impendia

44 ms·

451.
by impendia 7y ago
You mentioned mathematics. I am a math professor. Thinking about the most successful researchers I know, here is the list of major reasons they do it: 1. Because they love their subject area, and are excited about doing this work for its ow
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by impendia 7y ago
Speaking as a mathematics professor -- In my opinion, it's like asking "Can I become a concert pianist without taking piano lessons?" Well, sure; indeed, it's been done before. But if you're going to put in the hard
453.
by impendia 7y ago
The advice I've read is not necessarily to go for a walk outside, but to do something more low-key: wash some dishes, read a book, or simply sit quietly for twenty minutes. Especially if you feel "tired" but not "sleepy&
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by impendia 7y ago
Hello -- I have experienced the same symptoms, although not quite as badly (waking up very early), for the last two years. Take this with a huge grain of salt, because most of what I tried didn't work all that well , but I'll let
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by impendia 7y ago
> you buy additional travel insurance Do most people actually do this? I never do. If an airline cancelled my flight, did not provide alternative arrangements, and cited some legal fine print instead... then I would be very upset. They
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by impendia 7y ago
As a university professor, I'm struck at how few of these I've heard of -- and, of those which I've heard of, how little I care. I just don't feel like I have problems which I'm itching to have solved by technology.
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by impendia 7y ago
Seems plausible enough to me. The academic job market is absolutely brutal. Ever more administrators are being hired, and (in some disciplines anyway) fewer and fewer tenure-track professors. As a result, there are tons of experts, with tra
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by impendia 7y ago
> if there's a good mechanism to do so. Have you ever seen longbets.org? My favorites: http://longbets.org/362/ http://longbets.org/382/
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by impendia 7y ago
> Ubiquitous mobile/wireless internet integrated into even very trivial consumer goods, with close to 100% coverage across the civilized world. A significant fraction of ordinary consumer goods simply won't work in "dark&q
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by impendia 7y ago
I have never owned a smartphone. I don't really want one; the sight of people with their noses buried in their phones doesn't really tempt me to follow suit. I already get distracted easily enough. That said, I am probably going t
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by impendia 7y ago
These days, recommendation letters are all electronic. It is possible, sometimes, to game the system. One year I served on a hiring committee while applying for a handful of other jobs. Although I didn't, I could have read my own lette
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by impendia 7y ago
University professors (I am one), at least in my discipline (math), tend to be diehard traditionalists. For better or worse, we tend to distrust any formal assessment mechanism.
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by impendia 7y ago
I am an academic mathematician, on winter break. I did some research this morning. Why? No wishy-washy reasons here, the reason is as you said: I like it. I will do more today. I do not believe that my work comes at someone else's expe
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by impendia 7y ago
My impression was that Kostka and Payne is fairly light going, with lots of examples of how the concepts are used in actual (classical) music. There is an accompanying workbook, and as far as learning went that was where the real action is.
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by impendia 7y ago
I took a year-long course in music theory as an undergrad; I loved it, and learned a great deal! I recommend sitting in on a university music theory course if it all possible. But, if not, I can at least recommend the textbook we used: Kost
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by impendia 7y ago
> Funny part is that all these extra administrators don’t actually help out the faculty much. For the most part, it's not part of their job descriptions. Some things which have grown: student services; "Student Success" ce
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by impendia 7y ago
I'm a math professor, asked to serve as an advisor frequently. I typically advise math majors -- and I do a fairly good job of it. Although I tend to have difficulty with the administrative side of things, especially since our degree
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by impendia 7y ago
I am curious -- were the departments, in fact, consulting the instructional designers? And, if yes, was it by choice?
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by impendia 7y ago
As someone who doesn't enjoy cooking all that much, I've noticed this too and been distressed by it. Restaurants, almost uniformly, serve unhealthy food. There are exceptions to this, but they don't seem to be all that popula
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by impendia 7y ago
> Who is fighting at the organizational level for the students? Plenty of people. Sometimes at cross purposes, rarely with little effect. Unlike Tolstoy's happy families, good teachers are not all alike. For the most part, I can&#x2
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by impendia 7y ago
> If you can't create a 200 person per year startup incubator that focuses on true learning instead of process hacking, then how could someone do it for a 20,000 person university? As a university professor, I can at least try . No
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by impendia 7y ago
If you want to understand Peluse's paper, I think the most directly relevant background reading would be Tao and Vu's Additive Combinatorics . Dummit and Foote's Abstract Algebra is an excellent book -- even if not very di
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by impendia 7y ago
This area is usually known as "additive combinatorics". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_combinatorics
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by impendia 7y ago
> Neither seems to have supporting exercises yet I contacted one of the authors of the book. He confirms there aren't exercises yet, but says it's a work in progress and hopes there will be in the future.
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by impendia 7y ago
I don't really think that representation theory is required here, it's easier than that. (Although representation theory is really cool!!) Every finite dimensional vector space over the real numbers is isomorphic to R^n, for some
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by impendia 7y ago
This looks outstanding. I am a math professor, and I need to choose a book next time I teach linear algebra. It may well be this one. If anyone has in-depth experience with the book, I'd be grateful to hear about it.
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by impendia 7y ago
Looking through the book, it seems to concentrate on R^n, and not pay much attention to abstract vector spaces. Probably a good choice for the intended audience (mostly engineers, likely). You might prefer Hefferon's Linear Algebra ,
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by impendia 7y ago
Analytic number theorist here. I can answer your question. The method doesn't really yield "exactly 70,000,000". If you traced through his method, and worked out each step in more detail, you'd probably get a bound of (s
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by impendia 7y ago
When I visited Venice, around 15 years ago, at first I was not impressed. I'd seen the fake version at a theme park, and somehow it felt like more of the same. But then I saw a couple traces of authentic life. We ran into a local walki
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by impendia 7y ago
> I find this whole "they're selling your data" trope to be trite and just annoying at this point. Do you believe it to be mistaken ? Or true, but not worth caring about?

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