@MarioS.E. I would hesitate to suggest things, since I don't know what might be expected of you at FEUP. Assuming the committee has read your proposal, if it was here I would focus especially on the aspect of the proposed research that is new rather than spending lots of time on review of literature. BUT other universities may have different ideas about that. How much time is allocated for the defence and your presentation part?

@AlanMunn It's supposed to be "flash". It's an exception because I have to go to Costa Rica to get married heheheheheh

@MarioS.E. ? "flash"

@AlanMunn I would love to have the time for it to be like a TED talk, but I'm guessing I'll have somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes.

@DavidCarlisle I don't really want to do anything fancy. I'll check out auctex, thanks.

@AlanMunn yeah yeah, like "flash"dance :P hehehehehehehehehehehehe

@MarioS.E. Ok. :) If people have read the proposal, 15 minutes is probably fine. I don't know much about engineering research. Are you proposing experiments or modelling something or what?

@AlanMunn This is proposing the research rather than defending a final thesis? I never did anything like that.

If you are over 60, I'm expecting to save your life in the next 20 years :). I'm trying to predict falls in seniors

@DavidCarlisle not common in the UK?

@DavidCarlisle It's quite common to have a prospectus/dissertation proposal that is defended and approved before you actually go off an do the work. This way crappy experiments or non-problems or just irrelevant bullshit can be avoided. It's the difference between having a topic and having a problem.

@MarioS.E. So this is computational modelling based on epidemiological data or something?

Or is it about the actual bio-mechanics of falling?

@AlanMunn It's about developing wearable sensors and constructing a prediction algorithm. It is more focused in creating a quantitative aid to assess fall risk probability

@MarioS.E. So a digital insurance salesman on your hip ?

@percusse Well, on paper it's all about helping physicians decide if you should go to therapy, when you should go and if you need a walking aid, or to assess if the therapy you are undergoing is actually working.

@MarioS.E. joke :-) I've worked on exoskeletons

@MarioS.E. I see. That sounds neat. So here's what I would look for in such a presentation (i) is there a real problem to be solved (ii) if there are existing solutions, what's wrong with them (iii) what is the foundation of your proposed solution (iv) is the solution viable/practical/constrained enough to be done in the time allotted (I assume a year or two). But I reiterate caution on how widely applicable this might be. Maybe @percusse has some comments too.

@MarioS.E. All the very best for your presentation about the thesis topic/problem.

@kan Thanks, although I have been through these type of things before, for some reason I'm kind of worried about this one in particular. I'm not sure what should be the best angle to defend it

@MarioS.E. I would say stick to the mathematical problem. Most of those motivations don't serve well. Mostly because you create more questions in the supervisor's head than the answers and the outlook.

@MarioS.E. so no need to exaggerate. They are mostly wondering about how many papers you can produce in the allocated time.

@percusse I agree with this. For a proposal defence you don't want to be too high level; you need to be really concrete.

@AlanMunn I could tell you: i) Yes, population is growing older and nobody seems to care. We need a lot of assistance... the sooner, the better. ii) There are solutions but a)are bad, b) are laboratory-constrained. iii) That I feel I can do it better based on MEMs and neural networks. iv) Yes, I have a couple of years and a company is interested in the product.

@MarioS.E. Skip iii) and you are good to go :P

@percusse Hahahahahaha, how should I approach this question then?

Well, first of all, don't pick a method before you dive in. I can guarantee you none of those methods beat simple line search in the physical setups. If there is a company involved and you are enthusiastic about it, make the pragmatic choice not the holistic. you might ask why (ctd.)

1) The field you are in together with mechatronics and control theory basically have a self-sustained reputation and industry finally realized that these fields are no use. However, people in it think that they are really mathematicians and doing rigorous work.

@percusse That's part of what I'm concern the most. I'm very comfortable selling the idea to companies, and to academia as well (hell, that's why I'm a PhD student), but I' not sure how to compromise to sell it to both

In reality they are chopping off the corners of the realistic problems so severely that the results they obtain are not even related to engineering and too boring for mathematicians.

This reminds me of a cameo of Al Gore in a Futurama movie:

"Finally I'm saving the Earth with deadly lasers instead of deadly slideshows."

@MarioS.E. it is probably more to do with the subject, if your experiments take real equipment and real money probably you have to make a formal bid, I was pure math, so just needed a pencil

@PauloCereda Buajajajajajajajajaja

2) If you have a working device, you will at most get nasty nerd comments, oh my algorithms beat your bla bla seconds and yada yada times and you can repel them by just saying let me see your setup (they can never implement!). But the companies will love it and you will have a proof of concept to sell your knowledge if that's what you wish.

@percusse Yes, that's the part of the company that I love

@percusse I'm actually afraid of the "this is not PhD material, looks more like product development"

@MarioS.E. You always have the get out of jail card There are unmodeled dynamics that needs a rigorous robustness analysis

Works everywhere everytime

@percusse hahahahahhahaha that's like "A formal investigation has been started to determine what were the factors that cause the incident"

This is so much more entertaining than editor wars.

@AlanMunn LOL

@MarioS.E. Well try any journal on your field and read the introduction of random 10 articles. You'll get the idea :)

@cmhughes Can you comment on that

@DavidCarlisle no pens? :P

I use pencils and pens. And staplers. And trash can a lot.

@AlanMunn: sadly this product development approach is now the tendency of research in Brazil: someone has to get rich. Development agencies don't want to invest on theoretical stuff. :(

@PauloCereda define theory. I've been in statistics talks where the sample size was 1.

I'm not joking

@PauloCereda Maybe they are hiring europeans??? :D:D:D:D

LOL did you guys see the flagged message? Apparently someone posted the song from Meaning of life. :P

@percusse LOL

Answer: No. :)

I willing to simply answer with "YES!"

and then another one "NO!"

@AlanMunn Short answer: no. Long answer: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. :)

@percusse You just brought me to tears. That's perhaps the biggest flaw in my research: I have to get a statistical significant sample and each one of the devices I'm planning to use for concept proofs cost around 3k EUR.

@PauloCereda Flagged message in chat?

ok Im posting "NO" just for the fun

afterwards reporting for moderation ;)

Three biggest lies in the world: lies, lies disguised as truths, and statistics. :)

@Rico Do you know how to post a two character answer?

@AlanMunn just found out 'bout that even comments need 15 chars :(

@AlanMunn It was a message from another chatroom that got flagged. :)

@DavidCarlisle so you are a mathematician?

What are you @AlanMunn, @PauloCereda, @percusse?

@MarioS.E. I'm too pessimistic so don't take it too seriously but I dislike the pretentious engineering which can't figure out how to make things work but then hide behind the obscure notation and excessive manipulations. For science and math I don't care I can only save one world at a time.

I am a born and raised mechanical engineer, did a phd on bilateral teleoperation control, Hinf, LMIs that sort of stuff

@PauloCereda en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Statistics

@MarioS.E. I'm a linguist with a background in math and CS.

@TorbjørnT. My favorite :-)

Theory is when you know everything, but nothing works,
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, Theory and Practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why!

@TorbjørnT. I loved this one: Politicians use statistics like drunkards use lampposts: not for illumination, but for support.

Impressive work, my colleague, but does it also work in theory?

@AlanMunn There are no linguists in my family... Is it the same as philologist?

@MarioS.E. I'm some guy on the internet working with theorectical CS. :)

@MarioS.E. No, very different. Linguistics is the scientific study of human language; philology is more about language history.

@PauloCereda @MarioS.E. Acutally he's some theoretical guy working on the internet.

Must read: uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Statistics

"Statistics, also known as computer assisted guesswork or the art of persuasion, are numbers used 55% of the time to describe everyday situations like how many times you get a hit in squash or how many people like cows as opposed to horses."

While we're on academic humour: fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/…

@mafp I deleted my answer because the OP just kept finding more and more things that he didn't like about it- more trouble than it was worth :)

@AlanMunn LOL go water! :)

@cmhughes OK, get it.

@mafp here's the code for my answer in case you want to build on it

@MarioS.E. That's what it says on my passport but I accidentally got involved in designing latex2e and my career took a different path but I worked as a postdoc for 15 years in math or computer science before moving here

% arara: pdflatex
% !arara: indent: {overwrite: yes}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[textheight=12cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\allowdisplaybreaks

\begin{document}

\listoftables

\section{Section}
\lipsum[1]
\lipsum[1]

\captionof{table}{My caption goes here}\label{tab:anythingyouwant}
\begin{align*}
    b_{1}  & = 0,200       & \beta_{1}  & = z             \\
    b_{2}  & = 0,022       & \beta_{2}  & = q             \\
    b_{3}  & = z           & \beta_{3}  & = 0             \\

@AlanMunn So it involves phonetics as well?

@cmhughes Well aligned ;-)

@MarioS.E. Yes. My work doesn't but that is certainly in the scope of linguistics.

@AlanMunn so, just out of curiosity... how many languages do you speak?

@David: let's us not forget that you are also the fastest XML reader/parser ever known to mankind. :)

@MarioS.E. All of them, including the unknown ones. :)

:9732424 \documentclass{article}
\usepackage[textheight=16cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\allowdisplaybreaks

\begin{document}

\listoftables

\section{Section}
\lipsum[1]
\lipsum[1]

\begin{center}
\captionof{table}{My caption goes here}\label{tab:anythingyouwant}
\abovedisplayskip0pt
\begin{align*}
    b_{1}  & = 0,200       & \beta_{1}  & = z             \\
    b_{2}  & = 0,022       & \beta_{2}  & = q             \\
    b_{3}  & = z           & \beta_{3}  & = 0             \\

@MarioS.E. This is about the worst thing you can ask a linguist, since linguists don't really need to know lots of languages. I speak English and I know some Portuguese and French and a little bit of German. I know about a lot of languages though, and as @PauloCereda implies from his comment, I think that all languages are fundamentally the same (at the right level of abstraction.)

I remember a last year I was talking with my roommate about particle physics (he is studying plasmas) and all the conversation went on to talking about the uncertainty principle. After 30 minutes of discussion, I asked him dispirited "either way, what would you win if you can detect an electron's position at any given time?" his reply "A Nobel Prize"

@AlanMunn So it's more about the communication involved rather than the language?

@MarioS.E. he would won a pat on the shoulder unless he can also detect other states of it simultaneously.

@percusse ooh quantum!

:)

@AlanMunn: uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Linguistics (forgive me, but I couldn't resist)

@MarcoDaniel thanks :)

@MarioS.E. No, communication is (almost) irrelevant. We can communicate without language, and we can use language without communicating much. It's about answering three questions "What do you know, when you know a language", "How did you acquire that knowledge" and "How do you put that knowledge to use in production and comprehension".

@MarcoDaniel using the center environment will prevent pagebreaks....

@percusse well, we were talking about the uncertainty principle :P

@MarioS.E. Yes, you can detect the position with almost certainty but then you loose the resolution on other state measurements.

@AlanMunn Seems interesting... sounds with a certain flavor of cognitive sciences.

@MarioS.E. Yes, it's a branch of cognitive science.

@percusse So, let meask you :) What would you win by knowing the both the position and the state of the electron?

@AlanMunn This is great!! fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/…

@percusse :)

@MarioS.E. Unless I can't drive it to the place I want it's raw material to me :)

Evening!

@percusse I was thinking about the same... "knowing" does not seem to have any direct benefit

@MarioS.E. Oh it does. It really really does. But I can't voice my ignorance here with my half-baked physics knowledge heheh. There are immediate tech problems that can be tackled but anyway nevermind

what package makes the footnote numbers to not be raised in the footnote?

@MarioS.E. knowing is just half the battle. :)

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez \usepackage{Bourgeoisie} :P

This was posted here before, but it's worth:

@PauloCereda Of course! I'm not advocating to give up the battle... I'm just merely denoting the point that without us being able to control what we know, it's kind of without practical application. Take supernovae, black holes, black matter... you get the idea

that the letter class does not put the footnotes at the bottom margin when the letter is short is way too ugly

@cmhughes Really? I my example I changed the margins to 16cm and it worked.

Tell me, would it be wrond to mark this:

Hi @MartinScharrer! Long time no see! :)

as a duplicate of this:

?

@PauloCereda Not as often in the chat room as I used to be. Doesn't work at work ;-)

Hey, and it's answered by me!

I acutally remember that answer. I got one of my first down-votes for it ;-)

@MartinScharrer Can you add a small hint for figure ;-)

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez Do you mean in the text and in the footnote itself, or just in the footnote? You can do the following, if you want the former:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[hang]{footmisc}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@makefnmark}{
\hbox{{[\normalfont \@thefnmark]}}}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
This is some text.\footnote{This is a footnote.} This is another bit of text.
\end{document}

@cmhughes Eh, no it doesn't.

@AlanMunn in the actual footnote

dinbrief has the whole content of letters in an argument to its \letter command... how annoying

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez That's IMHO a bad idea. If it's so important to be in a \normalsize font, the it does not belong into a \footnote

I'm using footnotes to set URLs

I never understood why the footntoe number in footnotes (as opposed to the numebr in the main text) is raised.

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez Here:

why footnotes appear right below the signature in letter.cls is another mystery :-)

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez Why anyone would use letter.cls is in itself a mystery. :)

because all the other letter classes are overengineered :-)

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez s/other//

I just use article.

@MarcoDaniel Done

@MarcoDaniel oh, my mistake- I thought it would... good to know! I suppose it is essentially a list environment, so it makes sense that it would break

@AlanMunn That did it with minimal work. thanks!

if now the footnotes would agree not to appear in the middle of the page, that'd be awsome! :-P

I'm in a grumpy cat state today... :-(

@MarcoDaniel This one seems also a duplicate of "Using an image as a table":

why does the koma script doc explain what a pseudolength is in the section about its letter class?!

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez Maybe it's just a pseudodocumentation ? ;-)

yeah :D

«Hey I should have explained this somewhere so well, this is as good place as any!»

:-)

@MarcoDaniel: On the other hand, this seems more about the list of tables/figures, so I only linked it.

otoh, footnotes show up in the expected position with scrlttr2

<3

Guys, I tried to run this on my syste, and I couldn't get any output too

@MarianoSuárez-Alvarez I think the footmisc package has an option to put footnotes at the page bottom, haven't looked for ages:-)

@AlanMunn expex is on github with relatively recent commits (I added an answer)

@DavidCarlisle So now not even the linguistics questions are safe from you. :)

@AlanMunn since I answer all questions by typing in to google and copying whatever it says, the subject matter doesn't much affect my ability to answer.

@DavidCarlisle Actually I think this change is somewhat unexpected, since I'm pretty sure if Frampton had intended to make github the point of contact he would have announced it to the LingTeX mailing list where he (and I) are active. So I think NEU has pulled the webspace rug out from under him.

It's quite typical that regular access is removed after 2 years, and he retired in 2011.

@AlanMunn yes I guess so. They could at least put in a redirect to a site of his choice

@DavidCarlisle For all we know, he may not be aware of it, or overlooked the impending "we will cut off all your webspace" warnings (if he got any).