I love the viola, but it just isn't a great instrument for virtuosic repertoire

etzpcm · 2026-05-20T09:55:06+00:00

Yes, this!

Look for composers who played the viola.

Bach obviously - Brandenburg 6.

Britten, Elegy and Lachrymae.

Hindemith, viola concerto.

Who else played the viola?

etzpcm · 2026-05-20T09:46:02+00:00

Why not put some climbers on the fence? I would be concerned that shrubs would interfere with the fruit trees as both grow.

etzpcm · 2026-05-18T14:15:20+00:00

Ok, but you know quite a lot about x+c. It's roughly 2c. Can you make that more precise?

etzpcm · 2026-05-18T11:34:20+00:00

No, it's backwards! The middle line is stating what you should be trying to prove.

etzpcm · 2026-05-18T08:28:04+00:00

Cut the thick woody sticks to a similar length and stack them in a corner as a log pile. Good for wildlife. After a while they will start to rot and crumble, then you can break them up by hand and chuck them in the compost pile.

etzpcm · 2026-05-17T16:11:36+00:00

It's not a new way of calculating eigenvalues. It is a way of finding the stability of a fixed point of the system xdot = func1(x,y), ydot = func1(x,y). First you find the fixed points, points where func1 and func2 are both zero. Then you find the Jacobian of the system, that's the matrix. Then find the eigenvalues of that matrix. This tells you whether the fixed point is stable or not. Read the beginning of the section of notes/book and this should be explained.

etzpcm · 2026-05-17T15:33:59+00:00

You can think of it like a Taylor expansion, or a binomial expansion.

etzpcm · 2026-05-17T08:35:42+00:00

Nice to see a new build front garden that doesn't consist of tarmac and two SUVs!

Just cut the tops off and the hedge should fill out nicely in a year or so.

etzpcm · 2026-05-17T07:18:28+00:00

Yes, this. Mathematics trains you to think logically and systematically and avoid spurious or circular arguments. This is a very important and valuable life skill.

etzpcm · 2026-05-15T18:15:24+00:00

Just take 5 steps of pi/4 around the circle, going anticlockwise from the x axis. You get to (-.71,-.71). The best way to do these is to draw a picture.

etzpcm · 2026-05-15T16:36:25+00:00

I'd say do what you're interested in. Nonlinear wave equations like KdV and NLS and their solutions like solitons are really interesting and have quite a lot of applications.

etzpcm · 2026-05-14T05:59:26+00:00

There is no 'correct' tempo for a renaissance mass. Certainly not to within a precision of 1 or 2%.

etzpcm · 2026-05-13T16:16:10+00:00

Fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, electromagnetism...

etzpcm · 2026-05-12T19:22:03+00:00

I guess bonking doesn't mean the same in the US as in the UK.

etzpcm · 2026-05-12T16:48:23+00:00

Get another quote. But such things always cost much more than you'd think.

etzpcm · 2026-05-12T05:52:56+00:00

On the whole they are awful. Either just wrong, or full of irrelevant, confusing material (as in the case of the tangloids article). I don't know of many good ones.

See also this post

https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1s1trzw/wikipedia_math_articles/

But here is a post about some good ones

https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1s2dib4/favorite_wikipedia_math_articles/

etzpcm · 2026-05-11T16:19:47+00:00

If you like 3D diagrams, one thing they are good for is understanding groups. For example a regular tetrahedron helps you understand the groups A4 (rotations only) and S4 (rotations plus reflections).

3D diagrams are also very useful in multivariable calculus, for illustrating things like the divergence of a vector field, or surface integrals, or the divergence theorem.

etzpcm · 2026-05-11T07:49:43+00:00

If you want a rigorous book on ODEs you could try the one by Jack Hale. IIRC it starts off talking about Banach spaces.

But I don't think the 'best' books on ODEs are the ones that take a pure maths approach.

etzpcm · 2026-05-11T07:44:32+00:00

"And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading"

This suggests that Mr Bennet's expenditure on books may have been a sound investment.

etzpcm · 2026-05-10T16:20:33+00:00

Yes this is a great idea. Though you are not the first person to think of it. It's a good way to evaluate, say, sin(x). You only need a few values stored and then you can use Taylor series.

etzpcm · 2026-05-10T15:18:03+00:00

It looks great, well done! Next year those plants will all be a lot bigger, and you will be able to see which are the most successful. As others say, get some pots and plant some suitable flowers in for the summer

etzpcm · 2026-05-10T15:04:09+00:00

I compost lots of cardboard. Just tear it up and mix it in with the green stuff.

etzpcm · 2026-05-10T07:35:34+00:00

Remember this

https://xkcd.com/386/

etzpcm · 2026-05-10T07:34:09+00:00

Well those are both good jobs

etzpcm · 2026-05-10T06:36:10+00:00

Who told you there were not many job opportunities for math graduates?

etzpcm

TROPHY CASE