rnather @rnather@mathstodon.xyz

I got my MSc thesis online a few weeks ago, and it covers some of the topics I'll be looking at. https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/336807

What I did there was read a couple of 90's papers by Jean Bourgain and explain the basic results. Bourgain was known for omitting *a lot* of details, so this was not an easy task! The result is 80 pages of dense maths. (Goal for MSc theses is 40 to 50...)

Chapters 2 and 6 present pretty general tools and should be readable. Chapter 4 can be used to scare demons.

Just for a laugh,
Let G be a graph,
With points called P
And edges called E.
Now draw a line
(just anywhere's fine)
And split up P,
Some for you, some me.
Now look at E,
And how it links P.
If every line
Connects yours to mine,
That graph called G?
Bipartite. QED!

In topology, spaces can be classified as: regular – normal – completely normal – perfectly normal.

Are we just bad (as always) at naming things, or are the topologists hiding something? ”Keep moving… this is a perfectly normal space… nothing to see here…”

Never get old
"Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it's not satire, it's bullying."
Still Pratchett

@ColinTheMathmo I am thinking a lot recently about how highly parallel paradigms (mainly GPU, but also multicores, etc) might transform the way we (should) approach or teach numerical algorithms.

It would be very interesting to find a programming language that allows to do this in a natural way, preferably with a higher level of abstraction. For example, are there dataflow languages that are suitable for high performance numerical work?

Other people elsewhere have posted less impressive versions of similar things, so I thought I'd post this:

I (love|hate) regular expressions -- muesli (@fribbledom)

PSA: Using Conway's Doomsday Rule for calculating the day of the week from the date ...

Today is a Doomsday!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule

"Updated Universal Estimation Table"

submitted by PotbellyPlatypus

Always be wary and sceptical of any statement that starts with 'Always'.

Woah, TIL that there are so-called fractal vises for clamping irregularly shaped items! (The picture doesn't explain it very well, you have to watch it in motion! It's in the first 30 seconds of the video:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBeOgGt_oWU
#tools #HandTools

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. -- Dalai Lama

The existence of computers implies the existence of co-computers i.e. mputers

Q: What's yellow, linear, normed, and complete? A: A Bananach space.

The essence of Mathematics lies in its freedom -- Georg Cantor

A "new to me" proof that \(\sqrt{2}\) is irrational, found by Sergey Markelov while still in high school.

In the decimal system, a square of an integer may only end in 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, or 9, whereas twice a square may only end with 0,2,8. So if a²=2b², both a and b must end with 0.

This triggers an infinite descent which proves that this is impossible, and so a²=2b² has no solutions in integers, hence 2 is never the square of a rational.

Let’s play a game of “What’s the plot?”!

A postcard for the first person to tell me what the logic behind this plot is (or, failing that, the answer I like best).

Tooting this because I want to do it but don't have time, and I want someone to pester me about it in a few weeks' time:

I'd like to start a collection of mathematical notation ambiguities, inconsistencies, and unpleasantness. It'd be a wiki, or at least collaboratively edited