Math

Mathematics and formal technical subjects

A topic in the tpot Community Archive, drawn from 2,347 posts.

Trusted voices in Math

Ordered by the trust Math's own network concentrates on each poster, most first.

  1. QiaochuYuan — trusted by 145 posters here
  2. eshear — trusted by 100 posters here
  3. algekalipso — trusted by 71 posters here
  4. davidad — trusted by 51 posters here
  5. eigenrobot — trusted by 50 posters here
  6. Morphenius — trusted by 27 posters here
  7. natural_hazard — trusted by 35 posters here
  8. exgenesis — trusted by 37 posters here
  9. anthrupad — trusted by 28 posters here
  10. visakanv — trusted by 46 posters here
  11. patio11 — trusted by 29 posters here
  12. myceliummage — trusted by 29 posters here

Top posts in Math

Ordered by the recorded like count from the source corpus; a like is not an endorsement.

  1. i am moderately confident that playing extensively with legos as a child was a key input into my mathematical ability (playing number munchers and math blaster and stuff probably also helped). had… (QiaochuYuan) — 37 likes
  2. if any mutuals ever want to learn or brush up on linear algebra, abstract algebra, topology, category theory, algebraic topology / homotopy theory, number theory, combinatorics, generating… (QiaochuYuan) — 33 likes
  3. my relationship to math is very weird b/c like i spent thousands of hours putting autism points into it and became clearly world-class along some unusual dimensions then totally abandoned the whole… (QiaochuYuan) — 31 likes
  4. There are crystal structures that simply won't form anymore, even though they did a few decades ago. Real life Ice-9? Could make an incredible sci-fi book. https://t.co/plVu56KejX (eshear) — 29 likes
  5. working on achieving enlightenment but via math instead of sitting for a long time or getting hit in the head with a stick (eshear) — 23 likes
  6. As a physics nerd, I see everything in terms of derivatives of position. So when someone says they're "popping off", I know they mean their popularity is accelerating faster over time I simply point… (nopranablem) — 22 likes
  7. maybe one of the biggest things i got out of doing math was seeing how precise it's possible for metaphors to be. in math it's possible to have completely precise metaphors (isomorphisms). so i hunt… (QiaochuYuan) — 22 likes
  8. hermann grassmann (1809-1877) was a german schoolteacher with no formal training in mathematics who appears to have more or less invented modern linear algebra. in particular he invented what… (QiaochuYuan) — 22 likes
  9. here's one of the questions i'd use to introduce someone to mathematics: flip 20 fair coins. can you estimate the probability that you flip exactly 10 heads? this is what you might call a… (QiaochuYuan) — 21 likes
  10. [pushes up glasses, laser eyes] actually it would be quite difficult for the fuckgraph to be non-planar. a graph is planar unless it contains a (topological) copy of K_5 or K_{3, 3}. in fuckgraph… (QiaochuYuan) — 21 likes
  11. Basically no one is taught math. Sure, people get thrust through something called "math class". They learn things called "math". And some learn the true Art DESPITE how it's taught. But most folk… (Morphenius) — 19 likes
  12. so a fun fact about me is i thought people were being metaphorical or something when they talked about their head hurting from thinking too hard about math or w/e. i didn't experience this feeling… (QiaochuYuan) — 19 likes
  13. there's a specific way you can learn how to talk and write if you're very good at math - probably you can get this from other fields too, idk. mathematical training produces a specific kind of… (QiaochuYuan) — 18 likes
  14. here's something i wrote recently on stackexchange in response to the question "does every proof need an axiom saying it works?" where i tried to offer some context about the foundational crisis in… (QiaochuYuan) — 18 likes
  15. True math is the divine art of honing your mind & perceptions to attune to unalienable truth. It's not about solving problems. It's not even about numbers or shapes. Those are just convenient… (Morphenius) — 17 likes
  16. almost all of the hypervolume is on the hypersurface https://t.co/KeK9coXeEs (DanielleFong) — 17 likes
  17. I'm trying to learn some difficult real math for the first time in a while and holy shit guys I see why everyone is raving about this AI thing now, this is a game changer. (eshear) — 17 likes
  18. contronyms are words that mean their own opposite for example, cleave means both to cut apart and also to bind together mathematical contronym: -log(P(X)) means information and also uncertainty (eshear) — 17 likes
  19. I'm sorry but I can't get over how fundamental computer science seems to be (not about computers, about information transforming and solving problems) - it just seems more general and dare I say… (exgenesis) — 16 likes
  20. And that can be fine, in principle. But in practice it's not. "Math" class teaches folk how to solve problems they don't care about, using tools they don't really understand, motivated by BS and… (Morphenius) — 16 likes
  21. this is a good example of a math education thing where i feel like people have real actual objections that are philosophical in nature that get stomped on and gaslit away with the raw mathematics.… (QiaochuYuan) — 16 likes
  22. the best way to think about multiplication of real numbers is in terms of scaling the real line. multiplication by -1 is a reflection across 0, and doing it twice is two reflections, which gets you… (QiaochuYuan) — 16 likes
  23. if we didn’t think in base 10 we would have different milestone years. makes u think (visakanv) — 16 likes
  24. 🧵 When I was in high school, my physics teacher casually mentioned during lecture that “the number zero is neither odd nor even”. I knew he was wrong; we ended up getting in an argument about it at… (gnostrils) — 16 likes
  25. survey tweet for anyone who'd like to see more math writing from me: what's interesting to you about math? what's difficult for you about math? what was your relationship to it like in school? what… (QiaochuYuan) — 16 likes
  26. the magnetic field isn't a vector at all. it's actually something called a bivector, but there's this weird confusing thing in 3d where you can almost pretend that a bivector is a vector (a… (QiaochuYuan) — 16 likes
  27. calculus may be important but learning how to do indefinite trig integrals in closed form is definitely not. that’s a pointless exercise that mostly happens to be easy to grade, the tricks you need… (QiaochuYuan) — 15 likes
  28. truth in mathematics is abstract, eternal, contextless. if a thing in mathematics is true then it is always true at all times and all places, everywhere, everywhen, no exceptions. even tegmark's… (QiaochuYuan) — 15 likes
  29. and when you're *very good* at mathematics, and i was very good at mathematics, you learn: "Truth is what i say it is, like, 99% of the time. i am pretty much always right about the Truth" (QiaochuYuan) — 15 likes
  30. in any case, Truth. if you are good enough at mathematics you get very used to directly asserting that things are True. this expression equals that expression, this set contains this set. you don't… (QiaochuYuan) — 15 likes
  31. the story isn't as simple as i think eliezer was superhumanly persuasive or something. certainly not in a generic way. whatever he was doing was a thing that passed completely harmlessly through… (QiaochuYuan) — 15 likes
  32. Uh oh. I think I'm about to try to actually learn algebraic topology. Send thoughts and prayers. (eshear) — 15 likes
  33. i can confirm this doesn’t help at all, unfortunately. not only is bayesian inference computationally intractable but you don’t even have a principled way to choose a prior before updating! and… (QiaochuYuan) — 15 likes
  34. i think it’s important to swear occasionally when talking about math. it breaks this like aura of respectability or sth. and math has frustration as a core part of the emotional experience. you’re… (QiaochuYuan) — 15 likes
  35. I start class on wednesday after 5 years away from the universityI'll be retaking an honors proof based linear algebra class as well as a grad level stochastic processes classit's math but im… (myceliummage) — 15 likes
  36. Claude Shannon did not *merely* invent relative entropy in the 1940s— by 1951 he got all the way up to the idea of an autoregressive language model for English, and very nearly the encoder–decoder… (davidad) — 15 likes
  37. I've apparently gaslit myself about the monty hall problem since learning about it 10 years ago! The entire thing hinges on the fact that he knows which door has [desired object] and he will never… (nopranablem) — 15 likes
  38. Did you know the physicists have something called imaginary time that things also progress in, which is perpendicular to regular time? What the fuck why did no one tell me there’s imaginary time too. (eshear) — 15 likes
  39. iirc at least two people decided to go to grad school in math because of things i've written online. somehow i didn't have a way to incorporate the value of my own mathematical work into my… (QiaochuYuan) — 14 likes
  40. which is why i was so drawn to category theory as a source of organizing principles, ways to quickly and rapidly make strong analogies between different parts of math, etc. i wanted *compression*. i… (QiaochuYuan) — 14 likes
  41. "You need this to graduate." WHY? Who da fuk decided that you needed to know how to use the quadratic formula in order to be a functional adult in today's society? I'm saying this as a PhD in math… (Morphenius) — 14 likes
  42. It's worth noting that the most common word mathematicians use for the experience of perceiving truth through the Art is… …EUPHORIA. Euphoria. Did you encounter euphoria in algebra class? Solving… (Morphenius) — 14 likes
  43. I hate the little things that are persistently taught slightly wrong because the assumption is nobody really cares. for example: escape velocity. "you need to be going X km/s to leave earth's orbit"… (xsphi) — 14 likes
  44. If it truly exists, there is math that describes how it behaves (eshear) — 14 likes
  45. The idea of a sufficient statistic is one of the most powerful ideas that I somehow missed in my academic education even though I took a fair amount of statistics. (eshear) — 14 likes
  46. i find it personally offensive when math is taught poorly because to me math is one of the only realms in which things can make perfect sense, in which it is possible to completely and fully… (QiaochuYuan) — 14 likes
  47. one of the first things you learn when you start writing mathematical proofs is the principle of explosion: from a single false premise you can derive any conclusion, true or false. interesting to… (QiaochuYuan) — 13 likes
  48. how tf do so many people pilot giant clumsy mechs around at 60mph on the daily without living in fear of their lives and the lives of those around them pls explain (goblinodds) — 13 likes
  49. Or how about "It helps you to think better." Really? How? Can you name ANY examples? "You need this for the next math class." …which I should care about because… I need it to graduate? 🥴 (Morphenius) — 13 likes
  50. huh. i never did math competitions for the sake of my college application, i did them because i was pushed into it and then because i loved the thrill of competition, y'know, crushing my enemies,… (QiaochuYuan) — 13 likes

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