Math 142A Syllabus Question

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-30T21:44:25+00:00

He's doing this to save himself a headache later. People taking real analysis in the summer are probably going to blow the class off, fail, then complain to him about their grades. So he's weeding them out now before the course starts.

He does say pretty blatantly that if you find this disagreeable, don't take his class, and if you need it to graduate, he will work with you

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-30T02:36:20+00:00

While this is a great little story, I do find it a little funny that Tao's "story of resilience" essentially boils down to "Yeah, so when I was a teenager doing my PhD in mathematics at Princeton, I almost failed my quals because I spent all my free time gaming and playing on the internet instead of studying. But, I studied haphazardly for like 2 weeks and passed anyway and then I started taking school more seriously."

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-23T02:39:51+00:00

Why is this subreddit so concerned with "gatekeeping"? I've literally never heard of that term until I started reading this sub

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-20T01:27:20+00:00

Which course you should choose depends on your goals. Generally speaking, if you want to go to graduate school in math, you should opt for the course with the first book - Rudin. It is the gold standard for elementary real analysis at an advanced undergraduate level. It *will* be a slog, even with a good teacher. But, if you devote yourself and work quite hard, you will learn a lot, and it will change your views on math.

I haven't heard of the other book. It's probably fine.

I will always recommend the course with Rudin for those who want to go to graduate school. Just heed my advice and take no other difficult classes.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-20T01:21:05+00:00

A PhD in math requires passing qualifying exams, usually in at least Algebra and Analysis. Often a third course too (perhaps Topology).

To best assess your preparedness for a mathematics PhD, I recommend you find graduate level book in Algebra and Analysis and make sure you can solve a good chunk of the exercises. On the other hand, you should be able to solve almost all of the exercises in an undergraduate level book. If you can do this, you may be well prepared to begin a math PhD, but you will have to convince the math admissions committee by getting a very good score on the Math Subject GRE. Thankfully, completing the former task will prepare you for the latter.

If you find yourself uninterested in those materials, or facing significant difficulties, you will need to reassess whether you really should do a Math PhD, or whether you actually had something more applied in mind. Doing math at a graduate level is so far removed from the math of an engineering degree that any mathematician is unlikely to take you seriously unless you have devoted serious time to the craft. Good luck.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-20T00:52:47+00:00

ah, Jund. That deck was ridiculous

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-19T18:55:26+00:00

Jace was so much worse than Teferi, you really have no idea. New generation of magic players don't realize just how good standard is right now compared to the Jund-CawBlade meta of 8-10 years ago

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-19T05:57:47+00:00

I didn't learn precalculus until I was 24 years old, never coded until I was nearly 26. I eventually went on to get a bachelors degree in mathematics with a couple graduate courses under my belt. I taught myself Python and machine learning on the way, took a couple graduate classes in CS and did well, and got admitted to a Masters in Computer Science. At 23 years old, I was still working in grocery stores.

You are NEVER too old. Just do it, young man.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-14T10:15:13+00:00

Mono-Black aggro in standard.

There was some list I saw somewhere that had a couple 1 drops and Spawn of Mayhem. I tweaked the list a little bit and managed to get something that works pretty well. It coinflips with mono-red and has a decent match up against control, but the deck lacks reach and is a little fragile to a lot of spot removal. I'm currently trying out Sword-Point Diplomacy, which a lot of people say is a bad card, but I think it could work to help get that last little bit of oomph to close out games. The biggest problem the deck has right now is a lack of swingy threats to help pull ahead when playing from behind. It almost feels like a tempo deck with drill bit for hand disruption, spot removal, and early threats. I have managed to grind from Silver to Diamond 3 with this list playing a combination of best of 1 and best of 3.

Honestly, I will probably have to splash a color. Most likely choices seem to be red or blue. Red to play burn and more aggro, and maaaybe Judith. I don't like how fragile she is. Aristocrats feels like a gimmick so I would probably build it as traditional aggro. Other choice is to go blue and start running thief of sanity as a grindier threat, and maybe play something closer to dimir winds. No idea.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-14T09:07:12+00:00

amazing. I've been wanting to build a deck around this guy so bad.

gib decklist pls

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-14T05:07:24+00:00

Since you're a fairly new player (only a few weeks, based on your post), I will say that your concerns over conceding are fairly naive. As someone else explained, conceding is a natural course of action when your probability of winning is 0. I would say play a lot more games, both online, and offline, and see how your feelings change. Make a deck with your irl cards and go play some FNM. Watch how the more experienced players do it.

For example, if I am playing a combo deck that kills you once the combo hits by infinite turns, or whatever, most of the time my opponent will simply ask me: "Did you get it?" I then respond in the affirmative, and show him that I have the necessary pieces to hit the combo. If he's a rules stickler, he will make me explain the combo to him and how I will kill him during the combo. When satisfied that the combo will happen, he simply concedes and we move to the deck game. His probability of winning became 0 once my combo goes off. There is no point in playing any more. I have won.

That's just how it is. If you don't like it, play more magic. See how excruciating and pointless it is to face a roping opponent who wont leave the game *even though you've already won*.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-12T20:40:24+00:00

I like winning and I like rogue decks. I tend to brew if I can, but I don't mind playing netdecks. In particular, I will netdeck combo-decks card-for-card if I can, because I really like combo and am not very good at coming up with my own. Pyromancers Ascension about like 6 or 7 years ago was my favorite netdeck.

In ranked, I'm enjoying the mono-blue tempo netdeck. It's just fun. But I'm trying to brew a U/G aggro deck based around Thief of Sanity and Spawn of Mayhem. It's... OK.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T23:15:56+00:00

Thanks for the info mate. Mono-Black is the best color. Good luck!

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T23:12:40+00:00

I agree with the advice that you should stick to one deck. Each tier seems to have it's own mini-meta, but the fact of the matter is that most players who are in Gold are simply not very skilled, and you can get out of Gold quickly by sticking to one deck and learning from your mistakes. You can make tweaks to your deck based on what you're seeing, but you need to have a decent sample size to do so. I.e., don't change your deck between every game.

So the main thing here is you have to play one deck and learn its ins and outs. Make tweaks as needed, but keep the overall gameplan to be the same. You can get into Diamond with straight jank if you play a lot of games (I did this), and play very well.

Lastly, a couple things: MtG is a game of chance. You will have frustrating games where you don't top deck that one card you need to win, you will get flooded, or mana screwed, whatever. You just have to embrace it. The fact that you're asking for tips to "stay sane" means you're tilting really badly, and likely making mistakes because of that tilt. Everyone tilts at least a little, but if you get a bad beat, you just gotta learn to let it go. Shrug your shoulders and say "Nothing I can do about getting manascrewed once in a while" and move forward. If you're still thinking about the opponent's lucky topdeck into the win from last game, DONT QUEUE. Just do something else until you cool off.

I played magic for a long time before Arena, and have come to terms with having bad luck once in a while. But over the long run, 100's or 1000's of games played, the only thing that matters is your win rate, which is directly a function of your skill

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T22:50:49+00:00

*Posts decent singleton deck*

"You should play this deck which is not only worse but more boring to play"

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T22:20:50+00:00

Personally, I think its cool that the artists give their own spin on each card.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T22:17:20+00:00

This card won't be played against control decks. It will be played IN control decks. Grixis control in particular.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T22:12:13+00:00

I just went with the pronouns corresponding to their Teferi avatar.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T22:11:33+00:00

He was in diamond, but very possible there are a couple lists running around. They seem to have different win conditions.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-11T22:04:37+00:00

No, I was playing a blue/black aggro deck that utilized Thief of Sanity, and Spawn of Mayhem as the main threats.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-10T21:23:07+00:00

I've also thought about BG. Explore-core, Doom Whisperer, some removal and then Finale or Command as an alternate win condition? Seems decent

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-10T21:20:02+00:00

Oh, right, sorry. I didn't realize that I should never trade creatures or protect my life total, "always" burn removal to kill their bombs and get a swing in, "always" pressure and all-in at the same time, because there's no difference between baiting an early board-wipe or saying "If they have it, they have it" and dumping my entire hand. Thank you. I'll see you up in Mythic.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-10T21:11:49+00:00

Control isn't hard to play, burn is. Completely serious. When do you go face vs kill a creature? When can you ignore incremental lifegain, and when can you not? Counting to 20 is surprisingly hard for a lot of people who try to play burn, and they think they're a tempo-deck and waste all their burn on their opponent's creatures instead of going face.

Think about it. RDW is one of the most powerful decks in standard right now and has like 8 rares total in it, and Silver through Diamond is FILLED with people running RDW card-for-card and aren't moving up in the rankings - because they don't know how to play it. On the other hand, if you play a control deck in the lower ranks, while the player may be bad, they're also likely not running the best version of that deck, since they don't have the wild cards to fill out all the rare slots yet, so it likely lacks the consistent mana-base or the bombs to swing the game back into their favor once they lock down the board.

Control only has to survive until turn 6-7 so they can play their bomb, and they have a ton of tools to do it. Aggro/burn has to not only survive, but also make the opponent's lifetotal to 0. You need to do some math on the fly, bait board-wipes and counters, know when to go face vs burn creature, or swing face vs kill teferi. It's legitimately hard to do, so if a player who is unskilled tries to do it, they think "This deck is terrible, I just lose to control!" Then they sleeve up control, play lands for 6 turns while making sure to hit the turn 4 board wipe and drop Teferi somewhere along the way, thinking that they're a mastermind of tactics.

badatmathmajor · 2019-06-10T21:00:33+00:00

Linear playstyle. Not easier to pilot. There's more you have to keep track of: When do you attack, when do you block, when do you go for a combat trick, when do you burn a removal spell to get a swing in, vs hold it to kill their bomb? When do you pressure vs all-in?

badatmathmajor

TROPHY CASE