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# btcprox@btcprox@mathstodon.xyz

This video series adds quite some rigour (particularly ) into mostly intuitive rules of . Having studied both and some , it's neat to find an intersection of the two areas.

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Hello Universe!

First post. What convinced me to choose this instance? $\LaTeX$

Just finished Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong. Good mix of theory + rhetoric, touches on some hot issues, and imparts several important moral lessons.

A little spoilery: the book indeed suggests ways to not be wrong using mathematical lenses, but cleverly doesn't promise "ways to be right" 😉

Apparently the "sunk cost fallacy" isn't human-only, and could possibly be experienced by mice and rats... med.umn.edu/news-events/sticki

Besides "correlation doesn't imply causation", another important moral is that correlation isn't transitive. Just because A positively correlates with B, which positively correlates with C, doesn't mean A positively correlates with C.

Tidbit of trivia I learned: just as the decimal system uses the decimal point, a generic base-n system has the radix point

So I guess I finally fulfilled a math student trope/cliche by learning to solve a 3x3 Rubik's cube... sorta.

Like I think I more or less know the general strategy and a few important algorithms to (eventually) unscramble the cube, but nothing more advanced/optimized than that

🎂 🎉

Is it bad that I'm bothered by how frequently " experiment" is used to describe a demonstration not actually involving experimentation or the scientific method?

Found this relatively recent (and fully English) in January by Cédric Villani at Imperial College London. Mainly discusses optimal transport theory, but also touches on artificial intelligence, and pursuing a career in .

My grades are still good enough to let me proceed into my fourth and final year! Now to wait to dive into the unknown territory that is the final year group project... Any advice for this as an applied maths undergrad?

A I saw today:

How many 10-digit decimal strings are there, such that their digits form an even sum? (the string can also begin with 0)

Several times I've been asked whether I've considered teaching in schools. Based on second-hand accounts from family members who are also , that option sounds like a horrible time sink that is 20% actual , 50% admin, and 30% overseeing unrelated extra-curricular activities.

The recruitment campaigns here focus a lot on "the joy of " and conveniently leave out all the messy fallout from the bureaucracy.

Looks like is starting a series on the of , beginning with the Euclidean flavour before touching on the non-Euclidean... their spelling of "Euclidian" bugs me though 😒 youtube.com/watch?v=nkvVR-sKJT

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@btcprox
The course is still open and free. Six short modules, three on mathematical mindset and three on actual math strategies:
lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/

There's also extra rules about spending a guessing stone to declare a guess, and earning a guessing stone if you can correctly predict if a specially declared koan is white/black, but those seem pretty superfluous.

Wonder how well a stripped down version of this game would work here?

/r/mathriddles has an interesting variant of the . Gist of rules:

* 'Master' decides on a secret rule that determines whether a 'koan' (a number, set, tuple etc., depends on the rule) 'has the Buddha Nature' (is 'white') or not (is 'black')
* 'Students' can input koans for the master to verify whether they're white or black according to the rule
* When they're confident enough, students try to guess the rule

"Study shows for first time that a free, online course can change students' mindsets towards their mathematical abilities, leading to increased academic achievement" sciencedaily.com/releases/2018

Currently watching "Contagion! The Four Pandemic" now, pretty interesting experiment to explore how a super infectious disease can spread within a community, sans using an actual virus. Neat application of smartphone to facilitate a simulation of such a scale.

Just wondering, is there some cultural influence on the preference in the type of optimization objective (min vs max)? So far my lecturers tended to go for min, while many online lectures I've watched went for max...