#my guess was going to be because of Stokes' theorem

[lipshits-continuous]

Found some discussion on it!

Why do we use the symbol for partial derivatives as the symbol for boundaries of manifolds?

[hollowtones]

Did you watch the last the devstream from DE?

If so, any thoughts?

Koumei looks pretty cool. "Apply a lot of statuses alert" is neat enough & will probably be pretty strong but it doesn't blow my mind, I guess. The dice roll stuff & the "do a riven challenge with a debuff to get a Duviri decree" had my eyes bugging out of my head with excitement! I like her weird haunted skeleton puppet look, I like the visible strings. Brella gun looks Fucking AWESOME.

Caliban rework looks hunky and I'm eager to sink my teeth into him. I already thought he was Fine to play, so making him stronger & giving him a more interesting / more synergistic kit has me happy. I wanna get more of / mess more with the theorem kitgun arcanes & see if buffing the summons is Anything now that they're better across the board. The Hildryn changes are exciting too!! Her 4th ability is Very Cute and I'll gladly take any excuse to not subsume it off.

All of that said: most exciting parts of the update to me are the changes to pets (Holy shit I've been wanting separate slots for Dog Damage forever... Holy shit I can try using more than just the Verglas) & the Nova rework / deluxe skin. I'm a sucker for the flower motifs, and the big back bow ephemera is so cute... I have like 3 or 4 different builds I want to try out on her now. Having speed & slow be on a toggle now is going to feel so much better in Duviri, & the forced orb drops has me excited to try out some wackier stuff. Her damn Ball might actually be better now... I always try to force that ball to work but you had to build basically entirely around it to justify it. The weird build synergies Nova had in the past were interesting on paper but felt kinda frustratingly limiting whenever I tried to build her. Which made me sad! Because I love the idea of her kit! Now it feels like I have more wiggle room to try shit out & slot in more Toys, which is exciting... I'm thinking about all her moves doing Blast & eyeing the orange archon shards. LOL

If the Nova changes are their idea of a "light rework" I'm super stoked to see what they do to Nyx (another frame I like the idea of but wish they would make some adjustments for) and Trinity (I already love her kit, simple as it is) in the winter.

I'm excited that it's coming out so soon after I get home from my vacation, haha. I feel like every time I've flown out to see my wife they've put on an event or held a really valuable Twitch drop campaign on days where I'd be stuck in transit. Digital Extremes is apologizing to me personally with Koumei. Now I just need Nintendo to apologize for all the "Splatoon 3" events happening on those same days...

[fandomfrolics]

1, 13, 25 for the fic ask!

Thanks for the ask @stokes-theorem! Wrote an essay for 1 here!

13. favorite writing song/artist/album of this year

oof this is tough. I've actually made a playlist recently for getting into the right headspace for my Kansas novella lmao but I guess my Spotify Wrapped has answered this for me cos my #1 song was Harmony Hall by Vampire Weekend (from the TL soundtrack!) and that was def the song I listened to the most when writing my first fic for this fandom (and my first fic in years!)

25. a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read

omg this is even harder than picking my own favourite. I tried going through my AO3 history and it BROKE cos apparently clicking through 58 pages of fic read in 2021 is bot behaviour. Anyway I'm not gonna pick any Ted/Rebecca because everyone should read all of them, they're all great. Actually ditto for Trent/Ted but I did love Lies, Damned Lies, and Lies to Journalists esp cos of how well done the other characters were done.

the orderliness of the world is an absolutely gorgeous 2x10 character study of Ted.

I read a ton of Batfam over the last few years but this one was a super fun hilarious Shazam gen fic for DC peeps Zamzoom!

And anyone who likes Beard/Ted should read Melt Away, it hasn't left my head since I read it.

[savrenim]

the mathventure zone

aka what happens when I am feverish, cannot fall asleep, and the two things I’ve been thinking about non-stop merge into one in my brain

Magnus: "okay, um, if they're twice-differentiable and agree at the endpoints I guess I'm just going to integrate and see what happens"

“We’ve solved your PDE puzzle!” “The answer was literally ‘guess the exponential function,’ I don’t know why it took you half an episode, but yes, you have solved my PDE puzzle.”

"By my power, the Dominated Convergence Theorem--" "Merle, that's a fifth level Analysis spell, you're a level three combinatorist"

"yeah I've got this new ability called Green's Theorem, it lets me convert integrals of vector fields to the flow on the boundary, when I get to level 7 it becomes Stokes' Theorem and I can use it in any dimension" “Holy FUCK that’s good” 

“Alright, and you get....ooooh, okay, this is really good, it’s called a Wolfram Alpha, once per day you can plug any sort of algebraic, multivariate, or integral equation into it and it’ll just solve it for you, and if you sacrifice one spell slot, it’ll show you the steps. You can also as a free action ask it to recite any theorem or definition that you want to remember.”

(to the tone of "I cast....Zone of Truth") "I invoke...The Axiom of Choice"

“I use Rustic Commutativity, it means that any time I interact with members from a group, I can treat myself like I’m an element of the center of the group.”  “You bring this up every time we talk about groups.” “And I’ve never gotten to use it because every other group we’ve interacted with has been abelian anyways!”

“I cast…Hamel’s basis” “That’s not a real spell, you’re just making shit up now” “It is! Hamel’s Basis! Look it up in the book, seventh level school of analysis!” “yeah I’m looking at it, that’s a real spell.” “Okay, okay, what the hell does it do?” “Hamel’s Basis: analysis 7, category theory 8. You can take any one vector space and any field of your choice, and if that vector field fails a charisma saving throw, it now has a basis over the field for the duration of the spell. By using a spell slot of eighth level or higher, you can extend this to a free module over a division ring and invoke the universal property of maps. If you use Hamel’s Basis to craft a basis for the reals with coefficients from the rational numbers, it automatically succeeds.”  “Holy FUCK. How is that even possible?” “Proof components: The Axiom of Choice. HAH! It even has a note, The axiom of choice is equivalent to the statement: ‘Every vector space has a vector space basis,’ and this is the only justification for the existence of a Hamel basis.” “Okay, I guess this vector space has a basis now, what do you want to do?”

[thesocialcandle]

Module Reviews (1)

I have a lot on my mind right now, and since I’m not sure where to start, I thought why not take a breather from my work and look back at the past three semesters of study in NUS.

Perhaps this will serve as a reminder of what I am looking forward to, what I want myself to achieve, and also what I may have forgotten as I blindly charge forward.

Many of my seniors have been saying that Industrial and Systems Engineering is one of the toughest engineering majors out there, with acronyms given to the course name like I Study Everything and I Study Everyday - and I think I’m starting to feel it in my fourth semester of study.

AY16/17 Semester 1

MA1505 Mathematics I (4MCs)

Assessment: 20% Mid-Terms, 80% Finals Lecturer: Prof Chew Tuan Seng

Part 1 of the engineering mathematics modules (before the curriculum revamp the following year). First two weeks was basically a revision of ‘A’ level mathematics concepts, before it got progressively harder as new concepts were introduced: Vectors in 3D, Fourier Series, Multi-variable functions, Line Integrals and Surface Integrals with Stoke’s Theorem and Green’s Theorem for integrals over surfaces and planes.

Tutorials were really plain and uninteresting as I recall, and I stopped going for tutorials after half the semester. Some of the tutorial questions were really hard, and many seniors have suggested to just not do the tutorials, as practicing past year papers for the finals would suffice. I kind of regret not listening to their advice earlier, as I spent more time on getting my concepts right (although it isn’t a bad thing), and did only a few past year papers. The format of finals remained unchanged, and I didn’t manage to finish as I got stuck at a question and didn’t move on (prime example of bad exam techniques).

I scored 8/10 for mid-terms (average was between 7.9 and 8 I recall), and thought I did pretty okay for finals. Heavily bell curved module due to the sheer number of engineering students taking it. The heavy weightage of the finals really meant that anything could happen really.

Expected grade: A- Actual grade: B+

ST1131 Introduction to Statistics (4MCs)

Assessment: 30% Mid-Terms, 70% Finals. Lecturer: Dr Wang Jun Shan

Another introduction module, mainly targeted at Statistics majors, Real Estate majors, Project Facilities and Management majors, and Industrial and System Engineering majors. Largely an extension and build-up from ‘A’ level statistics and mathematics. Topics include exploratory statistics and visualisation, association and regression, sampling methods, probability and probability distribution, confidence intervals, significance tests and comparing between two groups.

Nothing extraordinary - this module was really about concepts and practice. The way questions were phrased were not much different between papers. There wasn’t any recent past year papers available for practice, only a mock paper given my the lecture if I recall.

I did well for the mid-terms (full marks if I’m not wrong), and finals wasn’t very difficult in all honesty. This module was really about building the foundation of statistical knowledge for higher level modules.

Expected grade: A Actual grade: A

PC1431 Physics IE (4MCs)

Assessment: 10% online assessments (MasteringPhysics), 10% Labs, 20% Mid-Terms, 60% Finals Lecturer: Dr Yeo Ye

Another module taken by many engineering students. While it wasn’t compulsory for me, I took it as part of my basket of modules (and I regretted it). This module extends on ‘A’-level Physics and goes a lot deeper in depth on the calculations and concepts. Topics covered are Kinematics, Dynamics, Thermodynamics. The more difficult parts of the module are arguably the rotational motion and inertia (calculating centre of mass, etc.)

Tutorial sessions were really good. The department only has two tutors taking all the tutorial classes, and they really know what they do. The tutorial sessions really helped to clear my misconceptions and understand some of the concepts better.

I really lost my cool with the modules as I couldn’t really grasp the concepts towards the end. To be frank, I think I did more calculus in this module than in the mathematics module and I really had to understand the meaning behind the calculus workings instead of blindly applying the formula. I did slightly below average for mid-terms, and completed slightly more than half of the final paper.

Expected grade: B+ Actual grade: B+

CS1010E Programming Methodology (4MCs)

Assessment: 10% Tutorial Participation, 2% Online quizzes, 18% In-class lab assignments (best 2 out of 3 per set), 30% Practical Assessments (3 in total), 40% Finals Lecturer: Dr Henry Chia

Many seniors told me that this module was the toughest for the first semester, and I understand why. It kind of sends you out of your comfort zone as you are working with something completely new. This module is really about computational thinking, and trying to write a program that does what the question wants, or understand what program does.

Luckily, I was quite comfortable with the content covered, and this variant of the introductory programming module was really easier than the others (CS1010S, CS1101S). There were 9 in-class labs and 3 practical assessments, all of which I was able to achieve the highest/second-highest levels. Prof Henry also amazingly removed mid-terms this semester, and made the finals 100% MCQ (not necessarily a good thing). 

I did above average for finals I guess - the first 10 questions were MCQs relating to program output, while the last 30 questions were scenarios that showed a program code with missing statements, and the MCQ questions contained the different possible program statement to include. The answers for these question were uploaded to CodeCrunch right after finals and we could see how we did (I got 23/30). I really enjoyed this module as it was really more about understanding and practice during the labs and tutorials - I didn’t really study much for the final exam.

Expected grade: A- Final grade: A+

UTC1102N The Bio-tech Future: Science Fiction Film and Society (4MCs)

This module was a Junior Seminar, taken as part of the University Town College Programme (UTCP) since I was staying in Tembusu College. This module really delves into the issues and ‘cultural anxieties’ (my prof’s favourite word) that were portray in films.

Lessons were pretty enjoyable and most weeks revolved around the discussion of two films that we had to watch before coming into class. The seminar-style class was conducted once a week, 3 hours each time (from 5pm to 8pm, really late compared to the other Junior Seminars).

Assessment-wise, I couldn’t really remember the weightage as the module was graded on a pass/fail basis (as nice as it sounds, but it is the only module in the UTCP that is graded this way - non-UTCP students taking ordinary GE modules have it much better). We had to do a presentation on a selected film, write up a presentation discussion paper, and 2000-word final ‘research paper’ that looks specifically into one film. I didn’t really enjoy the writing process though, perhaps it was because it was a long time since I wrote anything of that sort and vigour.

Actual grade: CS (Completed Satisfactorily)

--

That’s about it for the modules in the first semester! I faced a struggle when the results were released as my grades were normal/good. I sought advice from my seniors and most of them suggested that I S/U the module that I got a B+ in, if I am aiming for a First Class Honours (or Highest Distinction).

I eventually did so, and told myself that I would work harder and continue aiming for that FCH. And so I completed my first semester in NUS with a perfect CAP of 5.0, but comprising only two modules. A very shaky start actually.

But are grades everything?