impendia

9 ms·

91.
by impendia 1y ago
I'm a mathematics professor, specializing in number theory. As others have noted (the author apparently "doesn't believe in irrational numbers"), this press release is laughable and utterly absurd. Wildberger did not &qu
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by impendia 1y ago
> it seemed the majority of their new employees are from state schools in the Midwest. I went to the University of Wisconsin for grad school, and I knew lots of people there who went to work for Epic. I confess that, before I applied, I
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by impendia 1y ago
This fascinating article by Atul Gawande explains both sides of the issue: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-ha... It seems to be the classic curse of enterprise software: it&#x27
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by impendia 2y ago
If I unsubscribe and still get marketing emails -- Or, if when I click the unsubscribe link, I am prompted to log in to an account which I never created, using a password that I do not have -- Then, with apologies to Francis Ford Coppola, m
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by impendia 2y ago
Apparently ads are starting to pop up, unbidden, on cars. When the day comes that I have to replace my 1999 Camry, I will be sure to buy a car without software with this capability. I consider any software that permits ads to be irreparab
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by impendia 2y ago
What exactly are you asking about? Reading blogs where the author is explaining some issue that makes them angry? Some things are worth being hostile to. For example, I don't see how one can read or talk about the war in Ukraine, witho
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by impendia 2y ago
(Math professor here) What do you mean by "foundational"? I love Calculus Made Easy , but in my opinion the reason it's so good is that it doesn't try to be foundational. It relies on quick and dirty tricks -- especiall
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by impendia 2y ago
> 12) Join a community of people sharing your struggles. If you can't find an in-person one, the Reddit community is pretty good, with lots of useful posts and advice https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/
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by impendia 2y ago
> you can say "Outlook is shit" all you want, the users will blame you for it, since you weren't able to fix what others could, for better or worse. Personally, I'd happily blame Microsoft, but the practical significa
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by impendia 2y ago
For the same reason that people expect car infrastructure to be paid for: whether they are walking, biking, or driving, they are frequently traveling to some place where they will contribute to the economy. Walking is not merely some sort
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by impendia 2y ago
Yes, this is extremely common. On the one hand, yes, this is absolutely batshit insane. On the other hand, college sports are enormously popular; football games regularly play to sold out crowds of over 50,000, and during football season th
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by impendia 2y ago
I don't know. I knew that salaries at public universities are public in many states, so thought to google it -- but the details can vary.
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by impendia 2y ago
There are strict privacy laws (e.g. FERPA) which university administrators are terrified of violating and getting sued over. Meanwhile, most university "enterprise" software is a festering pile of shit. I'm very surprised by
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by impendia 2y ago
I'm a university professor, and this is batshit crazy. Who ? As in not "they" or "the university", but who within the university? Can you tell where the directive is coming from? If this comes from, say, the Provos
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by impendia 2y ago
As a math researcher, and a signatory to the Elsevier boycott, I am confused. Not by the resignation itself, but rather by what Elsevier is attempting to accomplish. From the resignation statement, linked to in the article: > In 2023, El
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by impendia 2y ago
Having lived in Japan, there is something of an attitude there that anywhere other than Tokyo -- or maaaaaybe Osaka if you're feeling generous -- is the sticks. Having been to Sapporo and Kumamoto -- and many other medium-size Japanese
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by impendia 2y ago
Cross training -- a mixture of cardio and strength training, with weights, rowers, kettlebells, battle ropes, medicine balls, etc. etc. and all sorts of calisthenics -- something different every day. It's not a chain establishment, and
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by impendia 2y ago
I'm 46, and I've gone through something of a midlife crisis recently (and things are getting better now!) When I was a kid, I was constantly being told how much much "potential" I had. I have accomplished a lot, and when
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by impendia 2y ago
The problems are uninteresting in the sense that the audience for these papers doesn't find them interesting. In particular, I'm not making any sort of logical claim -- rather, I know many of the people who read and write these pa
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by impendia 2y ago
I strongly agree with you, in the sense that many papers provide far fewer details than they should, and reading them is considered something of a hazing ritual for students and postdocs. (I understand that this is more common in specialtie
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by impendia 2y ago
Speaking as a current researcher in pure math -- you're right, but I don't think this is easily resolved. Math research papers are written for other specialists in the field. Sometimes too few details are provided; indeed I common
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by impendia 2y ago
I am an academic mathematician, and one thing I love about our culture is that transactional relationships are considered perfectly okay. I can invite a colleague at another university, whom I might consider an old friend even though I have
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by impendia 2y ago
I think this is tricky. I'm someone who very highly values social connections, but finds it a little bit awkward to just "shoot the shit". I really enjoy interacting with people based on shared experiences, of whatever type -
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by impendia 2y ago
Technically, dx/dt is not a fraction, but, but, ... https://mathoverflow.net/questions/73492/how-misleading-is-i...
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by impendia 2y ago
I'm a math professor. In my opinion, no. This would be possible , but I don't believe it would be a good idea. I firmly believe that, if you want to learn any math subject, whether elementary or research-level or anywhere in betw
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by impendia 2y ago
This is a coordination problem. There are some efforts in this direction; for example, the researchers who led the Elsevier boycott http://thecostofknowledge.com/ started a free open-access journal https://discre
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by impendia 2y ago
As an academic, I agree with almost everything you say -- but I wouldn't blame policies in universities. As much as I hate all the bureaucracy, I can't blame it here. Academics are periodically called upon to pass judgment on ot
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by impendia 2y ago
Indeed, I posted my first paper in 2006. It is still live on the internet in exactly the same format, and I've done absolutely nothing to maintain it. I'm guessing there are few web pages of any significance which need to stay exa
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by impendia 2y ago
> This would also make it easier to rewrite parts of the paper without having to go back and fix all of your layout-dependent references when the layout shifts. Just thinking about having to change layout-dependent references, every time
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by impendia 2y ago
> Use HTML rather then PDF. The PDF is the original paper, as it appears on arXiv, so using PDF is natural. In general academics prefer PDF to HTML. In part, this is just because our tooling produces PDFs, so this is easiest. But also, w

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