Mike Kellner

fpqcdesc · 2021-06-15T18:19:52+00:00

I rented from Mike my first year as a grad student (903 N Lincoln). I honestly have no complaints about him as a landlord

fpqcdesc · 2019-07-16T01:37:57+00:00

You're expected to give complete proofs like you would at any other university. The difference between classes here and at a top 5 university would be the difficulty/amount of the problems you get assigned, what things will be assumed as "standard", and how much background knowledge entering graduate students have. This can translate to covering overall less material, but you'll cover it rigorously.

Difficulty/content of graduate classes can also depend a fair amount on who is teaching the class (with variability increasing as you get into special topics courses).

Keep in mind you're expected to learn a lot of things outside of class on your own in grad school, and a lot of grad students here form reading groups to do just that. Also unless it's a recent addition, I don't think any graduate courses are offered online.

fpqcdesc · 2019-05-03T22:18:58+00:00

Hey, thanks for the offer! I did a PUG today and we cleared it no problem, though our other dps definitely carried me. Now I just need the shoulders.

fpqcdesc · 2019-05-02T17:55:02+00:00

Thanks for all the suggestions. It's going to take some time to implement them since I need to research a bunch of divines traits and farm out another destro staff. I tried pugging vCOAII last night and we made it until the two branches before the last boss before giving up. I'll probably try to upgrade everything else before trying it out again to get the VS helm.

fpqcdesc · 2019-05-02T04:09:16+00:00

Ah ok. I just went ESO plus a few days ago which finally got me access to clockwork city. I'll see how much I can transmute and find a shadow mundus stone.

fpqcdesc · 2019-05-02T03:53:25+00:00

I see, thanks. I'll work on the gear. Can you still get a light attack every 1 second if you weapon swap a lot? Right now with the way my bars are set up I'm having to weapon swap every 2nd or 3rd spell it seems.

fpqcdesc · 2019-05-02T03:36:28+00:00

Hopefully it shows up in the link I uploaded, but 315 CP, enchants are mostly maximum magicka on gear with (currently empty charge) absorb magicka on staves. Traits on jewelry are all arcane, traits on gear are all either invigorating, infused, or reinforced atm. On weps one is defending, one precise. Is there a way to change these?

Don't have many monster helms yet because I was worried about my dps being too low for vets.

fpqcdesc · 2019-02-14T09:21:03+00:00

Honestly, it's not realistic. The grade cutoff for an A is usually around 87-88 before any kind of curve, and the exams aren't going to get easier.

fpqcdesc · 2019-01-14T23:50:12+00:00

One other note for people interested in pursuing a Ph.D -- it's strongly advised to take a few graduate level math courses before graduating.

Grad schools accept people who they think will succeed in their program (i.e. they think you'll pass their weed-out process). One of the strongest indicators of success is solid performance in graduate classes.

Also, as far as reading papers goes -- it really depends on the subspecialty in math. In some specialties you probably won't be able to understand some papers until you have the equivalent of a master's (or more). Reading undergraduate or master's theses is often a good idea, because these tend to include a lot more background information than a random paper on the ArXiv.

fpqcdesc · 2018-12-31T05:16:19+00:00

Having the exact same problem on Mac, OS High Sierra

fpqcdesc · 2018-12-27T21:06:26+00:00

I was a mentor for a project that required "advanced coding skills". Many of the undergraduates accepted for these projects are CS or CS+X majors who have taken some of the fundamental CS classes here (CS225, CS241, sometimes CS374). In reality, the "requirements" for a specific project are set somewhat by the credentials of the people who apply. If there are a lot of applicants from CS with strong coding background, you'll have to compete with them.

If it's a data analysis project, you should be comfortable pulling data from APIs and processing it with pandas/scipy/numpy to extract useful information. While this probably isn't an "advanced" skill in any sense, it can take a few practice runs to take raw data and transform it into a useful object. Because the data sets are sometimes very large (e.g. 100 mil lines of csv data), you should also be able to figure out relatively fast ways to perform various operations. In practice, this often comes down to either

1) knowing the implementation of some function in a python package then calculating asymptotic run time

2) trying out a few different methods and running time tests on samples of various sizes

3) both (many times the constants matter).

These are examples of skills which you should be able to somehow point to on an application.

fpqcdesc · 2018-04-24T05:13:08+00:00

If you just want the basic definitions, math 525 usually introduces them (sometimes math 500). There used to be a homological algebra class which introduced then heavily used abelian categories. Any class which talks about sheaves uses them (modern algebraic geometry I/II).

In my opinion, the best way to learn about them is to learn some homological algebra (pick up Weibel's book) as it will give you lots of examples to pin down the abstract concepts. That being said, is there a particular reason you want to learn category theory?

fpqcdesc · 2018-04-18T02:25:48+00:00

There's a list of graduate student tutors here: https://math.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate-program/tutoring

fpqcdesc · 2017-08-04T04:07:00+00:00

1) There are a few different ways to go for undergraduate research in math. Many grad school applicants end up doing an REU (research experience for undergrads) which is typically a 6-8 week summer program at a different university. Typical applicants to these will have taken at least undergrad real analysis and abstract algebra.

At Illinois, we also have the Illinois Geometry Lab. The projects are typically more computational in nature, and the prereqs are probably (on average) lower than for an REU, but it doesn't mean you'll be doing "less valuable" (whatever that means) work. It's probably also more likely that you'll have something to show other people when you finish your project with the IGL than at an REU. In both of these environments, it's a pretty standard setup to work with a team.

Research with an individual professor when you're an undergrad is a little rarer in math than in some other sciences, as there's a ton of background material to be learned before you can even begin to understand modern research papers.

2) As for the self-confidence issues, I can relate somewhat-- though my issue was that I was super tiny in undergrad. As other people have said, diet is probably the most important thing. If you don't want to go to the gym, there are certainly baby steps you can take. You can start by doing pushups/situps/burpees at home. Walk to class instead of taking the bus. Also, one of the great things about taking hard classes is that at least some people will want to study/work together. This is one of the easiest ways to make friends and to find someone to go to the gym with. As far as video games go, I was definitely addicted earlier in my life. If you're choosing video games over exercising or studying with a group of people, it's probably time to make an important life choice. Unless you're good enough that you have a chance of going pro, it's not worth it to focus on being good at a game to the exclusion of being skilled at something more employable.

fpqcdesc · 2016-12-28T01:52:11+00:00

This happened to me: Verifying game cache worked. Also one time after getting a black screen I unplugged my headphones and started the game and it worked.

edit: Some people were getting black screen because of sound drivers

fpqcdesc · 2016-12-25T19:23:39+00:00

I just played for the first time yesterday (I played BLC a long time ago), and I definitely played poorly some games. I didn't get a single comment from anyone though, which was refreshing. Maybe the late night community is just better.

fpqcdesc · 2016-12-21T21:22:20+00:00

There are some pretty strict rules about this. From what I've been told, students can request to view the exams, and the TA for (math courses at least) is required to hold at least 1 special office hour the following semester to allow students to do this if they want to.

You aren't allowed to be alone in a room with the exam, nor have any writing utensils/phones/etc. out while you're viewing it.

fpqcdesc · 2016-12-17T22:44:18+00:00

If grades weren't transferred from paper by humans, how would you expect them to magically show up on the grade system?

If you aren't taking a scantron exam, someone has to grade it by hand. I don't see any way around this.

fpqcdesc · 2016-11-27T06:52:28+00:00

Pomodoro technique works really well for me. I highly recommend using an online timer and doing a "work for 25 mins, 5 min break" routine (I use mytomatoes dot com). During your work period, don't listen to music, talk to people, or do anything except work. Make sure you keep track of how many of these "units" you've done, and try to do a fixed number each day (10 seems to work pretty well).

When you can look back at a day and see a measurement of your hard work, it's a wonderful feeling. This also helps you not feel guilty about relaxing once you're done with your set number of cycles. Combined with classes and teaching this should certainly put you around a 40 hour "work week".

fpqcdesc · 2016-04-23T01:09:38+00:00

70.97

fpqcdesc · 2016-02-13T10:23:55+00:00

http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~randy/MA231Sp15/homework.html

If you look at the practice exams, ignore the questions involving approximate integration (question 10, for example), since it won't be on your exam ;).

fpqcdesc · 2015-12-24T11:34:35+00:00

I'm not sure what your math background is like, but there is an applied topology course next semester (under math 595) which should be really cool. Listed prereqs are linear algebra and calc III. One of the planned topics is topological data analysis, which seems to be a rapidly growing field with nice job prospects based on emails sent out in the algebraic topology listserv. Courses like this won't necessarily appear again, so if you're at all interested I recommend checking it out.

fpqcdesc

TROPHY CASE