• Mathematician Chat v. 3.999...
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I so cannot stand Word any more. Because the user gives no explicit commands (\begin{} \end{} tags), Word tries to figure out what you want to do and it gets it wrong 50% of the time. I think I've become a full-on LaTeX elitist and think all typesetting ever should be done in markup :v: Well okay perhaps not stuff that is typically done with InDesign but you get my point... Also Powerpoint does work quite nicely, never got the hang of Beamer.
[QUOTE=thelurker1234;50016015]I can't math at all (hoping to change that over time) but thanks OP for introducing me to latex, best way to ditch microsoft office imo. Also, is there a nice open alternative to matlab/mathematica?[/QUOTE] For matlab there is octave, which is probably the nicest alternative to it out there. Last I tried it can be a pain to get it to install on Windows, but it's easy enough on Linux.
[QUOTE=Number-41;50016269]I so cannot stand Word any more. Because the user gives no explicit commands (\begin{} \end{} tags), Word tries to figure out what you want to do and it gets it wrong 50% of the time. I think I've become a full-on LaTeX elitist and think all typesetting ever should be done in markup :v: Well okay perhaps not stuff that is typically done with InDesign but you get my point... Also Powerpoint does work quite nicely, never got the hang of Beamer.[/QUOTE] I feel that forcing yourself to learn the harder, more manual thing leaves you more efficient, for reasons like that. Since latex doesn't really assume what you want, you don't have to fight it. I haven't had to use Beamer since most of my presentations are group projects and either I just hand off the responsibility, or we use something like Prezi which has nice collaberation tools. [QUOTE=judgeofdeath;50016305]For matlab there is octave, which is probably the nicest alternative to it out there. Last I tried it can be a pain to get it to install on Windows, but it's easy enough on Linux.[/QUOTE] It's probably pretty easy if you're rocking mingw or something similar. But octave looks pretty good! thank you.
[QUOTE=thelurker1234;50016015]I can't math at all (hoping to change that over time) but thanks OP for introducing me to latex, best way to ditch microsoft office imo. Also, is there a nice open alternative to matlab/mathematica?[/QUOTE] Sage is a nice one. It was kind of a bitch to get running before (virtual machine was the easiest way) but now there's SageMathCloud, and the free functionality is basically all you'd ever need if you're not doing legit resource intensive research. It's got a little bit of a learning curve like LaTeX and the documentation at the moment is not great but it has a lot of functionality. [editline]27th March 2016[/editline] I saw a bunch of people on reddit recently arguing that you should use Word over LaTeX. Not just people who don't know LaTeX, but people who are actually saying Word is superior. Fucking plebs.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;50016829]Sage is a nice one. It was kind of a bitch to get running before (virtual machine was the easiest way) but now there's SageMathCloud, and the free functionality is basically all you'd ever need if you're not doing legit resource intensive research. It's got a little bit of a learning curve like LaTeX and the documentation at the moment is not great but it has a lot of functionality. [editline]27th March 2016[/editline] I saw a bunch of people on reddit recently arguing that you should use Word over LaTeX. Not just people who don't know LaTeX, but people who are actually saying Word is superior. Fucking plebs.[/QUOTE] I find the popularity of word weird nowadays. Even for document setters just like it there's libreoffice writer which is pretty much at feature parity with word, even having features that word doesn't, and on top of that is free af. Also google docs for another super easy free thing that may have less features than word/writer, but those features are irrelevant to most people. But oh well, microsoft giving free/cheap copies to school and getting people hooked to their products is quite powerful indeed.
Short story of Unabomber: He was young student who was studying math. He signed for secret experiment (by CIA), because he needed money. He said he was kind of forced into it. Anyway they secretly dosed him with LSD over time. They tested him with questionares and found he was fine. Except he wasn't. He was growing emotionally-unstable and started to hate technology and scientists. And then he had it enough, he started sending bombs to Universities and Airlines. He sent 16 bombs. When Unabomber sent out his manifesto, his brother recognized his writing and reported it to the police. He got captured and got life in prison. The end.
[QUOTE=judgeofdeath;50016305]For matlab there is octave, which is probably the nicest alternative to it out there. Last I tried it can be a pain to get it to install on Windows, but it's easy enough on Linux.[/QUOTE] There has been a bit of a push for [URL=http://julialang.org/]Julia[/URL]. The biggest problem for me was the lack of a solid ide (JUNO has problems with plotting) and that plotting simple things was far more involved than MATLAB. I used Octave for many years in undergrad but it is substantially slower than MATLAB. If you are feeling brave, you can always try C++ with Armadillo which is fantastic for any intensive computation.
So I'm at the part in later high school wanting to go to collage in programming I want many credits in math because I believe it will help and math isn't didficult for me anyways I am looking at various graphing calculators and got reccomendations but I don't fucking know other than appearence and price what the differences are. They are all Casio. I am looking at the HP Prime, the Prism, and the 9750 GII Thanks for any advice I can get
[QUOTE=TeamEnternode;50074845]So I'm at the part in later high school wanting to go to collage in programming I want many credits in math because I believe it will help and math isn't didficult for me anyways I am looking at various graphing calculators and got reccomendations but I don't fucking know other than appearence and price what the differences are. They are all Casio. I am looking at the HP Prime, the Prism, and the 9750 GII Thanks for any advice I can get[/QUOTE] I don't know how it's in US, but in my engineering university we do math all by hand and Calculus will be a big surprise if you don't know any high-level math. Calculators are forbidden from math exams :v: And for graphing stuff, you will have to learn how to draw any function by hand with the power of deriving. The only calculator you need is a really cheap one with trig functions and their inverse, nothing more. [editline]5th April 2016[/editline] If you really want some gadget to graph, why not download an app to your phone? It would be a whole lot cheaper... [editline]5th April 2016[/editline] And it's probably a good idea to get to know your way around a math software, either wolfram mathemathica or gnu octave or whatever you find fancy and useful.
Took the exam on integration techniques (by parts, trig substitution, and partial fractions) and series (telling if convergent, divergent) and a question about a geometric series where it's limit is less than infinity, it asked if you could alternate the sign of every second element in the series to make it converge at any number. I wrote down no because I think it's absolutely convergent meaning it only ever converges to the same number, not sure if I got that one right or not. Anyways today in class as an intro into taylor series my professor talked about how the sin, cos, and exponential functions are approximated by computers and calculators, something I'd never wondered about before but during the lecture caught my attention.
Got a final exam for my differential topology class coming up in a month which should be pretty fun. I get to give a ~35 min lecture on whatever manifold of interest that I choose. Any suggestions? My current favorite contenders are Calabi-Yau manifolds and Spin(n). For the Calabi-Yau manifolds, I even have a neat etched glass desk ornament that I can bring in which is a 2 real dimensional slice of the quintic Calabi-Yau threefold.
[QUOTE=cody8295;50083187] Anyways today in class as an intro into taylor series my professor talked about how the sin, cos, and exponential functions are approximated by computers and calculators, something I'd never wondered about before but during the lecture caught my attention.[/QUOTE] Taylor can be used but calculators use something entirely different which is quite advanced and faster (for sin/cos)
[QUOTE=Fourier;50099490]Taylor can be used but calculators use something entirely different which is quite advanced and faster (for sin/cos)[/QUOTE] Would you mind elaborating? I think he was talking about early calculators
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORDIC[/url] I kinda want to implement it myself for fun but the Wiki already spoiled it with their example code.
if you want a real challenge then you can implement Chebyshev polynomial approximations to sine and cosine :v:
Got a 95 on my calc exam im fucking amazed i thought i failed
[QUOTE=cody8295;50100223]Would you mind elaborating? I think he was talking about early calculators[/QUOTE] Number-41 said it, it was CORDIC. Also Taylor is still used for approximations in many embeeded applications. But not calculators since calculators need to be very precise and.. precise Taylor requires very long calculations, especially for sine/cosine of big numbers.
[QUOTE=Fourier;50113012]Number-41 said it, it was CORDIC. Also Taylor is still used for approximations in many embeeded applications. But not calculators since calculators need to be very precise and.. precise Taylor requires very long calculations, especially for sine/cosine of big numbers.[/QUOTE] Thank you! I was reading into that wiki link a little bit earlier. Cool shit I never knew about is always appealing
linear algebra can get so tedious, jesus christ almost every problem always comes down to reducing a system, no matter what the topic is first week of class: "solve the system of equations by reducing the coefficient matrix to row echelon form" last week of class: "find the basis of the null space of the matrix... by reducing it to row echelon form"
But it's so fundamental it's worth learning it good
Linear algebra can feel very tedious, but it's nice because it comes with so much nice, easy structure. Everything done in linear algebra terms feels overpowered. I can't tell you how many times we've had to prove that a map is injective at the level of tangent spaces in differential topology and I'm continually amazed that all we have to do is prove that only the zero vector goes to zero. That's so strong. If you want to prove something is an diffeomorphism, for instance, you have to prove that it's smooth, that it's surjective, that it's injective, and that it's inverse is smooth. For linear algebra, if you have a linear map so that f(v) = 0 iff v =0, you're done. That's so strong.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;50117630]Linear algebra can feel very tedious, but it's nice because it comes with so much nice, easy structure. Everything done in linear algebra terms feels overpowered. I can't tell you how many times we've had to prove that a map is injective at the level of tangent spaces in differential topology and I'm continually amazed that all we have to do is prove that only the zero vector goes to zero. That's so strong. If you want to prove something is an diffeomorphism, for instance, you have to prove that it's smooth, that it's surjective, that it's injective, and that it's inverse is smooth. For linear algebra, if you have a linear map so that f(v) = 0 iff v =0, you're done. That's so strong.[/QUOTE] well hopefully they offer topology next spring because i'm sick of reading wikipedia articles and your posts and getting more interested in it
Passed the first calculus test woot I missed a chance to apply Bernouli-L'Hospital shit on a 0/0 shit but that's how it goes.
[QUOTE=NixNax123;50117955]well hopefully they offer topology next spring because i'm sick of reading wikipedia articles and your posts and getting more interested in it[/QUOTE] See if your library has Munkres and start reading! Amazing textbook, it's no wonder it's the standard. Very clear and self-contained. And on the subject of topology, my differential topology final presentation might be computing the cohomology ring of flag manifolds. The other option is defining spin structures on manifolds. Both seem like lots of fun.
So it turns out after I complete calc 2 and linear algebra which are required for my major, I'd only be 1 math class away from a mathematics minor... The dreaded calc 3. I'm wondering how useful a Math minor would be on a CS degree. Trying to think if it would be worth the hell of that one class
[QUOTE=cody8295;50122005]So it turns out after I complete calc 2 and linear algebra which are required for my major, I'd only be 1 math class away from a mathematics minor... The dreaded calc 3. I'm wondering how useful a Math minor would be on a CS degree. Trying to think if it would be worth the hell of that one class[/QUOTE] Pretty useful if not critically important. CS majors often suck at math (but believe otherwise), so a CS minor would probably look pretty good.
speaking of that, it turns out I've completed my math minor after this semester, but still have at max 3 semesters left until I graduate. should've double majored :v: [editline]13th April 2016[/editline] still trying to take as many math courses that interest me as possible though. sadly the only PDE course offered next semester is taught by one of the worst professors I've ever had (the current one for my linear algebra course), so I REALLY don't want to mess that up for myself, especially since PDEs are so goddamn important.
[QUOTE=cody8295;50122005]So it turns out after I complete calc 2 and linear algebra which are required for my major, I'd only be 1 math class away from a mathematics minor... The dreaded calc 3. I'm wondering how useful a Math minor would be on a CS degree. Trying to think if it would be worth the hell of that one class[/QUOTE] I'm going to go for it so we can suffer together. Anwyay atlear at my school calc 3 is supposedly easier than calc 2.
calc 3 is definitely easier than calc 2 all around at least until you get to stuff like line integrals which might be challenging
Ive heard from fellow students that calc3 is the most challenging class they've taken... i do need an additional math or science class so maybe ill take the risk in my last semester
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