The h Bar

glS

13:00

@Slereah honestly even just the formatting on physics overflow is enough to discourage me from being active there. Also the fact that it is outside of the SE network is a pretty big factor in my opinion. I would rather prefer the more moderated, less "liberal" approach taken by the moderators of the SE network rather than a fully self moderated site

ultimately, I also have doubts on the proposal and its potential success, but I can think of many people in the community that would be possibly active there and very unlikely be active here, and the possible, if not that likely, positive outcome is enough to make it worth a shot for me

ACuriousMind

@glS Sure, I agree, most are physics. In fact, most of the example questions would fit on physics.SE, with a few for CS. I understand that you want to gather the community but I don't see how the site will actually achieve that.

Slereah

Well Math Overflow is part of SE

and it works fine

ACuriousMind

@glS Unlikely because there's a lot of questions about topics that don't interest them or because there's a large proportion of laymen questions? The former is something the new site can possibly alleviate, the latter...not.

Emilio Pisanty

@glS I find that to be an extremely dubious claim

ACuriousMind

@Slereah MO is a very special case because it is a) older than math.SE, and in fact older than the concept of "the SE network" and b) was founded by a dedicated group of professional mathematicians who used their contacts to invite other professional mathematicians and very stringently excluded anything they considered below their level.

Emilio Pisanty

13:05

I just don't understand what profile of people you're describing

Slereah

Well do that I guess

Invite Lubos Motl

ACuriousMind

That is, MO was very intelligently designed by experts to attract experts, and them alone

I don't see any such design for the current proposal

Emilio Pisanty

@ACuriousMind frankly, the MO community design was amazingly well done, and there's nowhere near enough recognition to the MO founders' achievement on that front

people just assume a site like MO happens by magic or something

@ACuriousMind also, (c) it built upon a pre-existing, very interconnected, very active blogosphere, including lots of doing-math-online projects like the various polymath strains

Slereah

is there a magic SE?

There's no magic SE

Very sad

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty Yes, and they (or their successors) still work hard to protect the community they created

glS

13:09

@ACuriousMind @EmilioPisanty look I don't know. I discovered the proposal like a week ago and got pretty excited by its potential, but I'm not saying I didn't have a moment of uncertainty as to whether support that instead of just asking the questions on physics.se. I may be naive in hoping that, yes, but I honestly don't see what is there to lose in trying it.

Slereah

15

Paranormal

Proposed Q&A site for phenomenon believers in: Metaphysical (Soul&Spirits/Esotericism/Astrology), Qi/Chi, Meditation&Consciousness, Hypnotism, UFO/ETs, Psionics (ESP/RV/NDE/OBE/Telekinesis/Astral/Lucid), Magic (Occult/Exorcism/Witchcraft/Reiki/Crystals/Runes/Rituals) etc

Currently in definition.

there's this one

Emilio Pisanty

@glS opportunity costs

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty I've personally tended to find that worryingly about things like 'opportunity cost' 1. Just causes stress and 2. Ends up closing doors on what would otherwise have been good opportunities

ACuriousMind

@Slereah That one gets proposed by the same user over and over again, gets closed, then proposed again, ad infinitum...

Slereah

@ACuriousMind Maybe that user is... A GHOST???

Emilio Pisanty

13:10

@Mithrandir24601 I tend to find that disregarding opportunity costs just leads to permanently shutting down doors that might otherwise have led to working communities

glS

@EmilioPisanty I would find myself definitively more encouraged in asking a question on a dedicated QC site, of course provided a large enough community of experts gathers around it, and I believe it would be the same for many other people.

Emilio Pisanty

physicsoverflow being the leading example of that

@glS frankly, unless you're well steeped on the pre-existing history of the (vaguely defined) network of related communities, I don't think hard-core evangelizing of something you found a week ago is going to be that productive.

Here's a question for you: how many failed area 51 proposals have there been on areas relating to quantum computing, and to physics more broadly, and why did they fail?

and more importantly, for each of those reasons, why is this one different?

ACuriousMind

@Mithrandir24601 I think my main worry is that a launch of this proposal effectively communicates to me "physics.SE is not good for asking quantum computing questions, so we need to make our own thing". I wouldn't worry about this if there were many example questions that wouldn't be on-topic here, but the vast majority of your top-voted example would be perfectly on-topic either here or on (T)CS.

So I worry that there is something broken on this site with respect to quantum computing, and instead of trying to just fix that we're creating yet another SE site.

Emilio Pisanty

unless you have solid answers to that, I really struggle taking that evangelizing seriously.

glS

@EmilioPisanty haha I don't think I'm "hard-core" evangelising it though am I? I'm just arguing it would be nice to have, and asked questions on the proposal to better understand what other people actually expect from it

Emilio Pisanty

13:13

@glS whatever, you do you

just mind the opportunity costs

glS

@EmilioPisanty I will, let's see what happens. I have to go now. It was useful to talk about this anyway, thanks

Emilio Pisanty

i.e. if you have an enthusiast-led proposal that's deeply flawed (simply because there isn't enough expert input into setting the tone, and to spread the word fast enough that a quality beta can be established), what does that do to the future prospects fo properly-run proposals?

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty to be honest, the only opportunity costs (for me, personally) I can see are that I'd read a couple more novels or something... Hardly breaking the bank...

Emilio Pisanty

@Slereah not for the first half of its existence. Site was founded September 2009 and didn't get absorbed into SE until June-ish 2013.

@Mithrandir24601 then you're not seeing the true opportunity costs.

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty enlighten me then, please

Emilio Pisanty

13:17

building online communities requires networks and enthusiasm and goodwill. Those just don't come back together on a second go-round if the first one fails.

or, if they do, they're much harder to assemble.

Let me put it this way. Say you got a guarantee from SE that if the TP.SE proposal was reinstated, they'd pump the old posts back in and they'd let it stay in beta indefinitely. How many people would join back in, and how many people would go "... and how do I know that this time it's not going to fail?" and just move on?

The old TP.SE site's corpse takes up a nontrivial amount of room on site-space, and any future community-building needs to work around it.

Mithrandir24601

@ACuriousMind I've put a small, partial list, part of which is based on first and second hand experience, at the end of this answer

Slereah

heheheh

TP

Emilio Pisanty

Ditto for the not-actually-functioning PO. (personal opinion obviously. But if you're going to argue otherwise, bring your stats with you.)

@Slereah that's a quality joke right there

ACuriousMind

@Mithrandir24601 I've read that but none of these questions appears in the highly voted example questions, suggesting this, if at all, would be a very small part of the new site.

That is, these questions may well be what you wish to see on the site, but once again I see no design to actually make them happen.

Emilio Pisanty

@ACuriousMind or the community that will sustain quality answers for them

(As of yet. But if experts join in now, they no longer have a say on the definition stage.)

Mithrandir24601

13:27

@ACuriousMind yeah, that's the bit that does actually worry me - some of these are actual issues people working in the field have (seriously, using commercial QKD hardware sounds like a nightmare), while many of the upvoted questions are either simple or at least relatively easy to tackle. However, it's not like somewhere like PSE doesn't have similar problems and it's quite successful...

Emilio Pisanty

@Mithrandir24601 and @glS here's a useful comparison point. Take the example of TCS as an example of a 'hard' science site that arose via Area 51, and look at the users that were signed up at commitment stage, area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/8766?phase=commitment, and count the number of people that appear under their own names (a reasonable proxy for an established professional in the field).

Do that for other science sites, if you will - Cross Validated in particular

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty yeah, of course, but you have to start somewhere

0celo7

@Kiarash no, sorry

Emilio Pisanty

@Mithrandir24601 that's completely missing the point

of course you have to start somewhere

the point is that you don't start right, then you don't get to start again

ACuriousMind

@Mithrandir24601 Well, but PSE, at least in my opinion, works because we cater to a very broad base - all of physics, at all levels from beginner to expert, makes this site as lively as it is. You're taking a comparatively tiny subfield with the hope that somehow a larger-than-average professionasl user base appears.

Slereah

13:31

Let's make a GR SE

All GR all the time, baby

0celo7

What’s going on

Emilio Pisanty

@0celo7 Slereah is starting a GR proposal on area 51

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty again, yeah, and again, we could have started much, much better. But someone else started first, so there's not a lot a single individual can do after that, although I've tried to do the tiny bit that I can

0celo7

Too much work

Emilio Pisanty

@Mithrandir24601 I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. All I'm saying is that the opportunity costs do exist.

Slereah

13:34

So anyway

Emilio Pisanty

@Slereah agreed

Slereah

Geroch or Penrose made that paper about doing GR as a 56 dimensional thing

Does that work for other forces, too?

Like what would be the equivalent for EM

ACuriousMind

I can only answer that once you've explained to me what Penrose/Geroch did, and what sort of "thing" it was :P

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty while I'm saying that it was too late as soon as the original QC proposal was proposed a couple of years ago :P I do agree with you though

Slereah

There's like 4 components for the potential and 4 derivatives, I guess

@ACuriousMind He made a weird GR formalism as happening over the bundles of every bloody component of the metric and the Christoffel symbols

So it's some 56 dimensional fiber bundle

Probably the most ludicrous formalism for GR

Emilio Pisanty

13:37

anyways, food calls

laterz y'all

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty enjoy! Maybe I should make some tea :)

Slereah

I think basically anytime someone makes something that ridiculous for GR they'll claim it's "uh, for quantum gravity!"

you never know if that's gonna be useful for quantum gravity!

is $Ad(e^{iA}) = e^{-iAd(A)}$

Secret

@Slereah I am not a strong fan of the paranormal (cause I treat all intelligent entities as, well conversation entities and not objects), but I do have a very strong interest in learning about magic in the cultural sense on how this concept and social phenomenon arises in history and the various cultural significances

Mithrandir24601

@ACuriousMind Hmm... I've got most of my rep from Worldbuilding SE... that's niche. It's niche enough that it created experts, in a sense, so I'm maybe coming at this from a very different perspective. Also, the idea isn't just the physics and maths behind QC, but on making and using real quantum processors and related objects. Of course, it would be nice if the defining questions actually focused on this a bit more, but there's not a lot I can do about that

Secret

so far, the only place in SE that has magic questions is world building and scififantasy

it is sufficient, but not much is said about the cultural historical context where the term has a significant meaning

ACuriousMind

13:51

@Slereah Yes

@Mithrandir24601 Worldbuilding is one of the weirder (in a good way!) sites on the network and I don't think you should try to generalize your experience there to a science site

0celo7

Hmm

Should I invent the co-cut locus

Secret

To put simply, I am more interested on how society in history came into conception of the concept of magic and its role in various traditions, tribe rituals and symbolisms, then designing formalistic magic that is used as weapons in RPGs (because the latter is quite arbitrary)

ACuriousMind

@Mithrandir24601 Also, you could start a discussion in the area51 proposal about making the questions you want to see higher profile and see if others agree. Sure, you alone can't do much - except getting others to maybe do something together with you

0celo7

🤰🏻

Slereah

are you pregnant

Mithrandir24601

14:01

@ACuriousMind if you look closely enough, you'll find that I'm already involved in 3 discussions where I attempt to give good question topics :P One of those considerably improved the description from the disaster that it was and the third has just started. Of course, it is annoying me that the second is being ignored, when it's really the most important :/

Slereah

heh

"Should I tell my students that math is hard for me?"

0celo7

@ACuriousMind apparently I do Morse theory in my sleep because I woke up knowing my proof was wrong

Mithrandir24601

@ACuriousMind I dunno... I get your point, but at the same time... In my idealised, non-existent QC proposal, there's something to be said for a bunch of enthusiasts coming together and coming up with actual quantum programs that are at least a bit more than academic exercises for relatively small systems. I'm fully aware that what we have definitely isn't ideal by any stretch, but that's life

ACuriousMind

I envy your idealism :P

glS

@EmilioPisanty Point is: I didn't start this thing, and the impression I get from browsing the initial description and questions from the person opening the proposal, is that this person has no idea what QC is (his/her account doesn't even exist anymore). Also many questions appear to be from people that just like the idea of a QC site because, ehy, quantum computing sounds cool!

Mithrandir24601

14:11

@ACuriousMind now I just need to find someone who is willing to put in the other 99.9999% known only as 'hard work' :P

glS

@EmilioPisanty My questions on area51 were trying to probe the people to see how many actual "professionals" are there, and possibly steer the proposal into a more serious direction. But the thing is there now, so I figured to try and fly with it, because ehy, it may even succeed! About having a very hard time after a first proposal fails, I don't doubt it but could you provide examples of that happening?

0celo7

Explosion in Manhattan

Anonymous

@0celo7 phew...

John Rennie

Wow, a close escape!

Slereah

Escape from New York!

Anonymous

14:20

"A man wearing a homemade device attempted to set it off at Port Authority bus terminal near Times Square on Monday morning"...what's up with the suicide bombers these days

Emilio Pisanty

Hey @DanielSank Here's one to kick-start the week

La Yegros - Trocitos de Madera

►

@glS I just gave examples, cf. TP.SE and physicsoverflow

It's not a death sentence (cf. the death of astronomy.se and its subsequent re-birth to a currently pretty healthy state), but it is something to keep in mind.

glS

@EmilioPisanty I mean evidence of the hardness of getting the proposals up and running again

Emilio Pisanty

@Slereah gets a one-up from me just by virtue of linking to Math With Bad Drawings

@glS ...

TP.SE and physicsoverflow.

seriously, if that is not background you're well acquainted with, I really struggle taking seriously anything you say about community building on the physics-sphere

glS

@EmilioPisanty sorry I don't get it. TP.SE is an example of a site that didn't succeed. PO you agreed yourself that it's kind of a special case. But how can you say that these failures impeeded successive proposals

Slereah

Pay physicists a hundred bucks to post on it

That will get things rolling

Emilio Pisanty

14:27

@glS I don't class PO as a 'special case'. It's a zombie that's completely shut down the possibility of a research-grade MO equivalent for physics.

I know it's tough words, but evidence that PO has succeeded has been severely lacking thus far.

The opportunity cost exacted by the failure of PO is staggering.

It's the one and only thing I truly begrudge its founders.

glS

I never claimed to be an expert of the SE network, nor to be an expert on "community building". I'm just arguing for what I believe is a possibly good idea, never said to be sure of anything or to be any kind of authority did I?

Emilio Pisanty

(Well, that, and the implied-sponsorship break with the CC-BY license, but that's less important.)

glS

@EmilioPisanty but that is exactly what I'm asking for. Why do you say it shut down the possibility of research-grade MO equivalent for physics?

Emilio Pisanty

@glS because it burned through whatever remained of people's goodwill and enthusiasm

Slereah

I will post questions on your site for a hundred bucks

Just saying

Even answers

glS

14:30

@EmilioPisanty yes I did, and I'm not claiming to be sure of those. But you seem to have a very high degree of confidence for what you are saying, hence I'm asking why you think so, so that I can possibly change my mind

Emilio Pisanty

2 hours ago, by glS

@EmilioPisanty let's put this way. My main point is that many people that would potentially be interested and proficiently be active in asking/answering research-level questions on the topic, coming to something like physics.se, would not see it as worth the time frequenting, seeing so many not relevant questions and not enough high-level/interesting ones.

you've made a number of categorical (if vague) statements about how people will/would react to this proposal with absolutely no evidence backing them up

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty what did PO do wrong?

Slereah

@EmilioPisanty I don't see a single functor in there

Emilio Pisanty

@glS scattered all over this chat's history, this site's meta, the PO meta, and several blogs

do it yourself

asking for specific examples of that is equivalent to a major literature search

there's plenty of good starting points in the main history thread on this site's meta I linked in my comment on area51

@0celo7 I don't understand the question. Are you asking on what grounds I claim it's not succeeded, or are you asking why I think that failure occurred?

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty More the latter, but the former too if you have time

PO was before my time

Emilio Pisanty

14:36

@0celo7 you've got the time-balance wrong there

glS

@EmilioPisanty fine, but if that is how you put that seems to me to be the idea you got from your experience in the whole thing. Which is totally fine, but is not hard evidence, just as well as my statements are not. Hence in my eyes it remains a matter of being more or less hopeful or positive given the prior personal experience we have. You have more for sure, and I may be more naive, but I don't see a reason why this thing is sure to succeed, and why an eventual failure would be so damning

Emilio Pisanty

I think it's failed because it's still importing PSE content at a nontrivial fraction of their posting rate

something like >40% of new questions were PSE imports last time I checked

It's not self-sustaining

and its topical scope is, in practice, minuscule

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty bearing in mind that the original QC proposal was a couple of years ago and the current one was 9-10 months ago, with an awful description etc. How would you go about fixing it? It's all right talking about opportunity cost, but that was already used up months, if not a couple of years, ago

Slereah

I like it, it gives me free points on PO when I get imported

I don't even have to make an effort

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty explain

Emilio Pisanty

14:38

As to why PO failed, though, that's a much bigger question that I'm not in the least inclined to discuss at this point in time

As to the topics represented on PO in the last two years, I guess that roughly half is quantum field theory and a quarter string theory. If I remember correctly this was not too different from TP; I don't remember how the remaining quarter was distributed on TP. Thus now as then, the distribution of topics is very skewed, natural for a very broad field in which only a small number of experts contribute answers. These experts determine how people perceive the site and which kind of questions are being asked. We have very few questions from experimental physics or from solid state physics, say. — Arnold Neumaier Apr 30 at 17:11

and surrounding conversation

@Mithrandir24601 I don't see any real opportunity cost being incurred from proposals in either definition or commitment stage.

The opportunity-cost-o-meter really starts off when you get to beta

that's why you have the definition and commitment stages on area 51

Slereah

what they need is more GR questions

All the kids love GR

Emilio Pisanty

so you can say "OK, that one last year wasn't pitched particularly well, and it didn't have the right community support, but now we have a bunch of experts interested and they've had a meaningful say in the definition stage"

@glS This stuff, physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9822/…, you know, I saw it first-hand.

Slereah

The failure of a tiny thing like that basically hinges on two things, same as most projects of that nature

You need 1) a bunch of motivated people to actually answer a lot of things 2) Advertize the thing enough to get it running

A lot of people assume that once the site is up crowdsourcing will take care of everything

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty I see, thanks

Slereah

But alas that is a fool's dream

Emilio Pisanty

14:43

@Slereah advertise the thing to death

you mean

Slereah

I've seen a lot of wikis suffer the same fate

0celo7

@EmilioPisanty My pet theory is that physics is easier so there's no need for a high-level site :^)

Emilio Pisanty

@0celo7 everything worthwhile, at research level, is hard - and about equally hard, too

Slereah

plz solve string theory @0celo7

@EmilioPisanty You've never read a humanity paper

Emilio Pisanty

@Slereah the fact that you can understand the words individually doesn't make the research easy ;-)

0celo7

14:45

@Slereah the foundations of string theory are too shaky

Slereah

@EmilioPisanty Obviously you've never read gender studies papers :p

The words are not easy to understand nor is there anything worthwhile in it!

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty fair enough... So essentially, if it kicks off, come down super hard on bad questions and put effort into ensuring we get a good number of good questions on a wide variety of topics. Otherwise, restart the proposal with a good description and 5 good initial questions, which, admittedly, the current proposal failed at drastically

Emilio Pisanty

@Mithrandir24601 that'd be my recommendation, yes

particularly on the asking good questions bit

coupled with as massive an advertisement campaign as you can muster

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty this is the bit I'm terrible at :P

Anonymous

@Mithrandir24601 Just get elected as a mod on that site and be a super strict one. :P

Emilio Pisanty

14:50

if you really want research-level users on that site, then once it reaches public beta there needs to be an advert for the site on the notice board (or equivalent) of every QI group you have connections with

ditto for every blog

@Mithrandir24601 it still needs to get done

MO didn't magically happen

it took a lot of advertising

including people manning booths at conferences and the like

Anonymous

Unfortunately there are not many experts in QI/QC. I know only one or two researchers who work on QC in my city.

Anonymous

Unlike mathematics

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty this is definitely a fair and important point

ACuriousMind

@Blue I think that young beta profits equally, if not more, from active community moderation instead of mod fiat.

Anonymous

(So getting as good a start as MO would be always quite difficult)

Emilio Pisanty

14:52

tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/78/look-out-for-this-man/… lolz

Mithrandir24601

@Blue theoretical QC people seem relatively few and far between

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty Doesn't load for me, server is taking too long to respond :P

Mithrandir24601

@EmilioPisanty ah-ha! This also explains why electrical engineering is separate to the engineering SE

Emilio Pisanty

@Mithrandir24601 EE.SE is way older than E.SE

Ah, found it

New batch of T-shirts

John Rennie

Good grief, Jon Skeet's rep is only just shy of a million!!!

Emilio Pisanty

14:58

How do I get one of those nifty mathoverflow signs for my office door?

0celo7

is jumping off a bridge really an effective method for suicide?

Emilio Pisanty

CC @Mithrandir24601 @glS, that's MO advertising in action there

Mithrandir24601

I also didn't know that it was Tim Gowers who started the polymath project :)

glS

@Mithrandir24601 I mean, that really depends if you are in the field. I know plenty :)

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie John, you're about the last person on this chatroom whose grief about that is believable

John Rennie

14:59

:-)

Anonymous

@EmilioPisanty I still have big issues with EE.SE's name. Electronics in the url but Electrical in the heading.

John Rennie

A million rep eh? I suppose that's possible if I live long enough :-)

Anonymous

I found it a bit funny

Emilio Pisanty

@Blue ::shrug::

@JohnRennie stackexchange.com/users/233926/john-rennie?tab=reputation plus linear extrapolation, no?

I make it a rate of about 200kRep/4.5y starting jan 2012

John Rennie

@EmilioPisanty that flatters me. I hardly answer any questions these days, and my rep is currently coming from old questions and the occasional HNQ bonanza.

Balarka Sen

15:02

hows it going

Emilio Pisanty

you should be at a million rep in... 2024 or so?

glS

@EmilioPisanty ok, I've read the whole post, but I still don't see how you can claim from those events that new attempts at starting a research-level physics SE site have been dramatically discouraged. Also not to forget that the QC proposal is not specifically about research-level questions, it's more than the topic naturally leads (or should lead) to more of those

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie where do you think Jon Skeet's rep comes from?

Slereah

arxiv.org/pdf/1311.2148.pdf

this looks like a neat paper

John Rennie

Does Jon Skeet still post?

Balarka Sen

15:03

@EmilioPisanty presumably from Jon Skeet himself

Emilio Pisanty

@JohnRennie last I checked, yes

Balarka Sen

/chuck norris jokes

glS

@EmilioPisanty with all of this I agree, and it's why I wouldn't have started the proposal like that

Slereah

Do you mean Charles Norris

Emilio Pisanty

though I guess he's slowed down some, he doesn't go that much above the rep-cap since mid-2015, I guess

Mithrandir24601

15:05

@glS I know (OK, know of or have met) a reasonable number, but for every ('hardcore', as opposed to ones doing a mix of theory and experiment) theorist, there seems to be many more experimentalists

Emilio Pisanty

@glS That claim isn't there. It's in its references, as well as

32 mins ago, by Emilio Pisanty

@glS scattered all over this chat's history, this site's meta, the PO meta, and several blogs

but frankly, if you're arguing to that kind of detail, you've missed the point

glS

@EmilioPisanty I guess so

anyway, I'll leave it at that, gotta go doing some actual work :). Was good discussing the matter.

Emilio Pisanty

@glS go for it.

Slereah

@ACuriousMind why is $U_\tau Q U_{-\tau} = \text{Ad}(\exp(i\tau P)) Q$, if $U = e^{i\tau P}$?

0celo7

I'm getting gray hair just watching the Sopranos

being a mobster is a high stress job

Slereah

15:13

Ba-da-bing

ba-da-boom

I'm waaaalking heeere

Balarka Sen

I am going to play Getting Over It

on a trackpad

wish me luck

Slereah

is it still okay to make fun of italians

I'm not sure

0celo7

hmm

that's my steam generator temperature

Slereah

0°C?

What kind of steam is it

0celo7

@Slereah it's the perturbation value

Slereah

15:17

Is baseline 100°C

0celo7

the full temp is 560.8 F + that

@Slereah that would be a very wet steam

Slereah

What is that in non-stupid units

0celo7

@Slereah idk, add like 400 to get Rankine

Slereah

Not really where I was going with this

John Rennie

@Slereah In Europe reactor cooling systems run up to about 350C.

Only just shy of the temperature at which water becomes a supercritical fluid.

user228700

15:24

@JohnR: Are you around? (And not busy!)

Slereah

350 Coulombs???

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H did someone call? :-)

Slereah

that's a lot of electrons

user228700

@JohnRennie Hi! :-) I have a quick, silly question about modules in Python...

John Rennie

@Slereah My you're in a pedantic mood today.

Slereah

15:25

@JohnRennie childhood trauma

Lots of professors being very strict on units and notation!

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H I don't know a huge amount about Python, but if it's a simple question I can probably help...

Slereah

they wouldn't let a vector without an arrow pass!

user228700

@JohnRennie I was wondering, mustn't the dot notation be used to access built in methods from a specific module?

user228700

Say I have imported the string module and wish to use the function isupper().

Slereah

"An effective realization of the causal metric hypothesis (CMH), whereby one may derive the emergence of approximate manifold structure at appropriate scales, beginning with just the axioms of causal set theory and suitable dynamical laws, has not yet been discovered."

What a hoax!

user228700

15:28

To use this function on a string I've got, str1, this is the syntax, no: string.isupper(str1)?

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H err, I'm not sure. Try it and see what happens ...

Anonymous

@Kaumudi.H Just str1.isupper();

user228700

._. OK...

0celo7

much better

user228700

@Blue So isupper() is not one of the built in functions that are within the module string?

Slereah

15:30

"Nevertheless, suggestive “toy models” have been examined. The most prominent of these is a classical stochastic model called sequential growth dynamics, introduced by Sorkin and his student David Rideout in their 1999 paper Classical sequential growth dynamics for causal sets."

John Rennie

D:\rhs\Kindle>python
Python 2.7.14 (v2.7.14:84471935ed, Sep 16 2017, 20:19:30) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> isupper("rats")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'isupper' is not defined
>>> from string import *
>>> isupper("rats")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'isupper' is not defined
>>> string.isupper("rats")

@Kaumudi.H ^ it appears not

user228700

Hmm, I'm quite confused now...

John Rennie

>>> rats = "rats"
>>> rats.isupper()
False

0celo7

this report is going to be 40 pages

if I don't get an A...

Slereah

"It is analogous to a mathematical category"

Nooooooooooooooo

user228700

15:33

It would appear that there are two types of these built in function things: one type, for which the syntax is <module name>.<function name>(<argument>)

Balarka Sen

rekt @Slereah

user228700

And another, for which it is <argument>.<function name>()

user228700

What are the names of these two different things?

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H that's because you have global functions and class methods.

Mithrandir24601

@0celo7 heh. The last report I wrote that length was 'terrible' :P

John Rennie

15:34

Any string is an instance of the Python string class, and that class has methods specific to it.

user228700

Ah, of course! Right.

John Rennie

isupper is one of the string class methods.

user228700

Right, right.

John Rennie

I don't think Python has a global isupper function, though of course you could easily write one.

user228700

Of course.

user228700

15:36

OK, I understand it now. Thanks so much! :-)

John Rennie

You learning Python?

user228700

(I'll be back with even more questions, I'm sure!)

user228700

@JohnRennie I learning 4 exam tomorrow :-P

John Rennie

You have a Python exam?

user228700

Of course!

John Rennie

15:38

Cool, at least they're finally examining you on something useful!

user228700

Well, the name of the course is "Introduction to Computing and Problem Solving".

user228700

There's a bunch of computer architecture and design as well, in addition to learning to design algorithms and drawing flowcharts. The rest is Python.

user228700

I'm very confused by strings and lists :-/ Hence the "I'll be back with questions".

Sid

@BalarkaSen Okay. I will keep that in mind then

@0celo7 then you get an A*.

Balarka Sen

@Sid Are you rather into the mindfuck genre?

0celo7

15:48

@Mithrandir24601 it's 75% pictures

Sid

@BalarkaSen Sort of. Not always.

Balarka Sen

Mmkay

I'm a big fan of unreliable storytelling

Slereah

I feel like I should get Quantum theory for mathematicians

user228700

I'm back!

user228700

Slereah

15:53

Is that what string theory is about

user228700

How would I access the split/joint list?

user228700

@Slereah Lol.

Slereah

Put it in a variable

user228700

I was wondering if that would really work...

user228700

I should just try that, sorry.

Sid

15:55

@Kaumudi.H the best way to understand programming is to just experiment.

In the end, something will work and you will also understand why others don't work

user228700

Thing is, I am a terrible student and don't actually have Python on my laptop.

John Rennie

@Kaumudi.H didn't we install python on your laptop?

user228700

@Sid I know, I know, I've done programming before...

user228700

@JohnRennie Nope!

John Rennie

Then you really need to install it

user228700

15:57

It's alright, for tonight, I will manage with an online compiler...

John Rennie

Trying to learn this stuff without having a copy of Python to hand is ... well ...

Ah, OK, you have access to an online Python interpreter

user228700

No, to be clear, it's not the first time I'm learning this stuff-we've done labs (a.k.a written programs) during the sem.

John Rennie

So what are you asking?

Anonymous

@Kaumudi.H The return type of <string>.split() is a list. So store it in a list.

user228700

^ Yes, I understood this :-) To store in a list, though, would it be enough to say list1=str1.split()?

Anonymous

15:59

@Kaumudi.H Yep!

Anonymous

Then you know how to access list elements

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