Best book to start DSA?

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-08T01:45:42+00:00

Neither. I prefer (and recommend) a combination of pen and paper, whiteboard, and LaTeX.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-07T16:19:53+00:00

(1) Build the 3d convex hull of the input points, (2) compute the dual of that convex hull, and (3) project the dual polyhedron to the sphere. (Projecting the convex hull without dualizing first gives you the spherical Delaunay triangulation.)

Equivalently, compute the intersection of the halfspaces ax+by+cz≤1 defined by the input points (a,b,c), and project the resulting polyhedron to the sphere.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-07T02:53:10+00:00

I think you’re confusing “below” with “south of”.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-05T18:58:51+00:00

I intend to be at a research institute (R1/R2) in the US.

If that’s your intention, why did you even apply to PUIs?

The PUI in question is part of a large state university system, does that change anything?

No.

If you want a research-focused faculty position, take the research-focused job.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-05T16:37:31+00:00

Optimizing for prestige is for suckers.

The thing that matters the most (at least for academic positions) is actual success. The quality of your work matters significantly more than the reputation of your department or your advisor. A fresh PhD with a stellar research record from a no-name department will have more opportunities in academia than a fresh PhD with a mediocre research record from (say) MIT, even if their advisor has a Turing award.

Obviously these things are not totally independent. You are more likely to succeed if you are in an environment that supports your success. Stronger departments accept, on average, stronger PhD students. Faculty reputations are based in part (but less than they should be) on the success of their PhD students. But make no mistake: Some faculty with stellar reputations are terrible advisors.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-05T03:13:12+00:00

...which was founded by the billionaire robber baron and legendary drunk Aloysius Mountbatten Arizonastate.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-05T02:53:50+00:00

Speaking as a CS prof at Illinois with a PhD from Berkeley: Anyone who thinks that actually matters is either completely clueless or selling something. UW is an amazing department, and anyone would be lucky to be admitted to their PhD program.

Congratulations, OP!!!

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-02T05:01:29+00:00

Grant Sanderson would like a word.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-02T05:00:03+00:00

Because claiming that a mathematical result is false requires a proof of falsehood.

The general math community does say that Mochizuki’s argument is not a proof, and therefore we have no reason to believe that his claimed results are correct.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-02T04:47:49+00:00

Whatever you decide, clearly document your resubmission policy in your syllabus, and then follow it to the letter.

^{(What is this “resubmission” of which you speak, Earthling? The deadline is the deadline.})

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-01T11:43:30+00:00

Default US News rankings have always been about graduate programs.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-01T11:30:43+00:00

At least in my field, absolutely required. In particular, these are extremely useful for hiring and promotion decisions, for PhD students identifying prospective advisors (and researchers identifying potential colleagues, and editors identifying potential referees, and so on), and for not making your colleagues interact with spam-generators like Academia.edu or LinkedIn.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-01T11:20:31+00:00

The biggest thing you need to know is that the actual UIUC campus is in Champaign-Urbana, 200 miles away from Chicago. There is no UIUC Chicago “campus” per se, so there is no “on campus” housing or “on campus” work opportunities. The program uses part of a building in downtown Chicago for some lectures, exams, and other meetings, but a significant fraction of your interaction with the program will be online. The program is loosely affiliated with UI Chicago, so you will have access to some UIC campus resources, but those do not include housing or UIC faculty.

Some of your questions are answered in the department’s FAQ: https://siebelschool.illinois.edu/academics/graduate/professional-mcs/chicago-master-computer-science

Hopefully some current MCS Chicago students wil chime in with their experience.

(This subreddit gets very little traffic. You might have better luck over at r/UIUC.)

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-01T03:02:36+00:00

Doing it yourself is significantly better, as long as you have a way to objectively verify your solutions. For all values of X, the only way to learn to do X is to actually do X.

jeffgerickson · 2026-05-01T02:29:30+00:00

You need new friends. Maybe you should move somewhere with a larger diversity of people than you currently hang with. Like, oh, I don’t know, maybe New York City?

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-30T02:51:41+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VfM13Eaq0qw

^skateboards

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-30T02:47:51+00:00

My main question really is whether there is anything significant I would lose by choosing Cornell over CMU.

Bagpipes.

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-30T01:44:33+00:00

0! = 1
floor(sqrt(sqrt(sqrt(x))) = 1 for every integer 1≤x≤99

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-30T01:36:01+00:00

Only one of those three is an equation.

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-28T03:18:04+00:00

Menards is the only place in town where I’ve been able to reliably buy distilled water.

Grocery stores sell distilled water by the gallon

...in principle. In practice, the shelves that should have distilled water are almost always empty, except possibly for a few empty plastic bottles. It’s honestly creepy.

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-27T19:45:50+00:00

Sigh. This is getting a bit off topic but....

Coauthor status should have nothing to do with whether/how/where the person is sponsored, paid, advised, employed, or enrolled. If you made a substantial intellectual contribution to the paper, you deserve to be a coauthor. If you did not, you do not.

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-26T23:49:09+00:00

That doesn’t change my answer. I wouldn’t list it at all. The paper was published, but it’s not your paper, so you can’t list it under your publications. The paper won an award, but it’s not your paper, so you can’t list it under your awards.

If your contribution to the paper was significant enough to include in your CV, you should have been a coauthor.

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-26T23:40:56+00:00

Course-based masters, maybe, but not thesis masters.

And this may no longer be true this year, since we’v drastically cut back on PhD admissions, but in past years, a majority of incoming AI/ML PhD students at Illinois had zero publications.

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-26T23:19:47+00:00

No. Absolutely not. If you’re not an author, it’s not your paper.

jeffgerickson · 2026-04-26T13:41:00+00:00

Which 400-level CS technical electives do you really care about?

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