First time I've seen a lecturer use the notation $$\underline{\!\left\lvert n \right.}$$ (well something close to that) to denote the factorial

He did admit it was archaic notation that he picked up long ago but still sometimes slips into that habit

Just checked a label on the side, and its English name is apparently TEAPI

Also 茶$$\pi$$ is supposed to sound like 茶派, which loosely means "tea party". So it's not-so-random wordplay! But still seems unrelated to the mathematical constant.

On a random note, I found this bottled iced that I guess you pronounce as "Cha Pi" (茶$$\pi$$).

It's sweet red tea with rose + lychee (maybe a little too sweet). I've no idea what $$\pi$$) has got to do with it.

The more I study maths, the more it feels like the state of "being a mathematician" is an ideal but unattainable limit point, and one can only hope to enter a sufficiently small local neighbourhood around this point

I've heard anecdotes of people who've done PhDs in maths and *still* wouldn't feel comfortable enough calling themselves "mathematicians"

Still on the topic of integration, maths teacher blackpenredpen went through a 6-hour integral-solving marathon (100 integrals!)

youtu.be/dgm4-3-Iv3s

Didn't know until now that MIT has an annual Integration Bee, which as you might guess is like a spelling bee but you're solving fiendish integrals instead of spelling words.

Also the winner - the Grand Integrator - gets a wizard hat 🧙‍♂️

mit.edu/~pax/integrationbee.ht

" for All: Building a Thinking Society": a by Po-Shen Loh during Festival of Learning 2019 @ MIT

Two core points: the motivation behind his founding of Expii, tapping on to provide to today's youth; and getting students interested in in the first place

"Katherine Johnson, the "human computer" whose work was depicted in the 2016 film "Hidden Figures," was recognized on Friday as the agency renamed a building after the pioneer.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration redesignated a building that houses programs essential to safety on space missions in the 100-year old 's native West Virginia as the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility."

abcnews.go.com/Technology/nasa

From what I understand from been drilled by teachers over many years: "X is N times as much as Y" = "X = N * Y", while "X is N times greater than Y" = "X = (N+1) * Y"

Somehow that distinction is weirdly not as universal as it should be in common English and I don't know why

Imma throw this question out here:

Is there a difference between "X times greater" and "X times as much"?

I'm totally biased and think it's totally different, but I find it bizarre that there's apparently ambiguity in English

Oxford Mathematics, for the first time ever, has streamed a student lecture live: youtube.com/watch?v=tDNDiLr_An

I'm not sure what the novelty of broadcasting the lecture live is: the channel already puts up recordings, and it's not like the lecturer actively responds to online viewers anyway

The National of is holding another edition of the NUS Festival, but this time it's mathematically themed to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Department of .

Don't think many festivals here have tried this fusion of + arts, if at all.

nus.edu.sg/cfa/NAF_2019/index.

A neat homework question that I did and you could take a stab:

Let C be the set of all well-formed formulae whose atoms appear exactly once, and do not contain the constants {0,1}. Prove that C contains neither tautologies nor antitautologies.

Never mind, turns out someone already found out a while ago

reddit.com/r/matheducation/com

Also highlights the frustrating quirk of overloading symbols with multiple meanings in mathematics

Just for fun, anyone wanna take a stab at this cryptic message? reddit.com/r/learnmath/comment

I suspect a lot of local conventions + liberal interpretations are involved but I'm kinda curious

James Grime has finally popped up on his YT channel again to talk about the Thue-Morse sequence and an infinite game of with Outray Chess

"Clark, assistant professor of , is using functional MRI technology to capture brain activity while children learn . Housed at the Nebraska Center for Children, Youth, Families and Schools, the project is exploring the relationship between children's mathematics and executive function – the ability to maintain focus and behave in a goal-oriented way."

medicalxpress.com/news/2019-02

A usual base point: 1,2,3 AD are (roughly) the 58th, 59th, 60th sexegenary years (Yang Metal Rooster, Yin Earth Dog, Yang Earth Pig). This means you can approximate your sexagenary year by taking your Gregorian year $$Y$$, then taking $$(Y - 3) \mod 60$$.

Some related stuff:

Most people might have heard of the 12 Zodiac animals (Rat, Ox, Tiger, ...) determined by your lunar year of birth. In fact they are just the "earthly branches" (支). There are also the 10 "heavenly stems" (干), alternating between Yang & Yin, then cycling through Wood→Fire→Earth→Metal→Water, e.g. Yang Wood→Yin Wood→Yang Fire→Yin Fire→etc. So the stem-and-branch pairing - the two cycles running concurrently - gives a sexagenary cycle (干支).

I think thus far I've seen like several ways of denoting probability of X:

$P(X),\, \mathbb{P}(X),\, \mathbf{P}(X), \mathrm{Pr}(X),\, \mathrm{Prob}(X)$

A Mastodon instance for maths people. The kind of people who make $$\pi z^2 \times a$$ jokes. Use $$ and $$ for inline LaTeX, and $ and $ for display mode.