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Some maths terms that i think just sound really cool

Shadow prices

The brachistochrone

Spectral theorem

Detailed balance

Eigenbasis

Cholesky decomposition

Free module

Essential isolated singularities

Bromwich inversion formula

Quadrupole moment

Homoscedasticity

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some things i’ve learned while studying in quarantine

drink more water instead of more coffee.

weekly goals are bullshit. set yourself 3-day goals. you’ll be less laid-back.

don’t just mindlessly stare at words. before you start studying, know your approach to it. have a plan.

summarizing the concept in your own words is the key part of taking notes. don’t just copy things down, convert them into your own way of talking, your own vocabulary, no matter how dumb and unprofessional it sounds.

don’t let the “studyblr aesthetic” fool you. studying doesn’t have to be pretty. summaries and notes can be messy as long as they’re comprehensible. you can always rewrite and reorganize them later. (honestly, you better do. and you better keep them.)

don’t throw away the papers you’ve solved your problems in. staple them to the fucking textbook. you need to see them constantly. cause you’ll need reminders of how far you’ve came, when you’re feeling discouraged.

don’t be an armchair analyst for your issues. if you have an idea then act on it.

remember: the exact point where it becomes difficult, is where your growth begins. take a deep breath, and try to focus on the paragraph in front of you.

get off your high horse and understand that if you’re a zero, you won’t go to 100 in a couple of days. first, you’ll need to reach 30, then from 30 to 60, and then from 60 to 90. nobody is 100 everyday. that happens very rarely.

you need to have fun everyday. you need to have peaceful time every single day. even on exam night. especially on exam night, actually. so make sure you’ve studied enough so you can have some time to yourself.

once you’re on a roll and in need of some challenge to stay on track, start writing down your studying hours. tell yourself you’re not allowed to do less than 80% of what you did yesterday. whatever the hell it was, even just one hour. so if yesterday you really studied for like, say 8 hours, today your goal is to study for at least 6 and a half hours. if you can’t keep up with that, make it 70%, or 60%. 

be forgiving of yourself. be kind to yourself. even if you bounced back and lost your streak. start again. as slowly as you did before. take your time. it’s okay, you were there once you can get there again.

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Square-product graphs from my senior thesis in number theory and graph theory.

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Oh cool, I found a polynomial answer to this question! Surely the root can't be that bad!

The root:

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Big math news! It’s been thirty years since mathematicians last found a convex pentagon that could “tile the plane.” The latest discovery (by Jennifer McLoud-Mann, Casey Mann, and David Von Derau) was published earlier this month. Full story.

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when you have a biochem exam in the morning and dont wanna study 

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1. Write proof

2. Find flaw in proof

3. Use flaw to generate counterexample

4. Profit

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every triangle is a love triangle when you love triangles

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08.04.20

So....I haven’t posted since the 13.03...sorry. Just with everything going on, life has been - for lack of a better word - stressful. I’ve also decided to not us the “c” word but instead take inspiration - and idea - from the game grumps and call it the backstreet boys reunion tour. 

As most school I know have done, we have moved to online classes. They are okay. At first teachers weren’t looking for evidence, but recently they have, which is sort of annoying. Also the online classes themselves are okay, we only have two: chemistry and biology, and the teacher who does the biology one is so boring, so it’s always annoying have to sit through them. But the chemistry one are great, one lesson our teacher even showed us his bees and he also put videos on our google classroom of his bees. And for where we are in each course; for maths: they wanted the resultant forces booklet done (so a start on mechanics); biology: we have mostly finished the course, it’s just about making notes; physics: I’m going to be real, I have no clue. I haven’t really been keeping up with physics; and finally chemistry: we have started energetics, which are okay, some of the concepts are a bit weird but it’s mostly GCSE content. If I’m going to be real, this entire time I’ve been in self-isolation, I have had no motivation to do any work whatsoever, which is not good. Teachers are not sure whether we will get predicted grades or not, some of them are banking on predicted grades while others are still teaching the course because knowing CCEA they could just make us do all of our exams next year - both AS exams as well as A2 - so hopefully, it will be predicted grades.

I also participated in this challenge called the C**** challenge (i refuse to even say it at this point) but it is basically a challenge where young people (in A-level or university) who are interested/doing STEM subjects can work together to help fight the backstreet boys reunion tour (by fight, I mean they asked us to come up with an idea that can help people). It was stressful. We literally got put into teams and given ideas on what we can base our project around 5 days before the presentation had to be submitted. 5 DAYS! So yeah, it was stressful, but we got it done. Our idea was a necklace that basically tracks how close you are to other necklaces and if a person was recently diagnosed or showed symptoms (has tickets) to the backstreet boys reunion tour, then if you came in close enough proximity to them, you would get an update telling you to self-isolate. I personally didn’t really like the idea because of the feasibility but when you only  have 5 days to make an entire presentation, you just got to go with it. Also I didn’t mind because I got to make SIR models and they were fun - yet very annoying because I had to plug in over 300 values for it to work.

I have also started to relearn the violin. It just sort of dawned upon me that I wanted to learn an instrument and I already had a violin so why not? So, I went on a face time with my friend who does music A-level and has grades in violin - I don’t know what grade she on is now - but she helped me tune and then I started learning. I can already play dawning of the day, as the deer and kerry polka, and even though I should learn to perfect those first, I’ve already started to try and learn Zelda’s lullaby and song of storms. But it’s fun and hopefully, if I do a couple of grades in it, it will give me something to put on my CV.

But yeah, sorry for the long time without updating, but I’m in a better place now, so hopefully I’ll start to update more regularly. But how are yall coping with the self-isolation? 

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literally me lmao

Nobody:

Not even a single soul:

Studyblrs: Sorry for being inactive lately. I was so busy with the school work so I couldn't post anything lately. I completed entire lengths and breadths of quantum mechanics, cosmology; then revised entire organic and inorganic and did some physical chemistry; finished off with some calculus, number theory; also got bored and finished some neuroanatomy and histology; revised German, French and Spanish revision and wrote a thesis paper today and also did a half-marathon. Also, went to this cute cafe and I am so in love with it 😍. Wbu?

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What’s blueish-green and bad news?

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Hmm

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What to say instead of "trivially"

This comes from a very long list of alternative phrases and words that was used to create “a program that will insert condescending adverbial phrases before any statement in a math proof”. But use it where you will - I’m sure other fields can benefit. Tag yourself, I’m “By abstract nonsense“.

By circular reasoning we see that 

There is a marvellous proof (which is too long to write here) that 

Figure 2 (not shown here) makes it clear that 

It is beyond the scope of this course to prove that

Only idealogues and sycophants would debate whether

The Math Gods demand that

For legal reasons I am required to disclose that

Remember the basic laws of common sense: 

Life is too short to prove that

All the cool kids know that

Wherefore said He unto them,

With God as my witness,

As a great man once told me,

Galois died in order to show us that

It pleases the symmetry of the world that

Mama always told me

By Euler

By Fermat 

I know it, you know it, everybody knows that

You of all people should realize that

The proof is left to the reader that 

We need not waste ink in proving that 

It would be an insult to my time and yours to prove that

I shudder to think of the poor soul who denies that 

We don’t want to deprive the reader of the joy of discovering for themselves why,  

Barring causality breakdown, clearly 

Through the careful use of common sense,

According to prophecy,

This won’t be on the test, but 

When one stares at the equations they immediately rearrange themselves to show that

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times,

Our forefathers built this country on the proposition that

By abstract nonsense,

My father told me, and his father before that, and his before that, that

The burden of proof is on my opponents to disprove that

The voices insist that 

Assuming an arbitrary alignment of planets, astrology tells us

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13.03.20

I know I say this every time, but, this week has been rough. I’m not going to get into why - because it’s personal and other reasons - but yeah, this week has been a major negative vibe.

I haven’t been able to get a lot of work done this week, which annoys me because my exams are in less than 2 months and I can’t be acting like this, but here I am, not doing any work. But on some good news: I’m off today and the following Monday and Tuesday, so hopefully, I’ll be able to get a lot of work done.

This week has also been stressful with the whole “school may be closing” due to the pandemic. So every teacher has just been dishing out the work in case we are told to close. This is not fun. I already don’t have that much motivation, so if we are made to stay home, I don’t think I’ll get anything done. It also doesn't help that we are apparently moving on to - what is described as - the hardest topic in AS chemistry: thermodynamic. But - during chemistry class - we joked that our teacher should do a live stream and he genuinely thought it was a good idea. In maths, my teacher just gave us the rest of the booklets for mechanics and posted all the other booklets on google classroom. In biology we only have 2 topics left and they are apparently just learning ones, so hopefully all should be good. Physics is a different story. We are now on electricity, which should be fine since I did it at GCSE; but there is a slight problem: I don’t know how to do electricity. So this isn’t fun. I also don’t want to be off because seeing my friends has made everything easier, so if I can’t see them, well, it won’t be fun.

I’m also part of a drama group and we have a performance tomorrow and if I’m going to be honest, I’m surprised they haven’t cancelled it yet.

All in all, this week has been rough, so if I don’t post for a while, I’m sorry.

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cut, find this on top of the deck

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08.03.20

This week...was rough.

It was results week this week, and that means one thing! A whole lot of unneeded stress! I am just going to get all the results over first; also - because my education system is weird, we have two forms of grades: your raw mark and then your UMS. Your raw mark is just how many marks you got out of the paper normally. However, if - hypothetically - everyone did really shit in the exam, the exam board would still want people to pass, so they shift the grade boundaries. In short; Raw: actual mark; UMS: scaled mark.

In chemistry, I only got my UMS and that was 76%. In physics, I got 72% raw and 71% UMS. Maths, I got 84% raw and 82% UMS and finally, in biology, 64% raw and 80% UMS. I have mixed feelings about these grades, and I know I’m going to sound like “That Guy” but...they could’ve been higher. I am proud of my physics and my chemistry, since in DT1 of chemistry I got a U and throughout physics this year I just haven’t been doing well; so it’s nice to know that I can do well. And I am proud of maths because I genuinely came out of that paper ready to rethink my entire life and not to do maths anymore. But, that biology, like, it’s still a very high C, but key word “C” - granted, I am very thankful for the insanely lucky UMS scaling - but, I don’t know, I just think it could’ve/should’ve been higher.

I have also been very unmotivated this week, which is not good. I have less than 2 months till  my exams start and I am just feeling dead, like, in class, I enjoy my subjects but when it comes to revising, I just don’t have any motivation. I also really need to go over shapes of molecules but I just can’t seem to find a nice way to do a cute mind map on it. I’m also just feeling burnt out, which is also very not good. But, I am going to head to bed, binge some Eve Cornwell and Unjaded Jade and hopefully in the morning, I’ll have motivation.

*also sorry for the short post this time; I’m just feeling really down right now.