I'm just going to put this here. No particular reaon.

@XanderHenderson You have a fine taste in music! My mother and grandfather used to listen to Boney M. all the time. Classic! I also like "Rivers of Babylon".

Also, because Ennio Morricone died recently...

I've always found it interesting that it is an Italian composer who was so influential in determining the sound of the American West.

Such a quintessentially American sound.

Nice! I have recently stumbled upon some 80's-style synthwave-y music. A good step back from the modern-era-style music.

@XanderHenderson this song is simply beautiful. I used to jam to this all the time when I was younger

@AsafKaragila Although, I have been told by senior users not to ping/ask about irrelevant stuffs, but then also I’m making this mistake for one more time. What was your educational/academic status when you joined Maths.SE in 2010? Were you a 1st year undergrad or something like that?

@Knight I had just finished my bachelor and had a summer scholarship before my masters degree. (It sounds fancy, but it's really not, it was standard for people who want to continue in academia.)

@Knight I don't think I would have done very well if I had this site during my undergraduate. I don't know, maybe it would have been helpful, but I don't know.

@AsafKaragila You mentioned in a comment (in 2016) that you wrote your MS thesis by giving much time to this site.

@Knight Yes. Ultimately most of the work I had done came through answering questions and getting to know people.

@AsafKaragila One last question: You have written in your profile that “don’t make any congratulatory posts”, did something happen that distressed you and made you to write that?

Thanks. I enjoyed talking with you.

3 cheers for NASA!

JPL, ULA and everyone including people behind the people who're behind the stage have done a wonderful job!

@sai-kartik A friend of mine is in charge of "guidance and control" on the Mars 2020 mission. Exciting times.

@XanderHenderson Wow !

Please convey my wishes to him !

Her*

sorry her*

hi @AlexanderGruber!

morning

actually evening for me but meh :P

you just woke up i presume?

No, I'm still up actually

I keep odd hours

Gotta teach in an hour... yay.

@XanderHenderson i miss teaching.

wait what time is it for you @AlexanderGruber?

@sai-kartik 9am

@XanderHenderson all the best !

@AlexanderGruber wait so you didn't sleep?

@sai-kartik Not yet, anyway.

@AlexanderGruber hmm

@AlexanderGruber I miss teaching in person.

you should really go sleep ig

@XanderHenderson How's that even work over the internet? Do you still lecture?

They had some e-learning courses when I was in grad school but I never taught one.

@AlexanderGruber Yup. I still lecture. Fortunately, I bought a Wacom graphics tablet early in the year (before the pandemic made them hard to find), so my lectures are similar in style to in-person.

i.e. I can still write on the "board".

And there are some advantages to teaching online---everyone can see my notes just as well as everyone else; everyone can hear; it is easier for me to hear the students.

Ahhh, that's nice. I have a microsoft surface that I use for notetaking.

okay im curious now... what is it like to be a prof? can you guys summarize it like "a day in the life of a math professor" please?

But the energy is just... off. And a number of students refuse to turn on their cameras, which is just rude.

Does it still feel personable?

To be fair, I am not a professor. I am an "associate instructor" at UCR until September. I start in a "Lecturer" position at NPC in a month.

@XanderHenderson lol idk, I feel that. I turn off my camera in meetings most of the time now, not trying to give colleagues a camera feed into my living room.

@AlexanderGruber I use background image. Once I get moved, I have a Japanese-style paper screen that I will set up behind me, so that I am not showing off my office.

@XanderHenderson well, i was asking in the general sense. as in what it is like to be a teacher?

But yeah, the "showing off my home" is a problem. However, that is a problem with the speed at which we had to switch to online learning.

My boss uses a photo of our corporate office as his background image. I can tell he misses it. Poor corporate exec.

Before the pandemic, I was already doing a lot of online teaching, using a studio on campus. I bought the tablet so that I could work from home (and then the pandemic hit).

@AlexanderGruber Heh.

@sai-kartik I wake up, get coffee, hang out here for a bit, teach my class, hold office hours, then work on my own work or prepare lectures for the next day.

@sai-kartik my experience is it's somewhere between being the smartest person in your study group and being a cop

But the class I'm teaching right now is one that I have taught many times, and one which I helped to develop. I can pretty much roll out of bed and teach it while only half-awake (though I don't actually do that, as I need to be happy and engaged if I am going to expect the same from my students).

You have a lot of fun and get to talk about things you like, but sometimes you have to give people you like bad grades, which sucks.

Grades are my least favorite aspect of teaching. :\

@AlexanderGruber course. no one likes bad grades :/

@XanderHenderson i ever tell you about my grading system?

so teachers in the US get to make their own grading systems?

like unofficially i guess?

@AlexanderGruber I don't think so.

@sai-kartik at the end you have to give everybody an A, B, C, etc, but you get to set up how to make those grades

@AlexanderGruber oh i see.. wanna elaborate a little on your process?

well let me preface by saying that this is only possible for small classes, it's definitely not scalable for big lectures

@AlexanderGruber like around 20-30 people?

@sai-kartik Yeah. The biggest I ever did it with was 3 classes of 30 people at the same time, and that was straining the upper limits.

My approach was this, I made a list of topics I wanted them to learn. Something like 20 things long. They tracked more or less with sections of the book

I'd give a quiz on the topic after a week or so of lecture

The quizzes were "perfect or fail." I.E. you get everything 100% right or you don't pass it

@AlexanderGruber :O

This is very harsh. However, the catch is that you can retake them as often as you like.

@AlexanderGruber ooohhhh i see where this is going..

At the end of the semester, you needed a certain number of passed quizzes to pass the course

nice

@XanderHenderson do you have any such methods?

That's a nice system for a small class. How long is each quiz?

@XanderHenderson 2ish questions

Long form answers with work shown

very effective i'd say!

plaza.ufl.edu/gruberan/MAC2234_U14/MAC2234_U14.html <-- this is the first time I taught it

(the rest of the semesters I had Canvas)

"That means you, Study Edge / TutoringZone." Ha!

Students responded really well to it though, they kind of hated me / were terrified at first, then over the course of the semester they gradually realized they were learning more than they ever had before on account of not being able to fake it through

Got lots of shining evaluations

@sai-kartik I generally break my grading down into three components: practice problems, written homework, and exams.

@XanderHenderson ohh okay..

With respect to practice problems, I assign a lot (for my 7 week summer precalc class, there is a library of about 400 problems).

@XanderHenderson whoa :O

@XanderHenderson how do you grade the homework part?

I tell students to get as many of them done as possible, and to ask questions about things they get stuck on in office hours. I them give them full credit for turning in a reasonable number of problems every week.

Nice.

So the practice problems are graded on completion. Of course, when I write my exams, I draw from that pool of 400 problems (and I tell my students that this is what I am doing).

I also assign a written homework problem every week. These problems tend to be a little more open ended, or require a little more synthesis of ideas.

I ask students to write up their solutions in grammatical English, with appropriate notation, etc. The goal is to get students writing technical documents, even in a precalc class.

These are graded on a two point scale: 1 point for mathematical correctness, 1 point for the writing component.

@XanderHenderson that's very important, I think.

Students may revise these assignments as many times as they wish until the end of the term.

@XanderHenderson did that help with the writing component? I tried incorporating that into my longer homeworks at a few points, but usually ended up giving up that part because students were so universally bad at it

@AlexanderGruber By the end of a 10 week quarter, 90% of my precalc students are turning in work that is pretty good.

But it is a lot of work to get students up to that level.

wow! you guys are great teachers!

It doesn't scale very well past 40 or 50 students.

@XanderHenderson did you take any lecture time to talk about writing?

@AlexanderGruber Some. It depends a little on the structure of the class.

At UCR, the discussion of writing can often be off-loaded to TA-led discussion sections. At NPC, I expect that I am going to be answering a lot of questions in office hours.

Though in the calculus class that I am supposed to start teaching in a few weeks, I am thinking of making Thursday "writing day". Those students are likely to eventually go on to a four year school, so it may be worth spending more time on writing, especially considering the general poverty and rural-ness of the area.

@XanderHenderson yeah, that would be helpful.

@AlexanderGruber Your calc II class looks like a lot of fun. How much time did you spend on the supplemental predator-prey stuff?

@XanderHenderson a ton. More than 50% of time was away from the book doing stuff like that.

Nice!

it was a terminal course for non-STEM majors so I figured if there was ever a time to emphasize using the math for things, this was it

later I ended up adding semester projects in mathematical modeling to the syllabus which worked out well

@AlexanderGruber Your optional homeowork looks a lot like the kind of thing that I give students as a "worksheet" in class. I spend the lecture going over the problems, then leave them with an open ended problem at the end to turn in as a written assignment. I once asked if Arnold Palmer could hit a golf ball off of the moon. :)

Though I do have to question your taste in baseball... the Reds? Really?

:P

@XanderHenderson I'm from Cincinnati, it's literally the only baseball team I know the name of. Lol

Ha!

Okay, you are forgiven.

@XanderHenderson part (j) was followed by a strenuous class-long discussion of how much money someone on financial aid have to make after graduation to get out of student loan debt by age 70

@AlexanderGruber Yikes. That's depressing.

there were a lot of accounting majors in the class that year which were fascinated by the problem

included in tax bracket info and stuff like that

@AlexanderGruber could you please give me a starting hint for P1 😅

@sai-kartik distribute

@sai-kartik distribute

HA!

Lol. Teachers.

ohh.. I was thinking about substitutions lol

the next problem would need that ofc

also Quiz 2 is missing?

Right... I need to get into the right mental state for teaching. Later, alls.

@sai-kartik probably just forgot to scan the blank copy. The solutions have the original quiz though

@XanderHenderson Good luck

@XanderHenderson goodbye !

@AlexanderGruber I was planning on attempting the quiz at some point of time :P anyway, that's alright:)

@sai-kartik that one's all about numerical approximation. It's a fun one, but not easy.

for a real challenge, take the final. ;)

anyhow, i got to go as well. see y'all around.

@AlexanderGruber i think my understanding of calculus hasn't crossed single variable. So if in involves multi variable i wouldn't be able to do it :/

@AlexanderGruber see ya !

@XanderHenderson in that spirit are you aware that Boney M. is ultimately German?

@XanderHenderson Brewers all the way! Any day!

Baseball...I barely know the rules.

Let's do words that rhyme with BALL

CALL, FALL, MALL, SMALL

PALL, AWL, ALL, TALL

GALL, SHAWL, WALL, HALL

I'll leave the rest to others, @quid :-)

@amWhy never would I've thought of awl. I'll trust you it actually rhymes.

One more, I can't resist: CRAWL

Does BRAWL work?

@quid Indeed it works!

As does STALL

And HAUL, and MAUL

GAUL maybe?

Oops, I've just been warned by SE software that I've exhausted my allowed quota for words that rhyme with BALL!

@quid a native or inhabitant of ancient Gaul.

Hint, @quid. A homonym of BALL (meaning "weep or cry noisily").

@amWhy bawl ?

@quid BINGO. But you must write it in all caps, and bold-faced! :-)

BAWL

@quid Yay!!

:-)

With all they rhyming in this room, we have created fertile ground for poetry.se.com :-)

I think "literature" exists?

Maybe Writing

WRITE, HEIGHT, FRIGHT, NIGHT, SITE, CITE, BITE, MIGHT, QUITE, @quid!

I have ten more words I can think of, @quid!

LIGHT

Now 12...

BRIGHT

DELIGHT

@quid Yup!! Yay,, and Yup, yay!!

@quid Good one! That wasn't among my additional 12.

IGNITE

DYNAMITE

@quid Another good one. MITE was one I thought of, but not yet dynamite!

REIGNITE

REWRITE

Kudos!!

SIGHT

FLIGHT

SLIGHT

KITE

TRITE

@quid Yup!!

TIGHT

BLIGHT

MARMITE

@quid I hadn't thought of that one!, nor marmite!

SPITE

I bring up delight and you spite and slight. Can we derive something from that? ;D

Then I brought the dyanamite.

@quid :P It's my PLIGHT, you are RIGHT

@amWhy maybe I actually confused blight and plight

@quid They are both words. plight: a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation. blight: a thing that spoils or damages something (e.g., urban blight). Though I guess one's plight might result from some blight.

@quid How could we have missed BYTE? :-)

Indeed.

Do you like marmite?

@quid I never encountered the word until you mentioned it! I doubt I've ever encountered the product.

@amWhy interesting. Apparently it's more a UK thing.

We'll ask @Asaf about it.

(Sorry for the delay, @quid. My computer crashed, and I had to restart it, but while it was restarting, I thought of four more words! INCITE RECITE INSIGHT and KNIGHT!

@quid That's what I gathered when searching for it!

Oh you should've left that one for @Knight

@quid I thought you'd appreciate it too, because it's a they are pieces on a chessboard!

@amWhy ah. Indeed.

Oh, @quid, don't get me started on words that rhyme with ROOK! :-)

@amWhy You'd be HOOKed

@quid Indeed!

Maybe BISHOP is safe!!

INVITE! @quid

As you can see, @quid. I'm not always readily able to put a brake on my word games. I move on to other things, but a part of my brain is still working on the previous task. But that's actually helped me be successful in math, too.

@amWhy I'll offer you a SPRITE if you are thirsty from all the rhyming.

@quid Indeed! and thanks! :-)

And a SPRITE is actually a word too: "an elf or fairy." You win!! lexico.com/en/definition/sprite

I did not know that but I knew "A computer graphic which may be moved on-screen and otherwise manipulated as a single entity."

One more, and then I swear I'm done: FORTNIGHT

Okay, I lied above, but this one is too good to let go: INDICT (formally accuse of or charge with a serious crime.)

Okay, @quid. You have my permission to suspend me from this chatroom if I do not cease with words that rhyme with WRITE! ;D

@amWhy this rhymes?

@quid Yes, though it is counterintuitive: lexico.com/en/definition/indict. Which is why it came last to my mine. It's pronounce like in-dight' (emphasis on the second syllable.

@amWhy strange

It seems to be a word used in North America, primarily the U.S. Grand Juries can decide whether to indict a suspect, or not.

@amWhy I knew the meaning but was surprised about the pronunciation; yet then I hear it at time I think so I should not have.

@quid That's how crazy English can be!! shakes head. But that word's pronunciation is more bizarre than typical, even for English.

Another word popped into my head, but I won't write it, because I asked to be suspended from this chatroom if I add any more words. Someone help me out: lexico.com/en/definition/contrite

You seem very CONTRITE about it @amWhy

Great one, @quid!! And one more, @quid, and I'm trying to be kind and considerate to others: lexico.com/en/definition/polite

POLITE, and I'll add IMPOLITE

@quid Yay!! I'll sleep well tonight!