What's one thing your learned at college/university that blew your mind?
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At a certain point, you need to be force which pushes you forward. I saw a lot of intelligent people fail because they no longer had the external stimulus to go to class.
Also, it is easier to manipulate people in positions of power, but you have to understand how they think and are rewarded. There is a reason why a lot of liberal arts education is focused on having people understand others.
Also, the liberal arts education of a century ago was basically a degree which was intended to make managers. Along with it, the extra-curricular activities were an important part of the education, but just what happened in class.
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That a diploma doesn't mean shit beside someone being able to say what their teacher want them to say... but that was not really new, it was just a lot more sad to experiment as naive me was hoping for something more.
I think this depends entirely on the subject.
I was in a STEM degree and I learned a lot of technical skills. (Super early internet, no YouTube) In the extra classes like marketing, English Lit, I basically learned how to deal with people because of the professors like you describe, group projects, and trying to see the perspectives that didn't make sense to be initially so I could pass the damn class.
It seemed incredibly stupid at times, but making you think in ways that challenge you in ways you hate and think are stupid is actually excellent training for dealing with the myriad of brain-breaking people on this planet.
High School did this too, but less in your interest.
High School was "shut up and do it this way, because that's how it's done." This benefits the Institution.College was "sure, argue, but here's why you're wrong, or if not wrong, you need to be able to see this differing perspective, understand, and navigate it. The world is fucked, there is so much that is morally gray, that you need to learn flexibility. Show me you understand by explaining back to me what I'm teaching you. Don't just entrench your whole being in what you've been taught before coming here."
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That I had to study.
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Whether or not an irregular verb retains its irregularity depends largely on how much it is used in everyday life. If it's a common word, it's more likely to stay irregular, because we're frequently reminded of the "correct" form. If it's a rare word, the irregularity tends to disappear over time because we simply forget. That's why "to be" couldn't be more irregular (it's used enough to retain its forms) and the past participle of "to prove" is slowly becoming regular "proved" (it's rare enough to be forgotten).
yes i like language very much
Edit: typo
It’s also interesting how the past-tense of “to dive” has changed over recent generations. “Dived” is supposed to be standard, yet people turn it into “dove” so frequently, it’s becoming the new normal.
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Computer science students multiple years into the course think I'm a hacker for using the linux terminal
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Computer science students multiple years into the course think I'm a hacker for using the linux terminal
Classmates of mine who moved to Linux in college, 20 years ago, all graduated at least a semester later than I did. To be fair, I got my pirated copy of everything from them.
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Can you please elaborate on that second one, or drop a name so I can look into it? Sounds very counterintuitive and like something I wanna know
wrote last edited by [email protected]The second one is the cantor function, also known as devil's staircase; the third one is topologist's sine curve.
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Classmates of mine who moved to Linux in college, 20 years ago, all graduated at least a semester later than I did. To be fair, I got my pirated copy of everything from them.
Granted, linux is probably much more user friendly now. Although I still see mysterious errors on boot and cannot boot into newer kernel versions. How peculiar.
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There is no god. No amount of looking for it would be enough. I was already doubtful beforehand. Having grown up conservatively, I kind of already knew it was all fake, but the deprogramming took a while.
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Granted, linux is probably much more user friendly now. Although I still see mysterious errors on boot and cannot boot into newer kernel versions. How peculiar.
I am getting into Linux now with Bazzite, but back then, Windows was still okay. Nowadays, Windows is as enshittified as MSN.com was back in the day.
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There is no god. No amount of looking for it would be enough. I was already doubtful beforehand. Having grown up conservatively, I kind of already knew it was all fake, but the deprogramming took a while.
I've always said in 99% sure there is no God. Or if there is he doesn't care about us.
However I'm 100% sure that every religion is full of shit and made up.
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More impressively, you can have function that is continuous, but you cannot find a connected path on it (i.e. not path connected). In plain words, if anyone told you "a function is continuous when you can draw it without lifting your pen". They have lied to you.
You are misrepresenting an analogy as a lie. Besides that, in the context where the claim is typically made, the analogy is still pretty reasonable and your example is just plain wrong.
People are talking about continuous maps on subsets of R into R with this analogy basically always (i.e., during a typical calc 1 or precalc class). The only real issue are domain requirements in such a context. You need connectedness in the domain or else you're just always forced into lifting your pen.
There are a couple other requirements you could add as well. You might also want to avoid unbounded domains since you can't physically draw an infinitely long curve. Likewise you might want to avoid open endpoints or else things like 1/x on (0,1] become a similar kind of problem. But this is all trivial to avoid by saying "on a closed and bounded interval" and the analogy is still fairly reasonable without them so long as you keep the connectedness requirement.
For why your example is just wrong in such a context, say we're only dealing with continuous maps on a connected subset of R into R. Recall the connected sets in R are just intervals. Recall the graph of a function f with domain X is the set {(x,f(x)) : x is in X}. Do you see why the graph of such a function is always path connected? Hint: Pick any pair of points on this graph. Do you see what path connects those two points?
Once you want to talk about continuous maps between more general topological spaces, things become more complicated. But that is not within the context in which this analogy is made.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Sure, I have no problem with analogy. I called them lie simply to peak people's interest, but in research and teaching, lies can often be beneficial. One of my favorite quote (I believe from Mikołaj Bojańczyk) is "in order to tell a good story, sometime you have to tell some lies".
At the begining of undergrad, "not lifting pen" is clearly a good enough analogy to convey intuition, and it is close enough approximation that it shouldn't matter until much later in math.
I can say "sin(1/x) is a continuous function on (0,1] but its graph is not path connected", which is more formal, but likely not mean anything to most of the reader.
In that sense, I guess I have also lied
However, I like to push back on the assumption that, in the context of teaching continuous function, the underlying space needs to be bounded: one of the first continuous function student would encounter is the identity function on real, which has both a infinite domain and range.
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Did you believe otherwise growing up?
Yes. I grew up in the Dutch Bible Belt, with very strict evangelical parents. They sent me to a Christian school that taught a literal interpretation of the Bible. So I was taught at home, in church, and in school that Earth was created about 6000 years ago.
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Which part
locality. what was it supposed to be? and why doesn't it actually exist? what model "replaces" it, if any?
maybe the meaning of spacetime isn't obvious either, and I just misunderstand what it means
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If you were to put a big fan on a sailboat and point it at the sail, it would move the sailboat in a similar way as if the wind was pushing the sail.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Which actually makes sense if you understand it's not the wind pushing but the generated updraft at the sail.
(also not point at, but sideways)
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Sure, I have no problem with analogy. I called them lie simply to peak people's interest, but in research and teaching, lies can often be beneficial. One of my favorite quote (I believe from Mikołaj Bojańczyk) is "in order to tell a good story, sometime you have to tell some lies".
At the begining of undergrad, "not lifting pen" is clearly a good enough analogy to convey intuition, and it is close enough approximation that it shouldn't matter until much later in math.
I can say "sin(1/x) is a continuous function on (0,1] but its graph is not path connected", which is more formal, but likely not mean anything to most of the reader.
In that sense, I guess I have also liedHowever, I like to push back on the assumption that, in the context of teaching continuous function, the underlying space needs to be bounded: one of the first continuous function student would encounter is the identity function on real, which has both a infinite domain and range.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I can say "sin(1/x) is a continuous function on (0,1] but its graph is not path connected", which is more formal, but likely not mean anything to most of the reader. In that sense, I guess I have also lied
It's also false. Take any pair of points on the graph of sin(1/x) using the domain (0,1] that you just gave. Then we can write these points in the form (a,sin(1/a)), (b,sin(1/b)) such that 0 < a < b without loss of generality. The map f(t)=(t,sin(1/t)) on [a,b] is a path connecting these two points. This shows the graph of sin(1/x) on (0,1] is path connected.
This same trick will work if you apply it to the graph of ANY continuous map from a connected subset of R into R. This is what my graph example was getting at.
The "topologists sine curve" example you see in pointset topology as an example of connected but not path connected space involves taking the graph you just gave and including points from its closure as well.
Think about the closure of your sin(1/x) graph here. As you travel towards the origin along the topologists sine curve graph you get arbitrarily close to each point along the y-axis between -1 and 1 infinitely often. Why? Take a horizontal line thru any such point and look at the intersections between your horizontal line and your y=sin(1/x) curve. You can make a limit point argument from this fact that the closure of sin(1/x)'s graph is the graph of sin(1/x) unioned with the portion of the y-axis from -1 to 1 (inclusive).
Path connectedness fails because there is no path from any one of the closure points you just added to the rest of the curve (for example between the origin and the far right endpoint of the curve).
A better explanation of the details here would be in the connectedness/compactness chapter in Munkres Topology textbook it is example 7 in ch 3 sec 24 pg 157 in my copy.
However, I like to push back on the assumption that, in the context of teaching continuous function, the underlying space needs to be bounded: one of the first continuous function student would encounter is the identity function on real, which has both a infinite domain and range.
This is fine. I stated boundedness as an additional assumption one might require for pragmatic reasons. It's not mandatory. But it's easy to imagine somebody trying to be clever and pointing out that if we allow the domain or range to be unbounded we still have problems. For example you literally cannot draw the identity function in full. The identity map extends infinitely along y=x in both directions. You don't have the paper, drawing utensils or lifespan required to actually draw this.
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That I spent years developing proficiency in my language and expanding my vocabulary to get accepted, only to be told to write simplified English in journalism school. Then they doubled down in my business classes to write for a 6th grade education and those who don't speak natively.
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Computer science students multiple years into the course think I'm a hacker for using the linux terminal
I once showed that
trickfeature - opening the terminal - to an Apple Genius Bar employee once. His brains almost fell out of his ear he was so surprised. -
The Twin Paradox (special relativity). Every time I wrap my head around the idea I lose it a few weeks later an it's a mystery all over again.
Twin Paradox TL;DR: Identical twins—one stays on Earth, the other rockets off near light speed and returns. Relativity says time slows for the traveler, so they age less (e.g., returns 20 while sib is 50). "Paradox" cuz from traveler's view, Earth seems to move, but acceleration/turnaround breaks the symmetry, so no real contradiction. Mind-bendy Einstein stuff.
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At a certain point, you need to be force which pushes you forward. I saw a lot of intelligent people fail because they no longer had the external stimulus to go to class.
Also, it is easier to manipulate people in positions of power, but you have to understand how they think and are rewarded. There is a reason why a lot of liberal arts education is focused on having people understand others.
Also, the liberal arts education of a century ago was basically a degree which was intended to make managers. Along with it, the extra-curricular activities were an important part of the education, but just what happened in class.
Why is it easier to manipulate people in power? What makes them more vulnerable to manipulation?
