@DanielSank Really, can you help me with this, then?

@Nick That depends on exactly what your question is.

@Nick: Are you asking for help on the question linked above?

@DanielSank yup, the ldr thing. I've read so much about it that it now sounds boring but I'm still curious about what I did wrong. I followed the instructions to the letter.

@Nick: What does ldr mean?

Apparently, my mistake tells me my ad-lib requires work. :(

@DanielSank It does not mean "long distance relationship". It means light dependant resistor. Also called a photoresistor.

@Nick Ok, so first, thing, let's improve the question a bit. Right now it's kind of hard to understand.

I'm going to edit it.

kay.

@DanielSank: ^ I've made a linearized replot.

It's that gosh damn error that's bugging me.

The reason why the first few observations were so messy was because the setup was ... handheld. lol

Hey guys, I'm so undecided about my major right now. Can anyone give me some guidance?

@ApprenticeHacker: Physics.

@ApprenticeHacker Physics, and take a lot of math courses.

@DanielSank that's what I thought earlier, but here's the thing. If I major in math, since math has fewer major requirements, I'll still be able to take all the main physics courses. The only things I'll mostly skip are physics labs and experimental physics courses along with a few optional electives. But in exchange for that, I'll be doing Topology, Analysis and Galois theory etc.

I see. Yeah, some math is covered in Physics courses. Like the GR course covers Tensor Analysis as part of the course

@ApprenticeHacker Here's my opinion: even if you are a theorist you really should take the labs and do not blow them off. Think about it like this: does an experimentalist skip his theory courses?

(Disclaimer: I am an experimentalist who just happens to like theory a lot)

@DanielSank Yes, some do, but I absolutely agree with the sentiment

(your sentiment, that is)

@DanielSank good edit. I'm horrible at asking questions. I'm unsure if anyone would answer it though.

@Nick: Well, the other issue is that you're asking more than one question. That's generally disliked around here.

@DanielSank I understand that. I wish I could take them but since I have a limited number of credit hours what would be more beneficial in a career as a theoretical physicist? Abstract Algebra or Physics Lab II?

You see, that's the dilemma I'm in. :(

@ApprenticeHacker: Are you an undergraduate?

@DanielSank Yes.

@Nick: What are you actually asking? You have one plot in the question and a different one in the chat history. Which is real?

@ApprenticeHacker Depends very much on what "Abstract Algebra" contains.

@ApprenticeHacker Then you aren't in as much of a rush as you think. I think you should take the lab.

@DanielSank I see.

@ApprenticeHacker Let me put it like this: I did my undergrad work assuming I would be a theorist.

@DanielSank Oh, I redid the experiment with another LDR and I linearized the scatter plot obtained. Now, all I need to know is the source of that damn -120 ohm resistance error.

@ACuriousMind What it contains

@DanielSank You make a good point.

@ApprenticeHacker That's a weird link. It wants me to download something of the file type "application/octet-stream"

...but I still took lab classes and actually did lab work over the summers. When I got to grad school I was one of the more mathematically proficient students in my class. Not the most proficient, but up there.

@ACuriousMind It's a pdf file

@ACuriousMind That means "file type I don't recognize, i.e. binary."

@ApprenticeHacker That.

Essentially, the course outline

@DanielSank I see. Thanks. :)

@Nick What do you mean by "linearized the scatter plot"?

Ah, manually giving it the .pdf ending fixed it

And...that won't be very useful as a theorist, I think

^ That told your browser not to worry about the fact that it couldn't figure out the file type.

@ApprenticeHacker: I took a look at the syllabus. Not worth it by my estimation.

@DanielSank I'm bad with technical words but I think you'll get the point

sigh, gotta love one liner question posts... 0 effort to elaborate on what they don't really understand!

@Phonon: That's not the worst question, really...

@Phonon Yeah, I have the worst question. :D

@Nick Oh, so by "linearized the plot" you mean "fit a line to the data".

@DanielSank exactly but the data was far more ordered than in the picture above.

@Phonon: No really, that's not such a terrible question.

Lol, and I see that you answered it.

@ApprenticeHacker: There's really not that much that abstract algebra in that form will do for you as a theorist. It's beautiful math, but not very useful in most cases.

@Nick: Ok, so you have some data and you fit a line. Now, what's your question?

@DanielSank still man...it's annoying specially when they start expecting answers that have to do with specific cases... I mean least one should do is set out the context in which he/she is interested and then ask away...

@ACuriousMind Bah. There are more beautiful things out there. Take algebraic geometry if you can.

@DanielSank Why doesn't that line pass through the origin like it's supposed to?

@Nick Who said it's supposed to?

God?

Thor?

Your lab TA?

@DanielSank I see. You've pretty much ended my confusion on that regard. Thanks again. :) One more question, since my undergraduate institute isn't that highly ranked grad school placements are risky.

If I graduate in math and can't go to grad school directly, there are a few jobs in industry. But if I major in Physics, I'll essentially be jobless till I graduate. There are a few students who got exceptional grad school placements in the past couple of years but they had 3.9-ish cgpas and 95th percentile GRE scores.

*till I go to grad school

@DanielSank All the books which contain the experiment I'm doing and yes, possibly some lab TA

@ApprenticeHacker What country do you live in?

I think you are grossly mistaken.

@DanielSank Pakistan.

@ApprenticeHacker Oh.

I see

In the US if you get a degree in physics and you are proficient at experiment (i.e. building things) you get paid a lot and can do whatever job you want.

@DanielSank Yeah, but the US is a knowledge-economy. Pakistan's in the dark ages.

I mean, many engineering type jobs are accessible.

For anyone who knows math you can do a lot too.

I see

Physics will give you something pure math will not: the ability to take a difficult problem and break it into pieces which you can manage one by one.

@ApprenticeHacker No, it's in 1947 and it has technology from the relative future. Much better than the dark ages.

If you know math you can do finance, data analysis for literally anyone who has data to analyze, statistics (for example in medical fields)... The list goes on for quite a while.

@Nick Could you get hanged for being an atheist in 1947? :P

@DanielSank I understand. I guess I should major in Physics then. Thank you. :)

@Nick: Think about what you're telling me. You're saying that if you put the bulb close to the diode the diode's resistance should go to zero.

@ApprenticeHacker Wow, can you really be hanged for that?

@ApprenticeHacker Being an atheist in a muslim country... I think the eyes upon which your society might look at you would be much more terrible than any silly old hanging.

@DanielSank Yup. Pakistan. Saudi Arabia. All these countries.

@ApprenticeHacker Wow. That is terrifying.

@DanielSank I know right. But you get used to it, lol.

@Nick Your diode does not become a superconductor when you put it near a light bulb.

@DanielSank I know it sounds silly. But I've got to get the result as the book has mentioned it and the book is a pretty vague banana.

@ApprenticeHacker That's an even more terrifying statement than the initial one :P

@Nick: If your book tells you the resistance goes to zero and you insist on matching what the book says, then I cannot help you.

@ACuriousMind That.

@DanielSank Thank you for re-affirming that idea. I spent half an hour with my physics prof he kept on saying it was either something wrong with my math or how I conducted the experiment.

@Nick Has your professor ever done an experiment?

@DanielSank I also received some advice contradictory to yours. Would you be kind enough to comment on that?

@DanielSank To be honest. I don't think so. Lol, he probably has. So, it just leaves my math. Wanna talk about that... well, there isn't much.

@ApprenticeHacker That's one guy's opinion and he used string theory as an example of where majoring in math is helpful. Are you interested in such very mathematical fields?

(I recommend against it, as it is hard to find a job)

I understand. Thanks again.

@ApprenticeHacker: "Theory" isn't "theory" - there are many fields of theoretical physics less "mathy" than string theory or the like

@ACuriousMind That is an important thing to remember.

@DanielSank: Do you have chatJax enabled on your end. I can show you the observation table.

@Nick You can show me as you like.

I got a Math minor in undergrad. Total waste of time because I took useless classes such as Number Theory and Diff Eq 2 (which didn't actually have anything to do with DEs). I'd have been much better off with a CompSci minor

@ApprenticeHacker Yeah, we should have said this before: learn to program no matter what else you decide.

@Nick: Your table is fail.

@Nick Congratulations, you broke ChatJaX :P

@DanielSank Already proficient in 8 programming languages. Also created one of my own (a tiny subset called the "Hack" programming language)

I annoyed my CS100 instructor all semester. He told me I didn't need to take the course, I did it for an easy A+. :D

@ApprenticeHacker That... is amazing.

I guess you already know this, but if you're an experimentalist I would recommend python and C, C++, or Java.

@DanielSank Still got rejected from MIT. :') .... :'(

IMHO: if you know one programming language, you pretty much know them all.

@DanielSank lol, tables are hard. I think I can upload a screenshot in the next 5 minutes.

@KyleKanos OOOOooooooh, I dunno about that...

@KyleKanos I know python. I do not know Haskell.

@KyleKanos Not really. What takes a couple of lines in Python can be a pain in Java or C

Functional programming languages would probably be the odd ones

@ApprenticeHacker Length is entirely irrelevant

@DanielSank Yeah, FP is the caveat to that

@KyleKanos The way you solve a problem in, say, a functional programming language is very different from that you use in an OOP language

So I suppose I should say, If you know one non-FP language, you pretty much know all non-FP languages

@KyleKanos I'd also say I don't know C++ on the grounds that understanding macros, templates, and the build systems themselves is an entire skill set.

All I'm saying is, you can't for example learn Pascal and say you know all there is to know about programming languages

@KyleKanos Yeah, up to the tool chains, which I personally find to the hardest part of any language :)

@DanielSank

@ApprenticeHacker If that's what you think I said, then please take the time to re-read what I initially wrote

@KyleKanos We're giving you such a hard time :)

Sorry.

@DanielSank Are Macros & Templates so necessary to C++?

@KyleKanos I apologize. Made assumptions. Stupid mistake.

@KyleKanos Nah, but they are necessary to read 90% of existing interesting code.

@KyleKanos Templates definitely are.

To me, reading the canonical existing code is roughly equivalent to "being proficient".

@DanielSank Nonsense: gcc -S foo.read.cpp foo.cpp

@KyleKanos Come again?

Dumps the Macros to a readable file

@Nick I don't know why you're showing me this.

@KyleKanos Well, ok, but... come on.

And that should be g++, not gcc

(though the -S trick also works for C)

@KyleKanos You still need to know macros to properly understand the standard library.

@KyleKanos Indeed, but still, grokking someone's code which uses templates or interesting macro tricks is not trivial.

And you can write C code in C++

@KyleKanos Yes...

So you don't need templates or macros for you to be able to code in it

Doing that would not make someone "proficient in C++", at least by how I use English.

It might make your job easier, but that doesn't mean you can't code in it

I never said anything about proficient

@KyleKanos Yes, you win.

<-- Fortran programmer just won an argument about C/C++ :D

^ Gold and glory rain down upon him.

@DanielSank Well, if I change that $460$ to $380$... I sort of win. But, other than the ethical reasons, I've got this disturbance in my mind whether I should do it.

@ApprenticeHacker (We both know he's wrong though)

@DanielSank haha, yeah. :D

@Nick If you fudge your data, you are dead to me.

That is without question the single most important rule of science. What you observe is the only Truth. Don't mess with it.

I gotta split. There was a power outage in the lab and I have to restart all our equipment.

Ciao.

@DanielSank All the more reason not to. So, I do need to present an idea as to why the diode does not become a superconductor when you put it near a light bulb.

I can program in: F77/90/95/03/08, C, C++, Python, Lua, Perl (if necessary), and probably a few others that I've not bothered to look at because why would I need them :)

But I'm only an "expert" in F90/95

Capable in all the others

@Nick "Because it's a semiconductor" would seem like a good reason.

(even says so on my CV)

@DanielSank I remember reading this article where some qualified physicists were trying to say that mathematical beauty is more important than observation and experiment. I was like, omg what happened to the scientific method.

@ApprenticeHacker That is... so terrible.

Those people probably weren't experimentalists, but even theorists should not go around saying that.

Feynman said that it doesn't matter how pretty your theory is, or how much you like it. If it doesn't match the experimental data it is wrong.

I have to go.

Bye.

@DanielSank Exactly.

@DanielSank lol, does the fact that if it's an extrinsic or intrinsic semiconductor have any weight on the situation?

@DanielSank He called experiment the sole arbiter of truth. And he was right.

@Nick Yes, because semi conductors are not super conductors ;)

@KyleKanos I noticed that you put on hold the question physics.stackexchange.com/questions/156396/… . Of course, I don't argue about that. But I answered him, just for helping. It's a baby, still in school, so I see by the style how he formulates his question. Whatever I ask is whether he can see my answer, given that the question is on hold.

@ACuriousMind Well, as trivial as my topic of conversation was, I feel it was worth having because in the midst of absolute intellectual pursuit, there is no room for self-doubt or fear of not conforming with the expected. Results are what matter. Thank you @DanielSank for that lesson.

@Sofia If he/she comes back to the site, they would see your comment.

@KyleKanos : But will he get a note that there is a comment for him? As I am getting notes when someone sent a comment to me. Will he? I mean, given that the question is on hold.

Yes, it being on hold does not change the notification

@ACuriousMind btw did you get to watch some of that David Gross talk I sent ya?

@Phonon Ahh...I totally forgot about that. But tonight's slow, I think I could get around to it

@ACuriousMind k :), I think you ll like it

@ACuriousMind There are several such quotations.

@DanielSank : Compare (pretty wrong) theory vs. pretty (wrong theory).

@Qmechanic Language is non-associative! ;D

@Sofia You'd be surprised at the amount of non-natives with decent English skills ;)

@DavidZ: apparently you have, um, a, er, fan?