same...does that mean life = 0?

@JonasTeuwen I find that when I get annoying symptoms, I can usually get over them by improving my diet, getting more exercise, and cutting down on alcohol - if that fails, I see a doctor :)

1:58 PM

@DavidWheeler What?

@OldJohn Yes, I know :-). I tried all of them. I will request a CBC now.

@DavidWheeler In which category?

@DavidWheeler What are the same?

when i am sick...i step up my drinking...in a most likely ill-advised effort to sleep through it