impendia

55 ms·

571.
by impendia 8y ago
Speaking as an analytic number theorist, the branch of math of which the Lindelof Hypothesis is part: This is a huge deal, if true. But USC's PR machine seems to have jumped the gun. The paper in question, found here https:/&
572.
by impendia 8y ago
Apparently the job market is hot in computer science: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/09/no-clear-solu... In any case, if you're thinking of enrolling in a Ph.D. program, I strongly urge
573.
by impendia 9y ago
> academia is probably one of the better ones. (Academic here.) In many ways, yes, and I love my profession. But a potential downside to academia is that all sorts of people will contact you and ask you to do things. Heck, I get regular
574.
by impendia 9y ago
(Professional mathematician here, indeed one at a less prestigious institution.) I would argue that medalists' universities have been reasonably diverse. For example, in the US since 1990, medals have gone to mathematicians from Rutger
575.
by impendia 9y ago
I am a mathematics professor (at a non-elite university). If anyone has advice on how I can help our students (at all levels -- undergrad and grad) get jobs in any of these industries, I would be grateful to listen!
576.
by impendia 9y ago
I am curious, would you mind explaining why you dislike PDF? (I'm an academic and I'm used to PDFs and I like them myself.)
577.
by impendia 9y ago
Professional mathematician here. That can occasionally happen with much less important papers; e.g. someone is asked to referee something, and doesn't really feel like actually reading it but would still like to see it published. If th
578.
by impendia 9y ago
The one on Harden Street in Five Points. That part of town, and the whole downtown area, was mostly unscathed.
579.
by impendia 9y ago
I was in downtown Columbia, SC for this rainstorm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2015_North_American_st... The next morning, my girlfriend and I ventured out on foot to attend a yoga class. The yoga studio was
580.
by impendia 9y ago
I don't describe cryptocurrency as a "scam" or "greed". Indeed, I find the whole subject fascinating. But, as to where skepticism comes from -- these so-called "coins" have been conjured out of thin air, a
581.
by impendia 9y ago
Aha. Looks like the editors made (and caught) a mistake then.
582.
by impendia 9y ago
(Professional mathematician and analytic number theorist here.) This is not correct. When mathematicians (at least analytic number theorists) use the notation "log", it always means to base e, i.e., ln. Natural logarithms come up
583.
by impendia 9y ago
> is that surprising? No. It's a difficult problem to mitigate. There are always going to be some students who want to learn the minimum possible to pass the exam, and who will never work with the material again. Although I do my be
584.
by impendia 9y ago
> the faculty has something of a phobia to ... students' access to help outside of the department. Math professor here. I am most certainly happy if my students get help outside the department, and I think my attitude is quite typic
585.
by impendia 9y ago
> Here's another idea, why I'm throwing them out: referees should be given an option to have a larger payoff with a short duration of a referee report -- say, two weeks -- while also agreeing to pay if they don't finish a
586.
by impendia 9y ago
Signalling effects. Imagine that you are one of five hundred postdocs applying for your dream professorship. Your papers are so highly technical that the hiring committee won't be able to judge them directly (certainly not before you m
587.
by impendia 9y ago
> I see it being used as a pedagogical aid for professors. This is, unfortunately, likely to be difficult. The pots of money that professors typically have at their discretion is usually for research, and comes from grant funding (e.g. t
588.
by impendia 9y ago
Whom at universities do you wish to sell to? Who do you see using this? I work as a math professor at a state university, and overall universities don't seem like good places to work as programmers. Most of the programming-ish work see
589.
by impendia 9y ago
> Could you go into more detail on the examples you mention, where doing so led to new insights? Good question. It's a bit hard to do so (especially without going into mind-numbing technical detail) -- in math you never quite know w
590.
by impendia 9y ago
> mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Yes, Hardy was a great mathematician and he did say this --- but mo
591.
by impendia 10y ago
I believe that you're overestimating Academia.edu's potential influence. The whole reason that Elsevier et al. can make so much money is that researchers can keep doing exactly what they have always been doing . Researchers thems
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by impendia 10y ago
> Open access to an ocean of articles without the ability to search through them is meaningless. As an academic mathematician, I disagree. The ability to search through articles' content is great, but being able to access an article
593.
by impendia 10y ago
I assigned this in an Honors Calc II class I taught at a state university. The main text was Stewart (decided at the department level), but I was teaching the Honors section which provided a good opportunity for me to ask for something extr
594.
by impendia 10y ago
You've gotten me extremely curious. How did they manage to spend $10 million?
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by impendia 10y ago
This fall I will be teaching the required "Discrete Math for CS course" to about fifty students at the University of South Carolina. Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably
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by impendia 10y ago
>I have had trouble understanding class numbers. Usually they measure the "failure" of unique factorization. So how does these failures become a special type of number, that multiply to form a group? That is a very good quest
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by impendia 10y ago
As a South Carolina resident, I'm confident this won't happen. Right-wingers introduce nutty bills all the time here (example: Lee Bright introduced [1] a bill to have South Carolina make its own currency), and they get a fair amo
598.
by impendia 10y ago
I strongly disagree. You can't penalize young scientists for playing the game; they pretty much have to. I believe it is much more appropriate to put pressure on senior, tenured scientists to publish their work in "ethical" v
599.
by impendia 10y ago
> Do those sorts of differences in early publishing predict later success? Absolutely yes. They are perhaps the most reliable yardstick for past success that we have available, and past success is the best predictor of future success.
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by impendia 10y ago
I certainly agree that it's ethical. As far as practicality goes, demanding payment will invariably amount to refusing the review assignment. I don't have any problem with that, but I don't believe that any publishers will be

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