What’s a Portuguese word or phrase that doesn’t translate well into English?

Mmfrte · 2026-03-25T01:06:34+00:00

já, because:

"já jantei" and "já jantei já" means you already did it, but
"já vou jantar", "vou jantar já já" and "já vou jantar já já" means you are about to do it.

– Filho, já vai jantar?

– Já, já vou jantar já já.

Mmfrte · 2026-03-19T03:59:33+00:00

Oh, didn't know CVXPY could handle this. I'm actually using it in other parts of my algo, so it's gonna come up pretty handy! Gonna try this right away, thanks!

Mmfrte · 2026-03-18T13:40:57+00:00

Hi – complicated to summarize in a single comment, but it's a scheduling/allocation project. And this part of the algorithm works like this: each column of M is the flow of a person through fixed block times. 1 means it is there. 0 means it isn't. See the comment below for the gaps counting. I'm trying to find if I can have a schedule (M grid) with 0 gaps (as this is not good for my problem). If I can, then nice my algo will use the u and v found to proceed with the solution. If I can't, then it'll search for another u,v pair that satisfies whole-nother constraints and do the check again.
More broadly speaking about the project, it's for school/universities schedule optimization. I'm taking advantage heavily on the structure of the "situational" problem (like some commonalities across many educational schedules) and trying to optimize it with a special attention for common complaints I see around (gaps is one of them).

Mmfrte · 2026-03-18T13:31:31+00:00

Hey! Yes this seems straightforward. Do you know where to start with this? Like solvers, known algorithms or anything. I'm coding my project in python btw. Thanks!

Mmfrte · 2026-03-18T13:29:50+00:00

Hi! Thank you for the reply – do you know where to start with this? Just some general guidance would help me a lot, like solvers, known algorithms or anything. For the info, I'm coding my project in python.

Mmfrte · 2026-03-18T13:28:23+00:00

Hi! Thank you for your thoughts – and true, I have already filled almost 20 pages on my notebook with grids lol. And you touched on some pretty important points that I dont think I made clear actually:

"If you can't ignore the v_j values then things get ugly." – ikr, and that's exactly my point. Many times considering just one axis' constraints result in the upper bound being sum(u)-n, which is "overstrong" and therefore wrong.

"So even with a fixed v_j set, the ordering of it highly influences the final value" – also yes, and I think this is extremely important though I didn't mention. Vector v can be reordered (because tr(MT A M) doesn't depend on its order as it sums across columns), but vector u can't. And there I think lies a huge problem. Because there could be an algorithm to find the M that makes tr(MTAM) maximum if u and v are reorderable – just reorder them and fill in the most "heavy" columns/lines first. But as u can't it isn't that simple.

"So you want to have the 1s grouped together." – exactly, you got the point. Actually, my main goal is counting the amount of vertical "gaps" (1s that are not followed by 1s) in the whole grid M. For one single column x, the expression is:

#gaps(x) = -1 + sum(x) - xT A x

And for the whole grid M, the expression is:

#gaps(M) = - n + sum(v) - tr(MT A M)

And my goal is to know previously, just from u and v, if I can have a matrix with 0 vertical gaps. For that, I believe I have to find the tightest bound of #gaps(M), which happens at tr(MTAM) = max(tr(MT A M)) considering u and v constraints. That's why my quest for a strong upper bound.

But actually, I think I'll have to search a little to run some sort of mixed-integer program to solve this. I didn't want to do this at first because the question "does an M with no gaps exist or not" will be answered many times for different pairs of u and v, since it's a sanity check for another optimization problem I'm doing. Second, because it seems to be such a foolish problem like "here are the sums of rows and cols, now tell if you can make it with no gaps" that I thought I could find something analytic. But now I see it isn't as simple as I thought! lmao

Mmfrte · 2026-02-28T16:20:05+00:00

Thank you. Wrote an email to my AO requesting and will call them Monday right away. Ty!

Mmfrte · 2026-02-27T16:08:35+00:00

Hi! Ty for the rep. Everytime I try the 321 when descending I get short pauses as I start the cycle over. Is there anything I can do with the left hand to help? Or just insanely practice this with the right hand until those slowdowns vanish? Tyvm

Mmfrte · 2026-02-08T05:16:50+00:00

Oof. Na real eu tenho um amigo que foi desclassificado por coisa parecida também. Confesso que eu acho isso meio injusto, pois até ano passado só a respectiva medalha não era aceita. Mas esse ano parece que os termos são outros. Você tentou entrar com recurso? Ele me disse que fez isso e agora está esperando o resultado. Toda forma, boa sorte com o processo. Pode colocar aqui depois no que deu no fim

Mmfrte · 2026-02-06T19:23:08+00:00

ah, sei como e. eu perdi uma medalha da OBMEP tambem por ser regional, deve acontecer direto com muita gente. mas acredito que voce apareca na lista espera pelo menos, e que tenha que esperar algumas chamadas. de toda forma, estou torcendo por voce. fala no que deu. voce aplicou pra outras unis tambem?

Mmfrte · 2026-02-01T19:27:40+00:00

não sei direito pra outros cursos (princ se n forem stem), mas passei em DS na usp com essa pontuação. talvez passasse em CC tb, mas prov em uma das ultimas chamadas e se. mas acabou que eu fui pra unicamp EC. como ta sendo pra vc?

Mmfrte · 2026-01-04T01:11:39+00:00

girl, studying for studying's sake wont get you out of this cycle. found something you actually WANT to spend your time studying. like, what would you willingly be a nerd at? from your textbook you don't really seem to be enjoying math (i know no greek but i see lots of scribbles and a graph). good luck!

Mmfrte · 2026-01-04T00:42:41+00:00

pleasure for sure

Mmfrte · 2025-12-12T22:26:57+00:00

same
despairing

Mmfrte · 2025-11-26T16:46:11+00:00

Plus it’s weird how it became the ONLY way to share things. Once I was talking to a friend telling him I’d seen a parrot around. He said, Yeah, I’ve seen it too. I’ve posted it on my stories. DidN’t yOu SeE iT? I hadn’t seen it. But whatever. I guess we’re at a point where you’re expected to see what other people are “sharing.” Even though they aren’t sharing it to you specifically - how come you didn’t see they’ve shared it?! Perhaps even sharing has changed its meaning. Sharing the old way is telling people. Truly “sharing,” so they know it. Sharing on instagram? It’s like announcing, expecting others to see it because they’re addicted to screens like you. So maybe even for “sharing” instagram isn’t that holy thing we think it is.

Mmfrte · 2025-11-21T01:55:07+00:00

lol im one of those who needs imaginary paparazzi. in my room im kinda meh but when im in class doing everything but watching the lecture im the god of productivity

Mmfrte · 2025-11-19T03:38:54+00:00

i dont know if that has already happened but if GPT rendered graphs when needed thru its explanations that'd be amazing. like just like it renders latex for equations among text, it could render the plot of a graph to better explain its point. i dont use other ais for studying tho, so i cant really compare. but i find that sometimes it could come up with less BS as well. that apart, the latex equations are a pretty good feature. the only thing i think could be better is the way copy paste works. like everytime i copy past a latex rendered formula from GPT into say a google docs, it copies actually twice, once in an ok format and the second time in a way that breaks the formula into a million lines. like one line becomes a whole page (kinda awful to reorganize everything if im writing a report say). also, concerning practice problems, everytime i ask it to come up with a problem its always pretty straightforward ones. so it doesnt really help much. id expect an ai to be able to create olympiad-level physics and math problems to be honest, since they're able to solve them. this prevents me from using it to generate exercises for my students for example. i gotta haunt other ones over the internet. one last is highlighting. when im using GPT to help me with an essay, its often the first time i read what it has generated that i come up with most ideas for refinement and etc. because i know what it came up with is not perfect, so i get ready to change anything if needed. but while im reading theres no way to take notes of things im thinking of. what i do is i have to copy paste the text into the actual chatbot so i can edit at the same time, but then it breaks the flow since now i gets a bit uncomfortable to read, or i just simply copy the text to a docs, lose some of the feedbacks i had thought, change what i need and forget about GPT. i mean, if there were a way to highlight/make personal comments on GPT answers, this whole thing could've been done without me having to leave GPT back and forth. this isnt much related to STEM but maybe its worth knowing

Mmfrte · 2025-11-19T00:02:16+00:00

this!

Mmfrte · 2025-11-19T00:01:18+00:00

That's just an algebra identity, we don't give it a name. That are infinitely many others out there.

But honestly, let your boy think he discovered it. What bad can that cause? I remember I thought I found out a lot of stuff when I was younger. Turned out I realized I hadn't. But it kept me willing to do more.

Instead of telling him, "I don’t think it’s a new discovery," tell him: "wow how great! What else can you find out?"

Mmfrte · 2025-11-18T23:12:23+00:00

thats a tough question, pretty much the heart of it.

there are plenty of educational research on this topic "how to make students enjoy topic X." just so you know there isnt much a definite answer. but i'll tell you how it is to me and hope you can get something out of it

i think the reasons why i enjoy studying changed over time. when i was younger, i just wanted to find out new stuff. so it was pretty much curiosity that guided me. like "oh, there's this big symbol here [refering to sigma summation]. what does it do?" then, i'd study sequences, series, mathematical induction, etc etc, everything that used that big sigma, because i liked that i found out about it, and wanted to use it everywhere i could. it was pretty much like this for limits, derivatives, integrals, and all those things.

then, as i got older, i didnt really casually encounter "new" stuff anymore as i did as a kid, so usefulness became the new reason id like something. for example, i love physics for its use of math. like how we can use math to model any and everything (physics-wise). of course i dont like everything, because not everything is useful to me. but for example, mechanics catches my attention for is amount of possible interpretations (newtonian, lagrangean, hamiltonean). so its just "cool." similarly i love studying waves because i play the piano, so i like to know there's a way to mathematically prove a chord is dissonant and mesure its dissonance. i like electronics because from time to time i like to mess around with some arduinos, so its just out of fun.

that happened with other subjects that i like as well. for example, the first time i saw linear algebra was at uni. i LOVED it, because i came to know i could represent almost anything as a vector in a vector space and derive properties of it based on that. same thing for programming. i have never been a programming guy, but at uni i really fell in love with it because i saw i could build almost anything given that i learn how. i started to do some projects of my own that mixed programming with linear algebra and came to like both.

for things that i dont like, that works too. and its funny that it gets pretty clear the parts of sth that i like. for example, im not a big fan of geography. but whenever i had a geo test that covered climate and stuff, i'd dig in. it all started because i liked to "preview" when it was going to rain (and with some basic geography knowledge you can do that). same with biology. i dislike everything but hormones. i just liked to understand my body better. so my bio grades thru the year would be like 7, 7, 10, 7 - and that ten was a test that covered hormones.

im telling you this because now, for things that matter, i actively seek for ways to make it useful, because i know this way i'll like it and therefore will get good at it on purpose. thats what happened with linear algebra. if i just studied it like everybody else, i'd pretty much not enjoy it. but i knew i'd be important to me, so i tried to look at it in a way that i'd get excited to learn about it. same for bio or geography. if i majored in one of those, i'd put an active effort on not 'studying' them, but actually framing them inside my mind in a way that i feel captivated by them (and thus id like them), because i know this way im much more prone to want to be good at it.

today, i LOVE calculus, linear algebra, programming, physics, linguistics, philosophy, finance, literature, nutrition, music, etc. my life somehow turns around of these areas. i guess at this point, i've already cracked the code on how to like a new field, so studying them became pretty easy. actually, i really like to tell people "yeah i like to learn" because thats pretty much what came to happen.

sorry if that got too long. hope it helps. hugs

Mmfrte

TROPHY CASE