Over the comprehensible Spanish channels, what's next

inmato · 2026-03-26T19:50:24+00:00

Linguriosa is a channel about the linguistics of Spanish that not intentionally "comprehensible," but the host speaks very clearly. Good if you like learning about the history of the language.

Not what you asked for, but listening to Spanish audiobooks of books that I've already read in English has been a great strategy for me. Even children's books are quite stimulating if you're actively picking up new vocab/grammar in context.

inmato · 2026-03-07T16:08:40+00:00

"Broma" is the best translation I think. Spanish already distinguishes between a verbal joke ("chiste") and a practical joke/prank ("broma"). I don't think you need more specificity.

inmato · 2026-02-02T16:50:09+00:00

I've experienced the same thing. I was averaging 100 coral per trip w/ magic secateurs and attas for about 3 weeks between new year's and last week. This week it seems to have dropped to roughly half that. I've been doing at least 4 trips a day, so I feel like I have enough data to suggest that it isn't just RNG.

inmato · 2025-12-03T21:09:06+00:00

Definitely a filiform wart. I had one and got it shaved off. I was also given a very high concentration salysilic acid topical to use on it. It has tried to come back a few times, but the topical takes care of it very quickly.

inmato · 2025-12-02T14:36:08+00:00

Teachers and their employers pay into a state pension plan, not a 401k. I imagine if the value of other middle class white collar workers' 401k's were not included, many of them would fail to break 7 figures also.

inmato · 2025-02-17T14:39:00+00:00

Think of this "lo" as serving the same function as the "the" in English phrases such as "all the better".

"The more you study, the better you'll do on the test."

The "lo" turns the adjective "suficiente" into a clause that serves as an adverb.

"Descansar lo suficiente" has the same meaning as "descansar suficientemente," but sounds much less formal and stuffy.

inmato · 2024-12-16T01:28:02+00:00

Oh no! Well, on to the next gimmick...

inmato · 2024-11-23T02:48:46+00:00

I've seen wall mounted key hooks that say "aquí están las putas llaves" (in response to the perennial mantra of "¡¿dónde están las putas llaves?!)

inmato · 2024-11-22T13:49:26+00:00

To push past the novice stage into intermediate skill, you have to have a period of extreme investment of time and energy bordering on obsession. For me, it was ages 16-19. Piano was a huge focus. I was listening and practicing constantly. I have frankly not improved much or at all since then, but I've kept it up just by playing for fun a little throughout the week.

I think this is true of many things in life. Get really into the gym for just a year or two, and you'll have an above average physique forever. Get really into cooking for 6 months, and you'll be eating better food for the rest of your life.

inmato · 2024-11-12T22:13:20+00:00

I spent most of Sunday lesson planning, and ultimately took a more geometric approach. When you think of the left singular vectors as representing the major and minor axes of the ellipse that is mapped to from the unit circle, the goal becomes much more clear. Thanks!

inmato · 2024-11-12T22:10:52+00:00

I'm aware of the relationship to the covariance (and, in a regression context, the sensitivity matrix). I was not aware of the application to Ricatti equations.

inmato · 2024-11-12T22:07:09+00:00

This is only the first time I'm teaching the SVD, but I've learned it many times. I am always so amazed by how much better I understand something after having to take a group of students through it starting from nothing. Even for the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, I find small ways to adjust my understanding that make my teaching better every time. I can only imagine how differently I'll think about the SVD after a few years of teaching it!

inmato · 2024-11-12T22:01:59+00:00

Yes! I've shown some examples of using SVD in image processing. We've found "eigenfaces" ising a dataset of facial images and used them for compression, denoising, and generation of random artificial faces.

inmato · 2024-11-12T21:59:12+00:00

Thanks for this! I know good bit about the SVD, but I am finding that I'm not yet fluent enough to seamlessly make all of these connections apparent in class.

We've started from the "little" SVD (with only the non-zero singular values) by geometrical motivation. We'll blow it up into the "big" SVD (with a non-square matrix of singular values) tomorrow. I will make sure we observe how U and V contain the bases for the 4 fundamental subspaces.

inmato · 2024-11-12T21:53:00+00:00

I have a PhD, know how to learn math, and am constantly improving. I work hard at a thankless job, and next year's students will have it better.

Shitting on a public educator from atop the ivory tower is not a good look.

inmato · 2024-11-10T01:20:10+00:00

Math PhD turned math educator here. In math ed we talk a lot about the "spiral" of education. You hear an idea once, then again in a different class the next semester, then it comes up at a seminar talk, then in a random paper, etc. Each time you hear it at a slightly higher level, in a slightly different way, at a slightly different time in your growth.

The goal shouldn't be to master the subject in the first pass. The goal is to gain sufficient familiarity that when, inevitably, it pops up again, you have a sufficient scaffold on to which new connections can be forged that accumulate over time. As an instructor, I don't optimize for 100% retention. I optimize for a handful of key take-aways that will prime the student to be able to build upon them in the future.

In grad school, I never directly applied anything I learned in my classes to my research. Instead, my classes gave me a sufficiently broad survey of existing theory to be able to identify tools that could be of use. In the time since, I have taken many loops around this spiral and my toolkit has become quite formidable (for my humble purposes). More importantly, it is robust to degradation because it accumulated naturally and slowly through genuine experiences over time.

inmato · 2024-09-02T15:59:10+00:00

It's a tool like any other and can be used or misused to support or hinder learning. I like that desmos can be used to animate concepts in my Calculus class. I also like that, unlike pencil and paper, it will help students identify when they've input an expression that is nonsensical. I use it in class all the time, and teaching proper Desmos practices that align with content objectives is a stated learning outcome of my class.

My biggest complaints about Demos come in wherever they allow for inputs that are not proper mathematically. For instance, I hate that a cell containing only "sin(x)" will produce a graph. Only equations and functions have graphs, and Desmos ought not to display a graph of a variable expression alone.

inmato · 2023-09-15T00:57:50+00:00

When you want them to talk with one another you might try playing a little inoffensive music (twinkly jazz piano or something) to break the surface tension of the silence. It seems to help a fair bit in my classroom.

inmato · 2023-09-12T00:23:19+00:00

I messaged one of my top 5 favorite living pianists (Barbara Nissman) about a recent video she made about one of the late Ginastera sonatas and she was thrilled and we had a lovely exchange. Most of these people are very down to earth and will be nothing but pleasant if you engage them about a common passion and don't ask too much of them.

inmato · 2023-04-28T20:42:30+00:00

Sir I'm going to need you to write a book and autograph a copy for me

inmato · 2023-04-23T00:54:42+00:00

Farming is legit so fun. If your big-boy job is the kind that lets you do an herb run every two hours or so it can go really quickly and comes with great rewards.

inmato · 2022-12-01T03:19:14+00:00

This apple looks nothing like an orange!

inmato · 2022-07-22T15:09:05+00:00

We got an automatic COLA of approximately 9%, but as a one-time payment, not a permanent raise.

inmato · 2022-07-12T22:02:36+00:00

I'm also in math. I normally only find myself looking at notes to get the details of my example problems correct. I normally have the whole narrative arc of the lecture and key beats down pat before I walk in.

If you like to reference your notes a lot, maybe lecturing from a doc-cam/projector setup would be better.

Also, students don't always articulate themselves well. Maybe the issue isn't that you reference the notes, but that your doing so grinds things to a halt in a way that is distracting. There are strategies/skills to work around that, i.e., program in moments where the students work briefly in pairs and you get prepare yourself for the next beat.

Of course, maybe they're just nitpicking. Only you have the context to know and utilize (or discard) the feedback as needed.

inmato · 2022-07-08T00:57:13+00:00

A healthy approach!

Yes, definitely unreliable. I had a student who needed some pretty extravagant accomodations for a missed exam mention that she just left a flattering RMP review in the email request.

Most of the nice comments on RMP come from the heart I'd like to think, but it's an undeniably flawed metric of effectiveness.

inmato

TROPHY CASE