January 2012
2 posts
Help!
I want to start figuring out what area of math to study. I’m not sure if any mathematicians read me here, but if they do I’d love to hear about how you chose what to write your PhD thesis in and about what it’s like to study what you study.
In the absense of any grown-up mathematicians, maybe I can just use this blog to collect my thoughts. Here are some vague ideas around what...
November 2011
3 posts
Grad students →
untydiefurrows:
ailanthusaltissima:
How many hours a week do you work?
Do you feel like it is enough?
Do you feel like you can have anything approximating a work/life balance?
I work about 15 hours a week at my non-school job, or closer to 30-40 during school breaks. The important context is that I’m in…
I’ve been trying to track this for myself, recently. I think it’s...
Master/Margarita
In the sense that Margarita was always my Spanish name in school, and I AM THE MASTER of my modeling homework!
Okay I’m not doing one part of one problem. Whatever! I’ve gotten like 50% or below on everything else in this class so far, so by comparison, this is awesome.
My favorite part was learning about the connection between the smoothness of a periodic function and the decay of...
October 2011
10 posts
Well I failed that exam!
Or so I assume. But not in the bad way. The class is ridiculously over my head and I’m going to keep trying to catch up part of the way. If I have to drop it, I’ll just drop it. As long as I feel like I’m learning cool stuff and making some kind of movement towards finding a specialty and they’re not taking my stipend away, grad school is going as planned!
Sure gives...
Distributions
are fucking marvelous.
Linear Algebra
For those of you playing along at home, I’m now trying to work on a dimensional analysis problem, which are supposed to be easy but which I didn’t understand when we did them on the last homework. I think it’s because my linear algebra is rusty. So here are some linear algebra facts:
You can think of a matrix as a function that takes in a vector and outputs a different...
Next up, distributions
But not in the probability sense! I’m apparently learning to take derivatives of functions that I’ve always been told weren’t differentiable. Because apparently now differentiability is not the point. It’s all about integration, baby.
I’ve been told before that integration is a mathematically deeper, more fundamental concept than differentiation, even though they...
So you've got this viscous fluid...
and this inclined plane. We align some coordinate axes with the plane so that the x direction is downward along the plane, the y direction in perpendicular to the plane, and the z direction is determined by the x and y. The plane goes on forever in all directions because this is MATH and we do what we want. There’s a layer of the viscous fluid on the plane. The layer also goes on...
More on Stress from Wikipedia
Ok, I think stress is “the intensity of internal forces” in a body. So maybe in my current example, the external forces are gravity pulling all of the fluid down the inclined plane, and some friction acting on the bottom “layer” of the fluid, the part that’s in contact with the plane. The internal forces are the…friction, right? between different...
“The stress tensor sigma_ij can be expressed as the sum of two other stress...”
– Well that’s a relief. (from Wikipedia)
Alright, Navier-Stokes
I’m trying to do applied math for the first time pretty much ever. The problem I’m trying to understand is about a viscous fluid on an inclined plane “governed by the Navier-Stokes equations.” Yikes! First step, I have to learn what all the words mean.
One of the words is “stress tensor,” which is a pun on my current situation.
September 2011
5 posts
6 tags
Updates on the (maybe) Faster-Then-Light Neutrinos
jtotheizzoe:
In case my take wasn’t enough for you, here’s some more updates from smart people around the web. They all weigh in on what the CERN neutrino observations mean, what they don’t mean and what the sources of error might be:
Wired Science - Take heart, Einstein: “Earth-shattering” science is relatively rare
Ars Technica - More details on the “faster than the speed of light”...
4 tags
Grad school has done the impossible
So, if you haven’t heard, in addition to my ongoing life as an itinerant math advocate, I’m now in real grown up math grad school, too, at the University of Minnesota. It’s outrageous! One thing that’s outrageous about it is that I’ve suddenly become a calculus teacher.
Okay, really I’m a calculus teaching assistant, but since I’m the one who has the...
I love topology
We’re learning about CW complexes and they tickle this very particular part of my math-brain that I’ve tried to talk about before (“I am a sucker for homomorphisms,” for instance).
I don’t know how to put words on what it is that I like so much about thinking about CW complexes. I know there’s something inherently satisfying about understanding the same...
July 2011
3 posts
“When I meet a bisexual teenage boy, for instance, I sometimes think to myself,...”
– Bisexuals by Dan Savage - Seattle Pullout - The Queer Issue: You’re Doing It Wrong - The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper
*facepalm* If I were a lesbian, or a gay man, I’d hate it if a straight person told me that “their life experience makes it difficult for them to accept my gay teenage sexual...
Watchsubtlecluster:
feministslut:
lifeunfolding:
karnythia:
corigami:
lamocosa:
brokeymcpoverty:
champagnexwishes:
Two young black men, dressed like most young men (of every color) dress are followed around Publix by a white worker who seems to think they’re going to steal something. They purposely allow him to know he’s being recorded in hopes that it will stop, but he continues to...
I just want to record
that I really do love Harry Potter (as a character but more as a phenomenon) in a way that’s nearly as intense and important as the way I love real people.
June 2011
1 post
Awesome kid mathematician tells you about fractals →
May 2011
1 post
April 2011
3 posts
Physics Phiends: Plasma... the platypus of... →
physicsphiends:
We recently watched a Nova Video about the obstacles we would face traveling to mars, and in passing, they mentioned powering a spaceship with plasma. You know, just plasma… no big deal… !!!!!!! And then I realized that I don’t really know what plasma is, so I read Wikipedia and here is my basic…
Geddes is super duper smart.
Minnesota
I’m officially, really and truly going to grad school in the fall, at the University of Minnesota’s math PhD program. Getting to this point feels like a huge accomplishment and a huge stroke of luck: I’ve worked ridiculously hard and so many people in my life have done so much to encourage and educate me from the time I was born.
It’s a little funny to know...
March 2011
6 posts
Triangular Number Art →
Annie Blazejack and Geddes Levenson have embarked on the most amazing mathematically inspired painting marathon that I, at least, have ever heard of. Check out day 1 on Geddes’s blog.
Math in the Bath! →
My dear friend/awesome real-life science writer Lisa Grossman wrote about math and pruney fingers.
Old-School One-Woman Math Squad
I started blogging here as a way to motivate myself about homework and studying. I haven’t needed that as much since I’ve been at Smith, but today I find myself facing a representation theory exam tomorrow with my motivation to study low and waning. So here comes some old-school homework blogging.
Okay. Representation Theory. It’s a totally rad way of turning group theory...
How I Can Tell I Have the Right Job
I was planning not to pay attention in representation theory today: I sat down in the back row with my markers out, all ready to doodle braids or work on research. And then the presenter stated the theorem she was going to prove, and I realized I had to change my plans. The theorem was Schur’s lemma, which is a couple layers too deep in definitions for this post, but which I’ll state...
February 2011
7 posts
North Carolina
I was in Raleigh for the weekend, visiting NC State University. I loved it there! Spring already, lots of excited mathematicians. I like the idea of being in such a big department, and whatever the exact numbers were, it felt pretty gender-balanced.
I’m looking forward to visiting other places, too, but this weekend definitely upped my excitement about grad school. I want to write more...
Vectors
Annie, Geddes, and I have decided to take an introductory physics class on MIT opencourseware this winter, and we’re still in the kind of background info about math and measurement and stuff. Which means I spent an hour talking to Geddes about vectors today. What fun!
I’d like, first of all, to offer you this opportunity to look up “dot product” and “cross...
Come to think of it
There are a bunch of other braid properties I’ve been implicitly assuming. Definitely that a strand can’t be knotted around itself, and maybe also something about how the strands can’t “double back” up toward the person’s scalp. But I’m not sure if the latter means anything.
Anyway, now you know what theoretical* math is like: make up an object and then get excited about what it is or how...
Man, I work a lot less these days.
It’s pretty sweet! And pretty necessary, because I’m going to Real Grownup Grad School next year and want to take my breaks while I can.
Mathematically, I’m really into braids right now; doodling them in class and braiding a friend’s hair during the department’s weekly lunch talks. I’m discovering that lots of braids that look good on paper don’t look good in hair because of the way the...
January 2011
3 posts
Brooklyn Free School →
If you’ve ever heard me complaining about education or the way our society deals with children and wondered how else I think things should be, listen to the last 16 minutes of this episode of This American Life. The Brooklyn Free School is at least one of my top 5 favorite institutions.
Vi Hart is awesome. →
Enough people emailed this video and its buddies to me months ago that this probably isn’t new to anyone, but just in case. AND the creator is always making new stuff. So read her blog.
I'm back. Maybe.
I worked a little too hard last semester, and it didn’t leave much time for math blogging. Well, I worked a little harder than I’m used to. It was a valid level of hard to work.
But this semester is going to be different! I’m going to work less at school and more at having fun. So, depending on how fun it is to write in my math blog, I might be back! Hooray!
November 2010
3 posts
the temerity: Things that I miss about Providence.... →
thetemerity:
Another emo post for an emo person on an emo day.
Bagel Gourmet, the bagel place that becomes a Mexican joint after 10 am.
Having, living with, drinking with, and just being happy with my friends.
Living three blocks from my partner.
2am. Thayer Street. Drunk.
Nice Slice Pizzeria. (FUCK ANTONIO’S)
Having everything I needed, including the biggest mall in New England,...
Kids who like math
I am now the proud tutor of four sixth graders who like math and whose teacher thinks are good at math.
It’s, on the one hand, the funnest job I could ever ask for. Doing math with kids who come into the room expecting to enjoy themselves, who aren’t afraid of whatever I might ask of them, is a delight. I get to ask them to manipulate ideas they haven’t heard of until thirty...
October 2010
8 posts
viva voce: On teenagers ... →
hermionedanger:
nanner:
A whole lot of my work (when I do direct services, which is a whole fucking lot) deals with teenagers. I’m an advocate for teenagers. Whenever we have a new grant or program in the queue, I always ask how we can get teenagers involved.
Why? Because no one gives…
TRUTH.
Man, I work a lot these days
Whenever someone asks me what’s new, I want to say something like, “I realized I could do induction on the degree of a polynomial over ALL fields at the same time, rather than just picking an arbitrary field and only working with polynomials over it, and BOY has that made my life easier.”
Because really, except for occasional climbing wall excursions or exercise classes (I love...
Inspired by Geddes, who was inspired by vivavoce...