/sci/ - Science & Math

>implying most mexicans dont have more pressing matters to deal with

i agree, mine died pretty fast

they tweak the weightings of each segment of the rankings every year to make sure that certain schools (ivies, MIT, UCHIC) stay at the top

>>4382414
If I'm not superior then how did I know you were going to say that exactly?

See:

>"On 02/19/12(Sun) at 14:49, mathgenius (not trolling) !!Ceavr+zDPUk will say:

>'If you are superior to me, you already know it. There would be nothing I can explain to you. But since you didn't expect this answer, you cannot be superior. In this case you will not understand my reasoning.'

>Make sure to let him know that his inferior mind cannot even imagine how superior I am, when you talk to him in that thread about rocks."

See? You are clearly inferior, mathgenius. Give it up and accept defeat!

>>4382393
You can tell it to me, as I am clearly superior to you and I will find the mistakes in the "answer" your puny mind attempted to create.

>>3541286

The question of just how far you tolerate and accept what are generally seen to be harmful ideas, based on terrible logic but also standing boldly in the face of a wealth of convincing evidence, that also propogates, funds and involves things as cruel and indecent and humiliating as some of the anti-Gay camps that the husband of Michelle Bachman is involved in, that seems adept at institutionalising its mindset into large majorities of a generation. Especially when, upon evaluation, where at the time it might seem like a deranged yet harmless (but inevitable) freak phenomenon when you have so many people, you see the possibility, as I do, that some fairly worrying things might be the consequences of lacking some degree of vigilance.

Sorry about the name. The unfortunate irony is that I actually quite like some verses of the bible. But as verse.

/faggot.

no, its a bit more complicated than that

So /sci/, i really need your help on this. Our physics professor fucked us over with a test that was too hard (class average was a 22%) and now hes letting us get back up to 40% of our grade if we answer these problems correctly. If someone can show their work and tell me why thats the answer, i will paypal or mail you money. im not joking.

>>2873531

Wasn't MIT the school that actually ignored AP credit and made you take their calculus courses anyway?

>>2873528

From my point of view, you just want to get it out of the way so you can get on with your life. You'll basically have another crack at calculus and do it the right way when you take an analysis course. Basically, that more advanced course will assume you know how to compute derivatives, can do some very basic integrals, and probably not much more. Calculus 1-3 as taught in most schools is secretly for engineers and scientists, and I'm not really sure why math majors even need to take it since it's all redone with more theory later.

>>2873458

Absolutely not. If you wanted to get a math degree at my school, you'd come in and get calc I and II out of the way, possibly linear algebra. Hopefully, those classes didn't make you absolutely hate mathematics. Then you can get diff eq. and calc III out of the way, possibly start chipping away at the upper level stuff by the end of your sophomore, definitely by the beginning of your junior year. You'd just want to be sure to clear out as many gen eds as you possibly could the first year and half so you could focus on math the rest of the time.

>>2873470

And don't listen to this guy. Not knowing stuff now doesn't mean you can't learn it later or don't have the capacity. :P

>>2873471

Tee hee, I get it. :P

>>2873395

I'm a cat because cats are simply the best.

>>2873396

I hadn't until just now. It doesn't really surprise me that there are programs that convert python code into executables?

>>2873358

I mean, I remember someone mentioning that some of the code that he ran in astrophysics simulations was written in FORTRAN, but it was old stuff that just did computations for a much larger software package. Are brand new, current models being written using the language?

>>2873256

Well, I'm not in any position to say anything. I would assume that the stupid line-by-line python has to be interpreted, but I seem to recall my python scripts being able to pick out errors that wouldn't make sense if it were going line-by-line. Of course, maybe my memory made that shit up and I'm just trying to be non-confrontational. :P

>>2873278

Yeah. I don't really understand this one. Mathematical ambiguity makes for the best shitstorm starters?

>>2873231

Yeah, my current knowledge of FORTRAN is that it was used ages ago, and currently it's mostly just kept around because nobody can be assed to fix what isn't broken.

>>2873251

Hm. Interesting problem. I would probably look at cycle decompositions. If a, b generate Sn, then if I break down a into cycles, then b should be able to get any guy from a cycle of a to any other cycle of a. Maybe out of that I could get a count on how many such a,b exist.

>>2873201

Yeah, no prob. Coming up with good research problems is not easy, since most of the stuff that can be grasped by undergrads has already been picked through pretty well. You really need some guidance. If nobody will give you that guidance, I'd suggest you just go pick up a book on a topic you're interested in and read it. That's what I did one summer, and it was pretty alright.

>>2873153

Oh, wow. I don't think any of my CS friends have ever had to even touch that language. Python is nice, but I have some sort of mistrust for stuff that isn't compiled.

I also just copypastad stuff from libraries for most of my numerics class, which is why I forgot almost all of it. That's what I get for taking a math class from the CS department, eh?

>>2873139

Yep, I did a little project at my school last year and will be flying across the country to do another project this summer. If you're a US citizen, then check out this page:

http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/list_result.cfm?unitid=5044

It's a list of schools that offer summer research programs for mathematics. I highly, highly doubt you'll be able to find one this summer, since most of the deadlines were in mid-Februrary. I think the latest one was April 1st. If you're truly desperate, you might be able to e-mail some programs and ask around. Keep in mind that you won't necessarily need really advanced classes to participate, some have modest requirements and will teach you there.

If you aren't a US citizen, I'm not sure what to tell you. Perhaps there are similar programs where you live. If not, just approach a few professors and ask if they have anything you can work on. You don't have to stand out in class to go talk to them. At any rate, you will want to be able to have a few faculty that you know fairly well and can vouch for you when it comes time to apply to grad school. (Or work!)

>>2873149

Second semester? I was doing an abstract algebra course out of Artin, topology course out of Munkres, and Semi-Riemannian geometry course that was over my head out of O'Neill. Still got some good out of the course, though, and I've been meaning to go back through with a bit more maturity under my belt and see what I can remember and fit together.

>>2873113

I say icky applied math, but I do like PDEs as they apply to physics and engineering. I imagine I'll have to go back and take some better numerical analysis courses one day. On the theoretical side, topology, geometry, manifolds, and complex analysis are all pretty cool. Keep in mind that what I like is heavily, heavily influenced by what classes I'm currently taking, heh. 'cept for algebra. I generally think algebra is lame.

And I've always thought about getting some stats or financial stuff in my head so I can take a crack at Wall Street if grad school goes south. Hopefully, that won't happen!

>>2873103

I wouldn't give it up just yet. My calculus III experience left me equally bewildered about basic concepts, and those freshman/sophomore classes can be made so mechanical and repetitive that there's hardly any real math left. My suggestion to see how well you'll handle upper level math classes is to hunt down a course with a title like "intro to abstract math", "intro to proof writing", or the like. If there's nothing like that at your school, I'd suggest some sort of abstract algebra course to get your feet wet. Or... you could talk with some faculty. They may or may not be helpful. As far as the IB, I'm an Americunt who doesn't know much about it or what it covers

.>>2873104

This man keeps his python scripts at the ready.

>>2873083

Icky applied math! I forgot so much of what I learned in that joke of an applied course. All I can remember is that there was a nice recursive formula that took the linearization of the function at a point you guess is near the real zero, and uses that to compute another, better guess. You then feed that back in and keep getting better results. Yay, recursion.

There were also some cases where you don't get convergence. And like hell am I going to actually churn out that calculation. Take your derivatives, check concavity and boundary conditions, and hand that shit to the computer.

>>2873051

If I knew the answer to that and had a proof, do you really think I'd be posting here? :P

>>2873055

Eh, it's a pretty natural concept. It's sort of like stepping up a ladder. If you can get to the bottom rung, and can step up from your current rung, you can get to any rung on the ladder. So if your statement P(n) holds for n=1 and you can show that P(n) holding implies P(n+1) holds, then P(1) holds, so P(1+1) = P(2) holds, so P(2+1) = P(3) holds, and so on...

Of course, you don't have to start with n=1 and there are other variants, but that's the basic idea.

>>2873044

Ah... well, I'm really not. :\

>>2873008

If I were going to lie, I would at least aim for the top 10%. C'mon...

>>2872997

Eh. This year's test was way easier than previous ones. I made at least one one-liner mistake, one of those awful things you realize you'd forgotten the second the test was over, and so based on how stingy those guys are with partial credit, I might not have gotten any points at all on that guy.

>>2872953
>>2873002

I'll assume you're the same person. I'm... not sure what an AMA even is?