@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

SvenGeier

@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz

Geometry, Physics, Art, Math.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=G0JsJQMAAAAJ

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foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Personally I only use the most legitimate of software.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@foone Ohhh... you have disk 8 and 9. I think I have 3,4,7 and 11. Now we just have to find someone who has the other 5 ...

Lana, to random
@Lana@beige.party avatar

What Your Piano Says About You: A Thread

1/🧵

You don't play the piano and you don't know anyone who does. What you do have is money. Lots of it. You are either a doctor or a lawyer by profession. The piano is likely placed in a prominent location in your expansive house, such as tucked under the stairs, where the sound can be muffled, or next to a bay window, where it can echo weirdly off the glass. The lid of your grand piano is always closed. There are photographs of you and your wife and kids arranged tastefully on the top and a soft accent lamp on the left hand side of the music desk which absolutely will not illuminate any part of the music adequately.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@rcoshow @Lana Yeah, same here - definitely a yamaha upright, but I drive a 1 year old Nissan Leaf with less than 5k miles on it...

SvenGeier, to random
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

And they say math has little applications in the real world...

cdarwin, to random
@cdarwin@c.im avatar

French company has developed a swimming device that uses your own leg power to accelerate you through the water at superhuman speeds.
This crank-driven pusher prop looks a bit like an ...
The idea is simple enough; you extend the Seabike's pole to the appropriate length, then strap it to your waist with a belt. Then you find the pedals with your feet, and start turning the crank, with the waist strap to push against.
https://newatlas.com/marine/seabike-swimming-propeller/

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@cdarwin How does it compare to fins? I can already move at "superhuman speed" (whatever that may mean) underwater with regular old fins on my feet which I always thought were about the most elegant propulsion devised by man. Is this better in some way?

dpiponi, to random
@dpiponi@mathstodon.xyz avatar

One of the weirder bugs I've experienced: you know how you're always being told to make sure caps lock is off when you enter your password? My Mac is currently enabling caps-lock at login and you can't disable it. It took a long time to deduce this was the problem but surprisingly I was able to log in after going round a few loops and realising an obvious trick...

A known problem with a venerable history: https://iboysoft.com/tips/macbook-stuck-on-caps-lock.html

SvenGeier, (edited )
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@4raylee @dpiponi I annoys me greatly that I still have to poke around in the guts of my OS in 2024 to get rid of Caps Lock. I don't want it, don't need it, haven't needed it since maybe the 80ies (and I'm not even sure then). And I don't change computers often enough that I can just do "whatever I did last time" - every new computer I have to learn a whole new set of nonsense to disable Caps Lock. 🙄
If some company made a decent keyboard that is exactly identical to all other keyboards but simply doesn't have a Caps Lock key, I think that would be a viable product...

ProfKinyon, to random
@ProfKinyon@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Sometimes I think I should treat my job as if it were an adventure game, but then I remember that my colleagues probably wouldn't appreciate me taking all their stuff just because they left it lying around.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ProfKinyon

ProfKinyon, to random
@ProfKinyon@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Started typing "is dark matter compatible with" and Google completed it to "windows 11".

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ProfKinyon
And, what's the result? Is it?

christianp, to random
@christianp@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I'm going to tell you two statements, each made by YouTube about a video I uploaded:

a) it was uploaded 1 year ago.
b) it was uploaded on 5th June 2022.

Could these statements both be about the same video?
If so, are they both accurate?

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@christianp Depends: "uploaded one year ago" on which planet?

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@christianp
Mars orbital period is 687 days.
687 days ago was Jun-23-2022. If we allow for 2 weeks slack, that fits quite well... 🤷‍♂️

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

People studying brains: "We found no correlation between number of neurons and IQ."*

People talking about AI: "If we just add more nodes to our deep neural network we are surely going to create a super-mind!"

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@j_bertolotti @apodoxus Dunno - to within some range, surely there's some sort of trade between the number of neurons used and the cleverness of their arrangement. I highly doubt that LLMs are anywhere near as well-organized as the human brain, so they may well be in the realm where "more neurons" still gives huge advantages. 🤷‍♂️ At some point there's a diminishing return, and then we'll need to talk about "better structure" (which I, personally, would guess means "more complex structure" - I'm staggered by how 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 the current crop of AI really are) but at any one time we might well be at a point where sheer quantitative growth can still beat out real advances...

johncarlosbaez, (edited ) to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Mathematics: "Real tori are all alike; every complex torus is complex in its own way."

To be precise, a 'n-dimensional real torus' is a real manifold of the form V/Λ where V is an n-dimensional real vector space and Λ ⊆ V is a lattice of rank n in this vector space. They are all isomorphic.

An 'n-dimensional complex torus' is a complex manifold of the form V/Λ where V is an n-dimensional complex vector space and Λ ⊆ V is a lattice of rank 2n in this vector space. These are not all isomorphic, because there are different ways the lattice can get along with multiplication by i. For example we might have iΛ = Λ or we might not.

And so, it's possible to write a whole book - and indeed a fascinating one - on complex tori. For example a 1-dimensional complex torus is an elliptic curve, and there are whole books just about those.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@johncarlosbaez
@wnj
I may not have learned much in my years on this planet, but I have learned this: if John Carlos Baez says "not easy", there is no point for me to even look at it... 🤷🏽‍♂️

SvenGeier, to random
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

i guess?

SvenGeier, to random
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. And then the dragons arrived...

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

please tell me the most obscure joke you know

(feel free to explain or not explain it, depending on what you find more amusing to think of me reading it)

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@SnoopJ @whitequark Bartender says "you guys just don't know your linits"

DavidKButler, to random
@DavidKButler@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I love those few minutes at sunrise when the tops of the trees are in sunlight but you are still in shadow.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@DavidKButler If the tree can see the horizon and you know the height of the tree, then measuring the time for the sunlight to reach from the top to the bottom allows you to compute the circumference of the earth...

julesh, to random
@julesh@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Beware the pipeline

image/jpeg

SvenGeier, (edited )
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@julesh
Wait, you have to go through a pipeline? I fear we completely skipped that part...

shadeow, to mathematics French
@shadeow@piaille.fr avatar

Alors la les matheux j'ai besoin de vous. Je suis tombé la dessus et je suis bouche bée 👀

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@shadeow
(Replying now to see what others come up with)

36 = 2×2×3×3 , so the 3 possible age distributions are

2, 2, 9
2, 3, 6 or
3, 3, 4

These add up to 13, 11, and 10, so I doubt the sum is going to tell us much here. Unless "passager" has a clever double meaning in French?

I'm assuming the "oldest loves sports" is supposed to tell us something about a minimum age a kid must be to love sports[?] My own kid was on a soccer team at age 6, so at most this might eliminate the 3rd option[?]

I'd love to hear what others make of this...

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@vacuumbubbles @shadeow (I'm not going to insult people by trying to write in French ;)

I had completely missed the "1" - that opens up the possibilities. Thanks.

Two kids can easily have the same age if they're twins, so 2,2,9 and such isn't excluded.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@mcgoa @shadeow

Ah, brilliant!

And then "my oldest" means there is a single "oldest" so it's not 6,6,1.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

TBH, putting "GIANT MURDER ____" in front of virtually any animal species' name makes it worse, except for Tyrannosaurs (where it's kind of redundant)

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@angusm @cstross

GIANT MURDER CAT ?

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

The four most used operating systems:

  • windows
  • apple macos/ios
  • linux (legacy, deprecated, not for new projects)
  • systemd
SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@foone I don't think android uses systemd (?) in which case android/Linux would be the first entry in the list, no?

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@foone

  • Emacs ?
ProfKinyon, to random
@ProfKinyon@mathstodon.xyz avatar

"...the advanced type system helps catch silly and profound mistakes."

Took me quite a while to realize that the author of the sentence probably meant this to refer to two different kinds of mistakes.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ProfKinyon

Joemoeller, to random
@Joemoeller@mathstodon.xyz avatar

This summer I'm starting a postdoc at CalTech! I'm working with the roboticist/control theorist Aaron Ames on using category theory to study stability of dynamical systems.

I got verbal confirmation a month ago, but I've been holding back on saying anything until I got bureaucratic confirmation.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@Joemoeller As a former Caltech postoc, congratulations.
Not sure if attitudes have changed from a couple decades ago, but beware of departments using you for their research and then dropping you on the floor - your career progress should be in the back of your head all the time. Write papers that YOU think are worthwhile (even if your collaborator/s don't think so). Attend conferences that are good for YOU (even if they're only marginally related to your 'official' research area). Make contacts that help YOUR networking (even if they don't help progress your project). You'll also do plenty of the other kind, ideally a lot of them. Ideally progressing your project/s and your career are symbiotic. But it's easy to lose sight of your own future in the hubbub and academic folks aren't the best managers that will look out for you...

foldworks, to random
@foldworks@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Central panel from tessellated floor of a Roman Villa, Ancient Corinth, Greece

In the corners of the panel, kantharoi with ivy. In the center, the head of Dionysos with fruit and ivy in his hair. 2nd half of the 2nd c. 3rd c. A.C.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@foldworks
Very cool, but I'm having trouble deciphering "2nd half of the 2nd c. 3rd c. A.C.": Second half of the ... second century[?] third century[?]
And what is "A.C."? ante ... something? I understand the move from BC and AD to BCE and CE, but I don't think I've heard "AC" before (except in the context of ⚡DC )

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