piles-of-numbers - Tumblr blog

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Bohemian Rhapsody. We Will Rock You. Somebody To Love. All hit singles, and all the direct product of a band that was formed when an astrophysicist and a dentistry major found a new friend in an art college, who then went on to recruit a fourth member from the electronics school. Based on this alliance I propose the rift in society between Arts and STEM students was fabricated to keep us separated so as to dilute our true power - and fabricated by who, you may ask? The business major, the only member of society who reaps no reward from art and science and thus must weaken us so as to stay ahead. In this essay I will

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Being a young adult is so strange. You enter a coffee shop. The 20 year old girl waiting behind you cried all night because she just came to a new city for university and she feels so alone. That 27 year old guy over there works a job he is overqualified for, he lives with his parents and wants to move out but doesn't know what to do about it. That one 24 year old dude already has a car, a house, and a job waiting for him once he graduates thanks to his dad's connections. The 26 year old barista couldn't complete his higher education because he has to work and take care of his family. The 28 year old girl sitting next to you has no friends to go out with so she is texting her mother. That couple (both 25 years old) are married and the girl is pregnant. The 29 year old writing something on her laptop has realized that she chose the wrong major so she is trying to start all over. We are not alone in this, but we are actually so alone. Do you feel me

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it’s monday i’m in the labyrinth

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I think one fun side effect of studying uni level math is that simultaneously the complex numbers start seeming simpler than you thought but at the same time the real numbers are *way* more fucked up than you thought

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Genuses of The Normal One:

The Normal One in their own mind

The Normal One, relatively speaking

The Normal One while they're on the clock

The Normal One if you're not paying attention

The Normal One as long as you don't mention the thing

The Normal One because the subject honestly never came up

The Normal One in the sense that whatever's wrong with them perfectly counterbalances everybody else's dysfunctions

The Normal One because they own a car

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imagine you make microwave popcorn and by wild chance every single kernel has the same exact popping point and after like a minute in the microwave the bag instantly fills up with a single earsplitting gunshot noise would that be fucked up or what

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they fear none. whichever claims the other first, none of it will matter.

I wonder what the mushrooms are thinking as they see me walking by. Do they wonder whether they will one day incorporate me into their form? Or do they fear that I will claim them first.

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did you know they say calculus is the language of God. did you know they tried to hold math up to infinity like a candle to the void. did you know statisticians plunged into the vastness of random chance and picked out patterns and equations and eight hundred ways to tell you how big your inevitable errors are and how far off those guesses at errors might be. math haters I can't sit with you anymore. human innovation is cradled in these ancient, methodical, desperate attempts at understanding what we are not designed to understand

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the amazing feeling of finding a pdf textbook all about the exact subject you need to learn more about quickly

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i can't do this anymore! i mean i can, and i will, obviously. but i can't fucking do this anymore!

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How is bnha anime of the decade...... they aren’t even anime of the hour of the minute of the second

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I love when a textbook has a theorem that is just the most obviously true shit, like girl I sure hope so, if that weren't true I think math would fall apart!

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wednesday, march 13th 2024

i think one of the best things to come out of my PhD (so far) is that i am learning to embrace finitude, and focusing more on the aspects of "what did i learn from this" instead of dwelling on getting a great grade. let me explain.

let's say i was taking this intro to neural engineering class in undergrad, where these hard as hell MATLAB assignments were due like once a month. i would be literally shitting a brick about trying to get it right, staying up late and compromising my health for the assignment, and then stressing like crazy over the grade. for it to all, subsequently and eventually, end up being fine and not the end of the world.

now, as a 1st year PhD student, in this exact position of having a hard as hell assignment that i kind of just figured out as i go, i'm not even trippin. like, i'm probably going to get half credit and i'm genuinely fine with that. why? because I: 1) embraced finitude of knowing that it's just not going to get done and 2) am celebrating the fact that I even learned the concepts to get half credit.

this...is a big mental shift that i'm really trying to cherish, because it took soooo long for me to get here. i also realize that i'm able to have this change in attitude now because undergrad is over, and for a PhD program, grades don't really matter as long as you meet the requirements to stay in your program. in undergrad, you're aiming for good grades because you want to have access to the next goal (job, internship, or grad school). but my god, is this such a RELIEVING mindset shift.

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it's asexuality awareness day!!

...

be aware of me. i'm out there somewhere.

*fades into shadows*

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It's so funny to me that people think of Math/Mathematicians as being hyper-logical and rational. Like, have you seen some of the wild things hiding in the Math?

Did you know there are non-computable numbers?? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant)

Did you know that there are things that are true, but we can't prove them??? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

Did you know that we can prove that something exists, and yet never actually figure out what that thing is?? (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/NonconstructiveProof.html)

Math is crazy. Math is wild. Math hardly makes sense, and when you think you understand the weirdest parts of it, everyone who hears you explain it to thinks you're a gibbering lunatic.

"In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them." - von Neumann

(please share more unhinged math with me, i want to see more scary math)

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I can't stop thinking about Suren's description of faeries in The Stolen Heir:

Holly Black wrote this so beautifully.

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ℝ. ℂ. ℍ. 𝕆. Long ago, the four alternative division algebras over the reals lived in harmony.