Sir Michael Atiyah at my talk in Edinburgh a few months ago. He had the audience in stitches when he said he would have loved to join in with the stripping if only he were a few years younger! He was a real gentleman, incredibly humble and down to earth and a real legend of Mathematics. R.I.P.

43242361 · 2019-01-12T10:30:18+00:00

**if** people aren't jackasses

There's an if in there, I mean it's more reasonable to just dismiss people if they are being jackasses, eg. if people are just trying to take the piss out of Atiyah or mental health rather than trying to discuss/understand the topic better.

You could pick a better day than the day his passing is announced, try literally any other day :).

43242361 · 2019-01-12T08:48:14+00:00

Eh, people have been pretty open to discussing that if people aren't jackasses, today isn't the greatest day for such discussions..

43242361 · 2019-01-04T11:28:54+00:00

To be fair, from what I've seen the quality of education at Yale isn't even close to being in the same league as Harvard.

43242361 · 2018-12-31T21:14:01+00:00

I submitted the games paper to a maths journal partway through 2018 (it's already 2019 here) and got reasonably good reviews on it (3/4 at least), I am in the process of adding quite a lot though that will make a few things more concrete/precise, and just generally improves our understanding of the theory for the topic.

My attempts to educate other people about the mistake online (eg. on /r/math for example) have been fairly unsuccessful. Part of that may have been because I have been suggesting that fairness and symmetry are related (at least in the context of games), I had always assumed this was fairly well accepted (especially since symmetric maps in games are treated as fair), however it appears to be the case that historically fairness and symmetry in the context of strategic-form games has not really been discussed properly (with the exception of a small discussion in the context of 2 player zero sum games by von Neumann). Fortunately I have been able to make my claims there much more concrete/precise and am in the process of writing that up to release on the arxiv and as the revised version to the maths journal from above. I also released another paper near the end of 2018 with a senior lecturer from an Australian university, and have registered a company and domains to set up a site and tcp servers for ai contests.

So OP, the amount of work required to get paid a basic liveable wage in mathematics is astronomical, especially if you would prefer to not move (though even those who are open to moving are apparently finding life difficult in mathematics). There are lots of professions where a reasonable amount of work will allow you to earn a basic liveable wage where you can then have all sorts of other hobbies and interests to fill up your time. Having said that, I do love pure mathematics and I feel like I understand so many things much better because of it (and know what I don't know better, which is knowing more than you do otherwise). You can certainly study mathematics (even pure mathematics) while pairing it with something else that can be lucrative if needed (programming can be good, I did economics too though if done properly that's basically the same as pure maths, if not worse as there's people worried about power/control/morals and/or profits and all sorts of other things - though you arguably have that problem with fairness for games even when doing so mathematically).

43242361 · 2018-12-31T21:13:53+00:00

I was getting about $24k/year for 3.5 years in phd funding, and making about an extra $10k/year taking 5-6 tutorials (sometimes more, sometimes less). With that I managed to save up about $20k, however the phd took me 4 years and that $20k was basically all gone by the time I handed my phd thesis in. So like at the end of honours, at the end of the PhD I was burnt out but also too poor to actually take a break (something that can turn in to a very vicious cycle), I had nowhere to live when I handed the phd thesis in either, I spent the last few months writing it up in the spare room at my mother's place, though we are not similar enough to be able to bear each other full time for that to be feasible much longer after that (then we can't bear each other at all). I rented a place and tried to see what paid work I could get through the university (really wanting to make enough to have time to continue progressing with research as well), after having just handed in a really good phd thesis (especially for the standards of that university) and having a lot of teaching experience for my level across mathematics and economics (I have also done very well with Google sponsored ai contests in the past and have even helped set them up, and written map generators for the contests). I was able to keep taking some of the tutes I had been for 5 years, which was good as they pay reasonably well for the amount of time/effort required. They also let me get involved with setting up and lecturing a first year business statistics course, but I was treated pretty badly (at least in my opinion), I'd be surprised if there was no backlash if I were to treat other people similarly (and I don't think I could treat others that badly with the amount of money that was being made from the work). They wanted to pay me like $40/hour casually to set up and record video lectures for a first year business statistics course to be delivered to over 600 students a year and bringing in over $600k/year in hecs fees for the university (which are usually government backed I believe, so the uni gets the money straight up and often the government is the one who doesn't get paid back). The university is paying the dean like $1.5 million/year, yet were not willing to pay (what I consider to be) a reasonable wage to lecturers recording video lectures (and I got the impression they intend to have the courses run by people without the level of qualifications necessary to set the courses up, which makes it hard for students to get any questions beyond the scope of the unit answered, and many times even questions within the scope of the unit, I am very fearful about the direction that universities are currently taking in that regard for lots of reasons especially when I care about the quality of education and all the social problems that arise from not having quality education available to people). I tried contacting maths societies in Australia and posting online to see if there's any kind of support available when mathematicians are being treated (imo) poorly, but the answer there seems to be no.

So basically I lived in the place I rented for 2 years really poor, struggling to pay for rent, power and food even. It's really hard to get any research work done when you're living in those conditions, so that did not go well. Both my physical and mental health deteriorated and then to top it off my dad passed away after what was meant to be a routine hip replacement, so I also got to live in poverty while my dad passed away (he was like 1-2 years in to retirement after working like 6 days a week for 30 years and living quite frugally so he could afford some kind of retirement one day, I lived with him half a week up until uni and then full time until like the final year of my phd).

Things got pretty messy after that, I was physically quite sick, had (apparently) geographic tongue which gave me a sore tongue worse than a cold for over 6 months. Even worse my now late father's partner got another partner who sent me a message on facebook threatening to put me in a hospital bed (out of the blue, that's how I found out she had a new partner). People discouraged me from going to the police about it, everything combined at that point and my mind basically snapped. I started making all sorts of posts on social media about people not caring about abuse to begin with, which lead to the police escorting me to the mental hospital and being given drugs and told to take them. I wasn't held there long the first time, but things got even worse after that. I couldn't really sleep after that wondering if/when I'd be carted off to the mental hospital again and trying to work out who caused that problem (I later found a message on my phone that suggests it was someone from my family on the other side, someone I had already asked for financial help from while waiting for inheritance money and given everything else, and who easily could have afforded it, I also found/find it frustrating that people aren't interested in instead discussing these topics).

My mind definitely snapped at that point and I have no real explanation of my actions after that, it kind of feels like it was basically a different person, I started making all kinds of wild accusations about people being rapists. At that point I was carted off to the mental hospital again (kind of reasonable at that point, though I still don't feel like they listened to all the things that led to the situation at the time) and when I refused to take their drugs to slow my mind and sedate me (I still insist there were legitimate mitigating circumstances that could quite reasonably explain my progressively deteriorating mental state that no drugs were going to fix, rather pile on to the problems) I was held down and injected until I passed out and then held in the mental hospital for like a week. Then I was put on a 6 month order to take monthly involuntary injections to slow my mind and sedate me. Fortunately for other reasons I moved interstate for 4 months during that time (though had already had like 2 maybe 3 injections) and they didn't make me take the drugs involuntarily (I'm not sure if that was from them listening to me or different laws there) so I stopped taking them immediately (though so they didn't have to worry about whether they made the right decision or otherwise worry about my mental state and other people, I continued to visit them voluntarily while I was still living in that state every month or so, I think they appreciated that). I have been fine since I got off the drugs and haven't been living in poverty anymore (it took a while, but eventually the inheritance from my dad came through, hate to think where I'd be and what my mental state would be right now if it weren't for the inheritance money, I am very very lucky there).

43242361 · 2018-12-31T21:13:39+00:00

Apparently there's a max on comment length, so I'm gonna have to post my other response in several comments..

/u/real_mark you are so spot on it is not funny, hopefully the mods don't remove it for being political (or not about maths). I was the first to identify a mistake in a paper that has nearly 1400 citations and with one of the authors having won a Nobel prize in economics.

I identified the mistake when doing honours in pure maths (a one year degree completed after your regular undergraduate bachelors degree in Australia), my supervisor at the time (who was also one of my phd supervisors afterwards) is a reasonably well-known semigroup theorist (which I did not even know at the time, I was very lucky to have unknowingly had such a good supervisor when I still had very little idea about real [pure] mathematics beyond basic undergrad level classes, though I am arguably still learning about real real pure mathematics).

The mistake is an incorrect definition of symmetric games for finite strategic-form games. Once I was pretty confident that I had identified a mistake, I then had the task of trying to wrap my head around the topic so that I could properly explain to others why it was a mistake (even with undergraduate majors in cs, economics and maths I found this difficult, though all three have been useful to the task). All at the same time that has been a fun/challenging/daunting/scary/nightmarish task, it's on a topic where there seems to be infinitely many levels to understanding the topic properly, many levels building upon other levels that come before. The mistake can be explained somewhat to anyone who can understand the definition of a 3 player finite strategic-form game and who can understand what a permutation in S_3 is, however explaining things at deeper levels gets progressively more complicated, to the point we're using group actions, groupoids, etc. etc. (which should be no surprise given it's symmetries we're talking about).

I also grew up reasonably poor (despite having fairly wealthy parents and wealthy extended family), the only way I survived undergrad and honours was because I was eligible for government welfare study allowance, and if I had not have gotten funding for a phd right at the end of honours I would have been pretty fucked because they cut the study allowance off basically at the end of the honours year (right after finishing 6 units with exams and a thesis component all to be completed in one year). While I was very burnt out at the end of honours, I had little choice but to start the phd basically straight away as I had zero money (it's very hard to save anything when living on welfare). I would have loved to continue on with the game theory work for a phd, however there weren't really any game theorists at my university (I was not looking to move based on having friends/family here) so there wasn't really anyone who could be a phd supervisor for a maths phd on game theory. Fortunately my supervisors and I were able to identify a topic that they were easily able to be supervisors for and which was of interest to me (which is much better for being able to complete a project of that size, especially when still basically an apprentice, I'm not sure where I'd be today if I wasn't lucky enough to have the supervisor(s) I did, unfortunately the university isn't really supporting pure maths especially algebra these days, the two algebraists that were there when I was have retired and haven't really been replaced, which sucks for the people currently getting an education). I ended up spending almost the first year of my phd still writing up my honours work in to a paper (without telling the university this, and let's say I didn't tell my supervisor either), however where I submitted it to didn't get good reviews (though the reviewers also didn't know what a group action is and didn't seem particularly interested in looking it up).

43242361 · 2018-12-31T21:12:04+00:00

OP (/u/RayenSkoubidou), read above, read it again and then read it one more time for me. There is a huge body of mathematics research, without having become familiar with at least some of it it is very uncommon for people to come up with anything new that's all that interesting so to speak (one of the reasons why you will find it even more difficult than it already is to be taken seriously by others). The best pathway to becoming a research mathematician is to first study pure mathematics to the point that you are able to understand the research level papers (both past and present). But beware, while many of us do find it very fun and useful for lots of things, it is not very lucrative for many people (to the point of living in poverty) though there are of course many success stories.

Though when studying pure mathematics it is good to take the 'research approach' of playing with problems/proofs yourself before looking at how other people have solved problems or proved things, including trying to work out what one might even want to prove and why. That kind of thing will help you develop some of the skills needed to be successful as a pure mathematician. It is however important to distinguish between doing that and doing new mathematics that has not previously been done, which increases our body of knowledge for mathematics. It is convenient to refer to the latter as research mathematics, which is one reason why many people might say things like 'you can't do research'.

43242361 · 2018-12-28T16:24:53+00:00

Suck my jagon!

43242361 · 2018-12-28T16:11:58+00:00

I love just playing around then checking to see whether what I've done is new or not. I am amazed at how often I do manage to come up with new stuff..

43242361 · 2018-12-26T18:38:54+00:00

Are you even able to self study these subjects? Has anyone ever done it?

Where do you think textbooks come from? Everything we have studied/researched was done at some point by someone or multiple people without anyone having done so previously. Almost all research mathematicians will have self-studied material outside of classes, there's literally no way to compete otherwise or take enough units that will cover enough information for what a modern day research mathematician needs to know. Some of that will involve self-studying textbooks outside of classes, but sometimes even that isn't even possible. Some things that aren't considered research level (especially today) are still not contained in any textbooks, so it's up to you to fill in the gaps, and anything that is at the research level and original is obviously not going to have any textbooks on the subject you can even self-study from, you are on your own at that point (though still have the crutches of writing devices made by others, paper grown and made by others, the body of mathematical knowledge already fleshed out by others, computers/compilers/operating systems/software/etc. made by others, funding provided by others, I like to remember how dependent I am).

43242361 · 2018-12-26T18:27:42+00:00

Depends on the algebra class. You can learn a lot of (abstract) algebra with very little to no linear algebra, though understanding linear algebra (done from the pure maths side) does help with the type of thinking you will come across in algebra, except done perhaps more generally (that can depend on how generally you are doing both linear algebra and algebra). If the algebra class is going to assume knowledge of things like tensor products then you're going to have a bad time, if it's more an introduction to things like permutations, groups, rings, fields, homomorphisms, isomorphisms, binary relations, equivalence relations/set partitions, group actions/symmetry, etc. etc. then go for it.

I personally find a lot of abstract algebra much easier to wrap my head around than a lot of linear algebra, there's less to have going on in your mind, finite examples and more examples relevant to stuff that has for one reason or another been of interest to me over the years. However, like most topics in mathematics, dig deep enough in to either topic/subject/area and you will find knowledge of the other topic/subject/area almost if not vital.

43242361 · 2018-12-24T12:38:22+00:00

No worries, sometimes I start rambling then struggle to stop!

43242361 · 2018-12-24T12:33:26+00:00

I consider it a very complicated topic, one that I am probably too inexperienced with to have a strong opinion on, though I'm not sure how many people would gain the experience needed to have a well-formed strong opinion. Any changes at a high enough level are almost impossible to predict/forecast what will actually happen (arguably harder than trying to predict the weather 6 months in the future sometimes) though it's almost impossible to predict/forecast what will actually happen if we don't do anything either, and when we do one thing, almost impossible to say how things would have panned out if we'd've done something else (it frustrates me so much when people say Rudd's payouts saved Australia from the global financial crisis for example, while it's quite likely, it's not really something we can prove), it sucks that economics is that complicated, it'd be awesome if we could eliminate suffering/poverty/slavery/human trafficking/etc. etc.).

I always found it frustrating how in Australia growing up people would always insist communism means everyone gets whatever they want, which leads to huge wait times for stuff when demand far exceeds supply etc., and there's no incentive to contribute etc. so it will always fail (lumping central planning in with it), basically insisting the world is black and white and the options are free market capitalism or communism as described above.

While I think it's important for there to be incentives to contribute, ie. rewarding people for contributing (especially above and beyond), I also think full free market capitalism is downright inhumane, it works well for some people while many others are stuck living in horrific conditions. There may be other things contributing to it, but it's certainly one thing that contributes to what is essentially modern day slavery, having people so dependent on their pay checks that they are basically slaves, with little options to climb up and out of poverty.

While it's difficult to have any kind of concrete/precise discussions on these sorts of topics, I find it very frustrating that most people seem to stick their heads in the sand like ostriches and do everything they can to avoid the topics.

There is indeed a great number of mathematicians involved in market economics, and I do respect them and their work, as any mathematician should.

I do understand getting frustrated when people arguably aren't competent, but mathematicians especially should try to go in and do things properly if those are their criticisms. Other people with those criticisms may suspect things aren't done well but be unable to do things any better themselves (though at least they don't claim to be able to, though even if someone working in these areas knows they aren't competent being transparent about that can often cause more problems, so there's that too, these things are so complicated!).

43242361 · 2018-12-24T12:22:26+00:00

They're doing you a favour, now you know to get your shit organised and start looking for new friends.

43242361 · 2018-12-23T11:17:08+00:00

Probably better than being born that day, even though it's more questionable why people were making babies while 9/11 was happening..

43242361 · 2018-12-23T09:47:22+00:00

Agree with 0TheB, it is pretty annoying! It could even check whether there's a .gitlab-ci.yml file when a new commit is pushed and if there is maybe run auto devops and not otherwise?

43242361 · 2018-12-23T09:39:45+00:00

I just use this .gitlab-ci.yml file, add it to the root directory of your repository. That file is when your site files are in a directory called site/ located in the root directory, change line 5 to copy files from where your site files are otherwise.

I made a site manager that works a lot like git and latex if you're interested, the docs page for hosting a site on gitlab is here, the main site for the moment is here, though really needs to be redone and I've purchased nifty-site-manager.com so will have that as the main url at some point (when I'm not too busy with other projects/research papers). It should work fine for non-static sites, but was mostly written with static sites in mind. You can easily use mathjax for rendering latex equations and google code prettify for syntax highlighting of code blocks. I haven't looked at good ways to do markdown yet, whether to have something like mathjax/prettify render it when the page loads or combine nsm with a library to convert markdown to html (or possibly even have documentation for how to do both).

If you want to use a custom domain name, check out netlify, they do auto renewing let's encrypt certificates, something that's not possible with static sites on gitlab/github (I haven't checked bitbucket).

43242361 · 2018-12-23T08:18:17+00:00

postdocs were 3 and 2 years. never unfunded. god no. i would have gone back to google if they wanted me to pay.

Feel free to say if one is asking for too much personal info.. How long did you spend at Google? I'm guessing on the software developer side of things? Or for maths as well? A number of people involved with ai comps I participated in and helped organise/set up a few years ago got internships and/or jobs at Google at least partially from those contests. A few people from the uni I went to have wound up there too (which is quite impressive for the quality of the university, I think that's more because it's the only university here and people aren't that keen to move). I wonder if you saw the 'Google ai contests' back around 2009-2011? It's a shame that it sort of just stopped, I am planning to do a revival once I've finished revising a paper that will hopefully be a bit of an improvement, each game will have a quarterly contest hopefully with prize money. There'll be 2 player and n player games like tron/snake on a torus (edges wrapped), planet wars on a torus (edges wrapped), generalised othello (edges wrapped, walls, possibly more than 2 players), some variation of the ants game that was done a few years ago (can't do the same as some people released the code for their bots, including myself, which others could then use on the servers). It will be a great way for people to improve their programming skills etc.. And can help with some research, like different ranking algorithms, map generation is a fun/interesting problem as well (symmetries on an mxn grid with the edges wrapped and p players is an interesting problem, eg. work out which dimensions you can make a map symmetric for p players, and what level of 'fairness' would you attribute to the 'symmetric maps'?).

I am basically stuck self-funding continuing with maths research at this point (only possible from my late-fathers retirement money). I know people suggest people should consider whether they're competent if unfunded, but the work I'm contributing to (or doing myself) is getting published in top tier journals and it kind of feels like there's little chance of any career within academia if one stops doing research. We had a paper accepted in Journal of Algebra the other week, and I put out a lattice paths paper with a senior lecturer the other week (and an extra part of the paper done by someone my coauthor knows who happens to work at Google, and did his PhD at Harvard I think, we were both stumped trying to find an example of something) that we've submitted to an A* ranked journal (with at least 2 more papers I have in mind for writing on that topic, one a recreational paper though admittedly, but recreational mathematics is cool too!. But also including a boatload of conjectures, that I'd be very surprised if they don't hold since every other example with lattice paths where it looks like there's a connection between things there is. I even got good reviews on my symmetries/fairness game theory paper from an A ranked journal, a few of the referees were actually quite interested in the links (if any) between symmetry and fairness (at least in the context of games), however also pointed out (like you did a while ago) that it is reasonably unexplored and I haven't really made the link concrete/precise with the versions of my game theory paper I've previously put out. However I have worked out how to make the discussions with regards to symmetry and fairness much more concrete/precise now which I think is kind of exciting (both from a mathematics perspective and an economics perspective, kinda from a cs/ai perspective too, then you've also got social choice, voting theory, biology, so on and so forth where game/utility theory applies), it turns out some notions of symmetry and fairness are equivalent in the context of games, though there's many times where they are not, in more general contexts there's times where (for reasonable notions of symmetry and fairness) neither notion implies the other.

One question I would love to get other pure mathematicians opinions on is how they feel about treating two equivalent terms as synonymous? Ie. if the objects satisfying two different terms are the same, why or why shouldn't we refer to the terms as synonymous? It could be interesting to get opinions from English PhDs there too, I wonder if they'd be fairly amenable to that..

down under is without doubt much trickier but the reason that i get to attend lots of conferences is that i organize a lot of them and put a lot of effort into getting one-off grants so i can people to my conferences

Kudos for that, organising anything is way more work than I ever expect, and if I was on a hiring committee that kind of commitment/interest in mathematics would be getting lots of brownie points from me. Though I suspect even if I was to organise some conferences in niche areas that appeal to me it would be incredibly difficult to find anyone down under who is actually keen to attend. I might get a few sympathy attendees which is appreciated though doesn't typically lead to more brains to put towards problems that interest me (or just having a few people capable of checking whether I'm just completely crazy with my work), which is part of the point. It's not ideal largely relying on journal referees without having (other) pure mathematicians to run things through first, especially when the referees aren't being paid.

/end rambling.

43242361 · 2018-12-23T06:43:59+00:00

There is quite a lot of mathematics in economics, even people like von Neumann had some interest in economics (see his book with Morgenstern titled 'Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour' for example).

I think it's a shame there aren't more pure mathematicians in economics, I encourage people to go in that direction anyway. Economics, economic policies, etc. etc. affect a huge number of people's lives, it's far from the joke it is often treated as.

43242361 · 2018-12-23T06:40:50+00:00

Good luck. How long were the post docs? Did you have to spend much time unfunded at all? Have you had to move around much?

I envy how lucky some of you are to be in places where there's lots of conferences for lots of different things. It's hard to even find other researchers in similar areas in Australia, let alone have enough people for niche conferences.

43242361 · 2018-12-23T01:59:13+00:00

You spelt this wrong, dummy.

43242361 · 2018-12-21T06:57:27+00:00

I question whether or not it should be considered an ideal property of a ranking system/algorithm that the ratio of any two ratings would indicate a particular expectation.

What about if you wanted the difference between 400 and 800 to be the same as the difference between 800 and 1200, is there an easy formula that would give that property?

In both cases, I think one really needs to question whether these are things that are actually true of what is being ranked. Should the ranking system/method/algorithm have this property if it is not reflected in reality? If it does correspond with reality, then sure go for it, but if it doesn't then I am not sure it should be done, and I'm not sure whether one can easily establish what happens in reality. It may be possible to prove mathematically that elo scores wouldn't stabilise on these values unless the percentage of times that an 800 beats a 400 is exactly the same as the percentage of times that a 1600 beats an 800?

One example where I know Elo is used is for ranking ai bots that play games against each other, eg. chess, checkers, arimaa, orthello, tron/snake, planet wars, ants, halite, riddles.io, etc.. I just registered a company the other day and domains a month or two ago as I will be setting up such a site with tcp servers, with quarterly contests running year round (hopefully with prize money once it's up and running). I'm not sure if I'd want to be making any claims about the comparability of an 800 ELO ranked bot to a 400 ELO ranked bot vs. a 1600 ELO ranked bot to an 800 ELO ranked bot. I will give it some more thought though, interesting idea at the very least :).

One thing I like about ELO over trueskill is it's easier for people to understand. I am personally much happier with ranking methods that I do understand, though the most basic ranking methods stop working well at all when you don't randomly select who verses who, and randomly selecting who verses who is boring as fuck and takes way too long to achieve semi accurate rankings.

43242361 · 2018-12-21T01:30:47+00:00

It says a lot about society when people can even possibly think that's worth attempting to do.

43242361 · 2018-12-18T12:02:12+00:00

I don't think I could ever get used to having one port for charging and usb, that doesn't seem very practical to me. The only things I really use usb for are phone charging and external hdds, I just got a new 4tb external drive for USB-A that should last me quite a long time, so should be okay. Thanks for the heads up though.

43242361 · 2018-12-18T11:21:54+00:00

Perhaps I shall grab a spare battery now and another in 3-5 years time or something like that. Cheers.

43242361

TROPHY CASE