9:06 PM
@Blue What's wrong with probability per time?
It just means that for a small time $dt$ the probability of the event is $\lambda dt$.

There is something about quantities "probability per unit [whatever]" that takes people aback the first time they encounter them.
It is easy to argue that they shouldn't, but it trips most folks at some point.
I can't count how many times I've had to patiently explain to a scorching bright grad student how the vertical extent of a histogram depends on the binning.

@dmckee Heh.
Hey, @dmckee, any clue on where I'm confusing myself on that exponential distribution?
We have probability per time of an event (say decay, or whatever) $\lambda$.
The probability of decay in time $dt$ is $\lambda dt$.
What's the probability of going time $T$ without decay, and then decaying at $T$?
Well, divide $T$ into $N$ intervals of length $dt = T/N$.
The probability of not decaying in one of those intervals is $(1 - \lambda dt)$.
The probability of not decaying in any of them is $$(1 - \lambda dt)^N \, .$$
We can write that as $$\left( 1 - \frac{\lambda T}{N} \right)^N$$ which tends to $\exp(-\lambda T)$ as $N \rightarrow \infty$.
I am confused in two ways: 1) That result isn't normalized, 2) I know that formula is almost the usual thing for exponential decay, but that "usual" formula is supposed to be the probability that you survive for time $T$ and then decay at $T$.
Oh maybe I get it...
Έυρηκα!
3
Yay!

9:32 PM
::hands @Daniel a towel::

Yayay! Now I understand why Poisson distributions happen in nature

::clap, clap,clap,...::

>citing wiki
I'm tempted to sabotage

9:38 PM
#145. 'Ah. Eureka,' he said.
'That's Ephebian, that is,' Cohen told the Horde. 'It means "Give me a towel." ' ("Interesting Times")

@0celo7 k

Be nice @0celo7 mentioning "sabotage" is punishable, as I have found out the hard way :(

sabotaging wiki is punishable by SE mods?

@skullpatrol no, it's not. Not just mentioning "sabotage".

that sounds crazy

9:44 PM
I seem to have a bad habit of finding out about policies @DavidZ
The hard way

SABOTAGE
::waits::

::flags::

you're hecked

Anyone watch the breakthrough prizes?

9:46 PM
@0celo7 claiming that you've flagged something is a problem though. At least, it's more punishable than talking about sabotage.

::rolls eyes::
ok

btw, it's "EV-ree-ka", not "yoo-REE-ka".

Ev?
Not Oi?

Says who?

@skullpatrol Every Greek speaker on the planet.

9:48 PM
@0celo7 did u hear the new jake paul album
it's the best album of all time

@BalarkaSen No, why would I listen to trash?
I'm not ironic like you

it also comes with a christmas remix of Everyday Bro

ok I might have to listen to that

Welcome back to the USA @DavidZ

@0celo7 dont have one
i have a feeling i cant take it

9:54 PM
I can't find it
oh well

finally so close majorana's in random dimensions...
Hilarious every time
-23

Is there an elegant proof of the existence of Majorana spinors? No. Because they don't exist. The neutrino is not a Majorana spinor. It's a Weyl spinor. See Dirac, Majorana and Weyl fermions by Palash Pal. He said “the neutrinos had to be uncharged because of conservation of electric charge,...

@0celo7 what are your thoughts on these

10:25 PM
@bolbteppa bleh
physicists shouldn't teach GR

Who should teach it?

Clearly not a student of Hawking who actually contributed to the field :p
Malcolm John Perry (born 13 November 1951) is a British theoretical physicist and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge. His research mainly concerns general relativity, supergravity and string theory. == Biography == Perry attended King Edward's School, Birmingham before reading physics at St John's College, Oxford. He was a graduate student at King's College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Stephen Hawking. He obtained his doctorate in 1978 with a thesis on the quantum mechanics of black holes. In these early years, he worked on several very influential papers on...

10:45 PM
The tetrad lecture is pretty good

Is the RHS solution just as general as the LHS? $e^{-\beta t}[Ae^{i\omega t} + Be^{-i\omega t}] =?= Ce^{i\omega t + \delta}$ To me it seems not, but it was used by the professor seemingly as if it was. It is the homogeneous solution of a damped oscillator.
I'm thinking, maybe because the general solution covers all three cases of dampening but in reality you always have $A$ or $B$ zero?

11:48 PM
@0celo7 My first (of three) GR lecturers was definitely a physicist. He was so good, that a few students bought the textbook, despite him printing everything out for everyone and then got him to sign the textbook

How were the other two lectures?