@robjohn Hi! It's a nice solution, thank you 💫

Hi

@leslie Most of the canned food is still unavailable here. I did get enough kitten cans for a few months.

I like @robjohn avatar 🥺

Hi @Alex. As I said earlier, robjohn is green with envy.

(I don't know how that translates to your language.) :)

ted: livvy's favorite variety is blue wilderness "red meat feast."

Mostly Screech has Science Diet kitten dry food; there are two types of Fancy Feast kitten canned food.

This should get people back to mathematics in a hurry.

sometimes livvy gets 'duck recipe' in a small can. it's the circle of life. from the duck pond to duck recipe.

yeah, surely somebody has something mathematical.

@TedShifrin hahaha How can I create an avatar like this? it's pretty "vert de jalousie" should be the proper term in french.

time for some chartreuse

What's mean chartreuse?🤔

it's an occasionally green liqueur. i was just free associating on french and green

one of my friends is from grenoble and the last time we hung out we had chartreuse

some of those recipes for a hangover are over 200 years old

I'm too young for alcohol, I've just heard about drinking.

Ah, encore un français!

In France no one is too young for alcohol :)

autant que je sache :)

@TedShifrin hahaha no no no that's not true hahaha 🤣

@leslie confessed that she almost trampled on the beautiful bird below:

@leslie ;P

she?

@TedShifrin Oh, that was a blunder! I know leslie is a he!

Indeed. With all the male chauvinism :D

@TedShifrin Tried to edit...

@TedShifrin Kind of back at you guys, ya'know!

I still don't believe that @Alex is just 10 years old.

@TedShifrin I don't either, but if s/he/they is, they best not advertise it on SE!!

I'm teasing. I just don't believe there's anything such as "too young to drink" in France.

Has @robjohn been zombified by the grinch, in an effort to steal Christmas?

apparently Erdos was his tutor at some stage

I'm sure Terry Tao was answering them :) I first made a stab at studying calculus around 14, I guess.

With regards to wheel diameters copper. This is my first "adult" bike so I still can't tell the nuances between different wheel diameters for riding. I'm just mastering proper gear switching right now...

mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Maclaurin A few days ago Mr. Maclaurin appeared, this is an interesting story.

@TedShifrin You are correct, how old do you think I am? 👀

@dc3rd :-). i think it is just age for me, i like the 26" and don't want to change unless there is a good reason (other than marketing differentiation to make money). one thing i don't like are disc brakes. they are effective but harder to maintain.

they don't make penny farthings like they used to

Since my brakes are new I do forsee that as being an issue since they are much more complicated. Seems like it is a mini car now and you need to be trained to perform proper maintenance

i had a farthing at some point, i gave it and my halfpennies to a nephew who likes such things

Je n'ai aucune idée. J'avais l'impression que tu sois à l'uni.

@dc3rd yep, i am not a pro nor a semi-pro, i ride about 1k miles/year for enjoyment/therapy and want simplicity when it comes to maintenance.

@copper.hat farthing could change the meaning entirely if a typo occurred, and omitted one letter.

:-) that's a gas!

poo poo and pee pee

Oy vey, not again.

I agree. The main purpose of my bike was for pleasure and riding to the gym. Maybe a long distance mountain ride every so often.

i have a convex calculus of variations problem that is stumping me :-(

@TedShifrin Well, most of my friends drink liquor, so maybe that's right.

@dc3rd i am low key, no specialised gear, etc. i ride in vendor wear & running shorts.

My sister framed "passing gas" to her toddler daughter as "tooting". I had never heard of that term in that context.

our cat is attempting to eat ornamental kale

@copper.hat 😔

@Alex ? did i do something?

i am capable of stepping on toes inadvertently

i hope you didn't do anything. the terms of your supervised release were very particular on that point

the stupid ankle bracelet is annoying

@copper.hat No no, he thought he was worried about his problem. Thank you very much for your kindness.

@Alex It's not necessarily right or wrong. But it can have consequences when overdoing it. So yes, it can be destructive when taken to an extreme, whether frequency and/or in amount.

drinking or passing gas?

@copper.hat Would that be a surveillance ankle bracelet?

@TedShifrin Our cats eat Science Diet adult indoor. My cat when I was young would only eat Kitty Queen Meaty Treat.

@amWhy i am joking :-)

@copper.hat Hah!!

@copper.hat Oh, hilarious! I knew that. I was just trying to gather my composure after LOL, to respond!

but seriously does anyone know how to snap those ankle monitors off? without your PO knowing about it?

asking for a friend

@robjohn Are you a zombie impersonating robjohn, the orange-man! Release him from captivity!!

@amWhy Bah! Humbug!

@robjohn ;P

@TedShifrin J'étudie les maths, mais je commence juste L1 et L2

my wife was thrown off jury selection years ago because the defendant was on trial as a sex offender as he urinated in public and there were children around. nothing untoward, just those were the rules. the judge said that they just had to decide if he did urinate in public or not, and he would be convicted accordingly regardless of whether there was anything justifying being convicted as a sex offender.

@leslietownes Only if you hint at who your "friend" is?

i have my patented portable faraday cage

@amWhy hahaha 👽

copper: that's when you keep your mouth shut and then instruct your fellow jurors on nullification

@leslietownes Damnit! I was about to say the same thing.

I am too slow. :(

[[[ legal advice ]]]

@leslietownes Indeed. Three of us, you, Xander, and me, slower than @Xander, @copper.hat, could have advised your wife!!

@leslietownes Again, I am so tempted to abuse^Wuse my super-powers to delete the word "not".

hey what the

Hah!!!!

Yeah, but if you look at the comment history, it was edited by @leslietownes, not me. :P

he edited that too

edits all the way down

i might actually be Xander Henderson

photoshop

i was thrown off in an abuse case because i was uncomfortable with one piece of verbal evidence was considered sufficient to convict, i forgot the rule number.

All I see, @leslietownes, was that you edited after realizing you said opposite of what you meant.

copper: the honeymooners rule

So... I wanted to make a very obviously photoshopped version of the image above, but it turned out too good. I had to make it worse. I ended up with this:

I was called to jury, twice, both times selected, (you all know how unbiased I am). But in both cases, the defendants changed their minds at the last minute, took a plea deal, in exchange for a guilty plea. No matter that I had to arrange for missing grad classes, second time, I had to arrange for faculty in my department to sub for me...

(In the first version, I matched the font more better. But then it didn't look obviously 'shopped.)

haha

@amWhy I ended up serving on a jury during the first year of my masters program.

i've never even gotten close to jury duty. never had to drive to a courthouse. i think they know.

@XanderHenderson Such an honest man!!!

The trial went on for three weeks.

well, never had to drive to a courthouse for jury duty. i should qualify that.

@XanderHenderson Wow, that can be disruptive, no doubt.

But it was clear from voir dire that the plaintiff was f'in' nuts.

@leslietownes Hah!

@XanderHenderson Was it a civil trial?

one of my best friends has almost made it to the jury in two cases that were fairly well-covered sensational cases in LA because they involved celebrities. but they always fill up the jury right before they get to her.

She was speeding through a construction zone while talking on her cell phone. After nearly running over the person holding a stop sign, she t-boned a dump truck. Then she had the audacity to waste my time by suing the driver of the dump truck.

They know to only call me for jury duty on cases involving commutative algebra

I made it as clear as I possibly could during voir dire that I though talking on a cell phone and driving was a terrible idea. The defense loved me, and I guess that the other side had run out of strikes or something.

I ended up being the second alternate.

@XanderHenderson Yikes. audacity is the perfect word here.

After three weeks of trial, deliberations took 45 minutes.

@yearning4pi Hahaha!

And, though I wasn't in the room, my guess is that almost all of that time was electing a foreman and filling out paperwork.

What?!

are you trying to tell me that you don't think 4 - 1 is 3?

No, that checks out, I think.

I had to use my calculator, though.

i could see it. if they've seen FTC in the form int a...b f(t) dt = F(b) - F(a) and have upper-lower case blindness

not sure how it ends up being 4 and 1 but shrug

@Alex Ces questions me semblaient assez compliquées pour le niveau de lycée. Très intéressant.

rule 301. that took a while.

@XanderHenderson You didn't realize that every function is its own antiderivative?

@TedShifrin Oh, I had forgotten that!

That is the first part of the fundamental theorem of calculus, right?

should have unclederivative, just to be fair

Interestingly, one of my Facebook friends in on the faculty at NYU and he and all sorts of colleagues all over the country have been commenting about how their calculus students are particularly disastrous this term, blaming Covid and remote learning. Bad algebra errors even in Calc III.

and i'm the one who's called a chauvinist

ima joevinist

@TedShifrin This term has been bad. I don't know if COVID is to blame (though I imagine that this is a contributing factor), but this term has been really, really bad.

you've got me there

@copper is in -- bleeding -- rare form today.

@TedShifrin Why not?

This is something which has been noted across the college.

my wife (not a professor at anywhere like NYU) has reported an epidemic of bad cheating at her school. worse than prior covid terms.

@copper.hat A Jehova's witness?

Well, it seems to be quite universal, @Xander, all sorts of levels of colleges/universities.

including students emailing people in response to forged/edited email chains.

really awful stuff.

@TedShifrin That is comforting, I suppose.

joehova, who goes against Rule 301

It is good to know that I am not alone.

@leslie Well, it wasn't specifically focusing on cheating. Just on weak, weak skills.

Though it is still extremely depressing.

I agree. Certainly the epidemic of posted homework/exams here on MSE has been worse.

maybe tiktok isn't the place to learn multivariable calculus after all.

i think the positive effect of human presence on learning & productivity in general is very much underappreciated

you should take down some of your videos, ted.

One of the posters on my friend's FB page commented that her students had apparently uploaded her real analysis exam to MSE. I responded to that directly.

I actually didn't post them. I don't know how to remove them @leslie.

i must confess that the idea that i may have inadvertently helped someone cheat bothers me

i mean your tiktok videos where you do viral dances while saying calc iii buzzwords.

maybe it isn't helping.

Oh, those!

I wonder if those are the ones @Under went to find.

In the future, @Ted and other men who like to joke at women's expense: please announce so in advance so the few of us who survived in this field can exit. No, this is not about PC. It's about human respect, and the need for a few men to grow up.

Ted, so I guess you find it funny to reply to someone saying "I'm called a chauvinist", with the quip "You'd rather be called a woman, I suppose :D". You can have your man-cave back, but you're a dinosaur.

i don't think ted meant any harm. i think he was making fun of me.

@amWhy I apologize. It was not a well-considered quip.

@TedShifrin Here the "licence" has a duration of 3 years: L1, L2 and L3. Then the master's degree and finally the doctorate. The "licence" would be I think the equivalent of the degree, a degree seems to me.

"then the masters degree and finally the doctorate" sounds like the description of a march to the grave.

So I'm now confused, @Alex. This is not the levels of high school; this is university?

→ 1 message moved to ­Trash

@leslietownes Sure. Bachelor's, master's, doctorate, postdoc, assistant professorship, full professorship, death.

The only way to win is not to play.

@Xander: I'm 95% of the way there.

@TedShifrin I accept. Don't worry about it, at this point. Each of us, in our own ways, faces obstacles. :-)

@TedShifrin Congratulations!

Oh... wait...

xander: i'm forever 30 because that's when i left academia.

And sometimes @leslie acts more like 16, too.

i can drop down into the 3-5 range on a bad day.

Oh wait, @Xander. You left out a cog in that machine.

@leslietownes I've seen it, and it ain't pretty!

pbhbphbhbht

I may have my bad days/utterances, but I have tried to be a supportive presence for the underrepresented LGBTQ mathematicians.

war games

that was a reference to @XanderHenderson's comment

HALLELUJA! A student managed to compute $\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x} |x|$ directly from the definition!

They even computed the one-sided limits!

(They probably copied it off of the internet or something, but I am going to pretend that they did it on their own.)

i think this means that they replace you

Does it exist at $0$?

I don't think I've ever given that particular question.

@TedShifrin The question is a two parter: first, compute the derivative (which I tell them does not exist at zero). Then compute the derivative of $|x|^3$ at zero (so, show that it exists).

I was reminded (in answer a question on main) of having seen some of our calculus instructors (not grad students) show students that one computes $f'(a)$ by taking $\lim_{x\to a} f'(x)$ ... no justification, no mention of a theorem.

@TedShifrin It seems to me that the best level to indicate would be readiness for the big schools, so the MPSI is a good reference. I think the study program here is different from the study there. My English is very bad, sorry. See here etudiant.lefigaro.fr/article/…

@TedShifrin Yikes.

alex: your english is not very bad.

You need to stop apologizing for your English. It's excellent (probably better than my French, which was once almost-excellent) :)

@Xander That was in a standard Calc I lecture.

I forget the function. But the instructors missed the whole point of computing from the definition and certainly did not know the corollary of the MVT that says they might be justified.

Я говарю франсуский язык очен плохо.

I also spell badly in Russian.

:thanks

You're missing your soft sign on the penultimate word. I don't want to switch keyboards.

MPSI looks hard (I'm french too)

@kijinSeija Yes I think also that

@TedShifrin I think it should actually be "Я говорю Француский язык очень плохо."

Oh yeah, I missed the first mistake.

So many mistakes. But part of that is coming from using a keyboard layout which transliterates (so it is not a legit Cyrillic layout).

@Alex So there are math, physics, engineering students all doing your program?

@XanderHenderson our encyclopedia of Xanderisms is soon to be published. Includes "dad jokes", "typos" blamed on a "faulty key board", and more! Disclosure: I will receive royalties for every copy sold. ;P

But, given that I haven't used Russian on a daily basis in 20 years, I think I did okay.

I last studied Russian in 1973, I think.

I like English and Spanish. They are cute 💫

@TedShifrin Whelp, that was before I was born.

I was negative eight years old in 1973.

Just about @leslie's age.

LOL @Alex mignons? :)

i was negative seven. of course it depends on when exactly in 1973.

@Alex ¡Estoy de acuerdo!

I conclude (by adding an appropriate constant) that @leslie and @Xander are approximately the same age.

In any event, I'm antique.

In certain academic circles "antique" means over 100 years old. Over 50 is "potentially archaeologically significant".

@TedShifrin No, you're really not. You get along fine with most ages on this site. You are easy to relate to.

it's because of his viral tiktok videos.

Precisely!

@amWhy There are beautiful verses in spanish, poems. 💫

I need to earn a different hat.

@leslietownes I figured! :-)

@TedShifrin Interesting

@Alex Indeed.

The hats are harder to procure if one isn't editing or answering a lot of questions.

@XanderHenderson This is very confusing, well I didn't really understand 🤣

i only have three hats and all of them are crummy.

As a freshman undergrad, first semester, I took Spanish VII, passed with an A, and hence earned college credit of 28. Helped boost my academic progress!

@leslietownes I have two secret hats: mystery .....

@Alex He said (in Russian) that he speaks Russian very badly.

He gets jealous when we speak in French, as he never studied French (which I find remarkable for a math Ph.D. whose adviser was in fact French!!).

@TedShifrin I won two hats 👀

i'm speaking the very good england

Félicitations!!

Some people, @Alex, in the US, think that learning French will make them appear more sophisticated than we all know they are :-)

@TedShifrin Felicidad! But I'll allow your word to count as Spanglish.

@amWhy I never took French, but I took a French exam in grad school. I had years of Latin in high school and was able to translate a page or two from a French math book using my knowledge of Latin.

@robjohn I studied spanish in high school, and could translate french, as well, based on their latin origins. Just don't ask me to speak French!!!

I actually majored in French. sticks out all tongues at @amWhy

My word was French, no pretense at Spanish or Spanglish.

@amWhy Indeed. There was no need to speak French for the exam.

@TedShifrin Then the French are more Anglicized (FRENCHLISH) than are the Spaniards.

When I went to Berkeley, they required reading facility in two languages. One could get out of one with college coursework, so I used German for that, and took the French exam. It was Mo Hirsch, I think, who decided it would be fun for people to translate René Thom with hardly any equations. It was fine for those of us who actually knew the language, not so good for people using a French math dictionary and hoping for lots of equations.

@robjohn I was so relieved when I learned that, early on.

No, I think English stole felicitations from French, not vice-versa. I'll actually look that up.

love those grad school language exams. i translated something written in french on topological groups.

Where are you from, for example? I would like to be able to travel to the United States, there is Disney 💫

they still do that as far as i know, ted. two languages lets them self-administer the exam. if it was one, the actual language department would be administering something on literature. which obviously wouldn't do.

A bunch of us are actually in California, two near Disneyland. There's also Disney in Florida.

I thought one language had turned into computer facility, @leslie.

i live close enough to disney to hear the nightly fireworks in the summer.

ted: maybe they've done that since i left.

for the record, i qualified in german and french. Ein Group ist ein Set mit ein Binaryoperation. yeah, i think i can translate that.

@TedShifrin No, I said that I speak FRENCH poorly. :P

we've actually lied to our daughter about the fireworks. she heard them and asked, "what's that?" and we say it's traffic from the nearby interstate.

I see

@TedShifrin I majored in Russian for two years before switching to anthropology.

we don't want her knowing about her proximity to disneyland.

I eventually got a BA in mathematics. In only took nine and a half years.

Very interesting. Of course, both felicitation and félicitation come from Latin originally. My Robert French dictionary gives a date of 1468; the web gives 1620s for the English. So I say French pulls rank.

@leslietownes hahaha noo😔

xander: was the thinking, "i've read enough of these novels to know the main character is eventually going to hang himself in a barn"

@Alex They're the wimps in the US. More or less same weather all year, nothing much to distinguish seasons. At least @Xander lives in a beautiful desert, not terribly far from the Grand Canyon. And then there is me from beautiful Wisconsin, that's where one experiences prairies, forests, tons of lakes, geology shaped by glaciers, beautiful spring and autumn, and warm summers...

That explains a lot @Xander.

Well, I do not apologize for leaving the bigoted south of the US — I certainly would not want to be there now with COVID and the overthrowing of democracy. Wisconsin and Michigan have their own problems in that regard.

@amWhy That is so cute 💫

I lived in Boston for 10 years. I loved the climate there as a youngster. After two heart surgeries and cancer, I confess I cannot take the cold so well any more.

The trouble with reading Russian novels is that each character has a page worth of names. It's impossible to remember who's who (even in English)!!! :D

@TedShifrin Nor would I, in the south. Hey, you had losers challenging a governor who all fell flat. And do NOT EVER compare WI to MICHIGAN!

LOL ... well, both you guys are having your own challenges to democracy.

ted i really think english translators ought to adopt a kind of symbolic naming system. A for the main character. B for his wife. C for whoever else.

LOL @leslie

i hate that feeling in chapter 5 of "wait, sasha and grigoryevich are the same person?"

OK, lunchtime for this bonzo. See y'all in a bit.

@TedShifrin I hear you. Many folks from WI are called "Snow birds" who "fly south in the winter, and back home in the summers.

@amWhy I think that those living in SoCal are actually closer to the Grand Canyon than I am.

Depending on which part of the Canyon you are referring to, I suppose.

I guess most people want to hit the south rim. In that case, I guess I am significantly closer.

eww

Is anyone spending time with their family this Christmas?

Oh, and folk here are in LA, not Riverside. That adds, like six or seven hours of traffic.

@geocalc33 I'm not a Christian. I don't Christmas.

geo: my local family (wife/kid in same house) yes. not extended family.

we christmas but i don't know what we are.

Whoa, the mean hulk?

@TedShifrin whereas Minnesota's problems are mostly the usual "liberal metro vs conservative suburbs/rural"

Okay, my calculus class is entirely graded. I ended up with 1 A, 1 B, 2 Cs, 3 Ds, and 9 Ws. I expected one of the Cs to do better on the final (this student did okay on an oral exam, but opted to replace that score with a written exam, and bombed that written exam---just... terrible). I will probably round up one of those Ds to a C. It is close.

nice

i still need to grade lab reports, ugh...

but the final exams tonight don't actually come in until tuesday (b/c yay gradescope)

semi: when you slide aluminum under a magnet you get owl eyes. just give me an A

@Semiclassical YAY GRADESCOPE!

@XanderHenderson The oral exams are hard:

But I have to turn in grades to the college on Monday.

:(

@XanderHenderson oof

@Alex I made it optional. Either take an oral exam OR take a written exam.

And I scheduled the oral exams to happen before the written exam was released, so if they felt they did badly on the oral exam, they could take the written exam.

that's generous

That is so cute

This student did better on the oral than on the written, so shouldn't have taken the written. That being said, even if they had not taken the written exam, they still would have been short of the cutoff. I might have rounded it up to a B, but they make a bad choice, and I think that one should learn from their decisions.

In oral exams, I always do badly.

@Alex I had an oral exam Thursday. The dentist said I passed.

Okay, now I need to grade precalculus crap. Final projects (which take about 5-10 minutes each to read---there are 20 left to grade) and two portions of the final exam (9 "hard" questions, and 24 "easy" questions---though I might have made the easy questions too hard; I'll have to look at the scores to figure out what I am going to do about that).

@robjohn hahaha ujum...I'm glad to hear that you were able to pass the exam hahaha

@robjohn BOOOOOOOOO!

I think I am going to go do something else for a while.

@XanderHenderson you'd rather I had cavities?

Maybe play some Sonic 2.

@robjohn I would rather that you have cavities than puns, yes.

You will never fail if no-one grades it

@Alex You may enjoy this song by two young Spanish women, Carolina Alabau & Èlia Bastida youtu.be/-6-WEIkCZAQ

Èlia went to a musical school, St Andreu's in Barcelona. They've been posting great jazz music videos to YouTube for over a decade. I've watched so many of them that YouTube's started showing me ads in Spanish (which I don't speak). Many of the songs by the kids from St Andreu's are in English, but they also do a lot of Bossa Nova (which is in Brazilian Portuguese).

Here's a Bossa piece from a few years ago. Triste, featuring Alba Armengou, Èlia Bastida, Andrea Motis, & Rita Payés, with their teacher Joan Chamorro on double bass. All those girls also play multiple instruments.

I really liked the songs, although I can't understand what they say too. This music is very pretty too, see youtu.be/5NjJLFI_oYs

youtu.be/S2lHQz-1GfI A classic?

whats the use of casimirs? what do they tell me? wikipedia basically just says "they are there"

Here's Andrea doing a Charles Trenet song, Que reste t il de nos amours ?

@XanderHenderson Indeed! I studied maps with Holbrook, and the CO river. I only meant "relatively close, as compared to, say, someone from Wisconsin!" :-)

@Alex Ah, sweet young love. :) It's cute, but the song by Camille is more to my taste. Nataly Dawn is American, but she went to school in France for a couple of years, and likes to sing in French. Here's a humourous example, Assedic, with her husband Jack Conte (founder / CEO of Patreon) on keyboards & accordion.

@XanderHenderson With respect to the "snow birds" from northern states, who fly or drive to AZ or Florida, occasionally Texas (top destinations, particularly for retired snow birds), but return north in summer, I wonder if both Arizonza and the state of origin, or any other snowbird haven, each count said snowbird as state residents? My guess is that the "observed population" in Arizona over winter months, is far greater than that of summer months. Okay, call it my hypothesis!!!

In the song Watch It Fall, Billy Strings (originally from Michigan), talking about New York, asks "And how could someone get so low in a building so damn tall?". Is he talking specifically about Trump Tower, or is it just a generic comment?

generic would be my guess

Thanks

It can be amusing to read YouTube comments on Billy's videos. His band is nominally bluegrass, and they do play a lot of traditional tunes, so they have a strong traditional bluegrass fan base. But they also play psychedelic & metal-influenced bluegrass (Billy was in a metal band in his teens), and politically Billy's fairly left of centre, which disturbs some of the trad fan base. But there's a long tradition of leftists in American folk music, eg Woody Guthrie.

@PM2Ring That is a really well put together piece. Thanks for sharing it. Regarding your question: it seems to be a more generic statement about class divisions in the US.