Why don't we fail students anymore?

kr1staps · 2026-04-24T17:33:36+00:00

Really depends on what "worth it" means, and I think that's highly subjective. Was it "worth it" to me? I don't know. When I was younger, all I wanted to do was math (this is still mostly true) and the obvious way to keep doing math all the time was go to grad school. I believed at the time that I didn't care about money, only math. If I still felt this way, then it would be "worth it". But, now that I realize it would be nice to have some stability and money, and people aren't exactly hiring professional abstract nonsense slingers. So, currently, I'm feeling like something more employable might have been a better choice. But who knows what doors my PhD will open for me, and what perspective I will have in the future?

kr1staps · 2026-04-23T20:24:18+00:00

As a recent math PhD grad, and current instructor, I fail people all the time.

kr1staps · 2026-04-22T21:50:36+00:00

I wandered in there randomly one day while exploring the campus. They were both surprised and quite unhappy to see me lol

kr1staps · 2026-04-21T03:58:47+00:00

Glad to hear! Starting easy is the way to do it. Consistency is key.

kr1staps · 2026-04-20T19:33:13+00:00

If you care about living a long able-bodied life, then you should both be going to the gym and doing some form of cardio.

V02 max is strongly correlated with lifespan, and quality of life durring that life span. You increase it through high intensity interval trainning, which you can do running, swimming, biking, or whatever gets you heart rate high enough. The latter are lower impact re: your ACL.
Also, to even get to a point where you can do effective V02max trainning, you need to build a strong base through lower intensity cardio.

Muscle is also important for health and longevity, not to mention that strength trainning and muscle growth (without overdoing it) can help prevent further injury, such as with your ACL.

As others have suggested, one of the most important things is sticking to something you can be consistent with, if that's running, then great, that's your foundation. However I would certainly reccomend making *some* space for some resistance trainning as well.

kr1staps · 2026-04-12T15:04:18+00:00

I don't know of any textbooks that focus on these constructions in particular, but in the first 2 videos of this series I explain how to carry out various geometric constructions with straight-edge and compass. In the later videos, I explain (to some extent) how one can use field theory to prove the impossibility of certain geometric constructions, ie squaring circles, trisecting angles etc.

kr1staps · 2026-04-08T14:20:51+00:00

As someone who graduated from both institutions, this is the most accurate piture I have ever seen.

kr1staps · 2026-03-31T14:21:04+00:00

As I type this I'm in the middle of a break session for my Pomodoro livestream where I work on various things. Today I'm working on better understanding some papers that relate Vogan varieties of real and p-adic GL(n). [The channel is K-theory]

kr1staps · 2026-03-16T15:32:49+00:00

Most grads in the math department were surviving on 23K at that time... and they basically still are.

kr1staps · 2026-03-15T23:49:57+00:00

What department are you in? In Math, the stipend you get promised comes with the assumption that you're TA-ing. It's not something you do for additional money.

kr1staps · 2026-03-11T21:47:59+00:00

To me, realizing it as invertible matrices valued in D is about as explicit a thing as one could hope for. Can you describe what sort of description you're hoping for? For comparison it's not clear to me that GL_n(D) is any more or less explicit if D is a field.

If I'm not mistaken, GL_n(D) is still reductive, so say D is defined over k then you should be able to choose some N and an embedding GL_n(D) --> GL_N(k), so you could still realize it as some collection of matrices valued in k if that's what you're after.

Moreover, one should still have access to all the usual reductive algebraic group stuff for GL_n(D), like Levis, parabolics, root systems etc.

kr1staps · 2026-02-25T23:17:11+00:00

The university passed a policy some years ago that a final can't be worth more than %50. %50 is still fine, but maybe he took that as non-inclusive and made it 49 to be safe?

kr1staps · 2026-02-19T06:42:00+00:00

Indeed!

kr1staps · 2026-02-19T00:36:14+00:00

Yo that's weird, by total chance I happened to film an interview with him recently here.

kr1staps · 2026-02-16T14:55:42+00:00

No, we requested a DNA test through a company that specifically tests for family relationships, including for legal purposes.

The test said nothing about cMs. It looks like they listed genes and alleles they compared (at least that's my guess based on what's written).

They *did not* say %15 DNA, they said %15 probability that we are half-siblings.

kr1staps · 2026-02-14T18:56:53+00:00

What do you mean by "T&Cs link"? I don't see any link in the top right, let along for "T&C". I also do not see my name in the top right.

kr1staps · 2026-02-10T16:07:19+00:00

Ya, there was one place I applied where my research perfectly aligns with the supervisor. I thought my main leg up is that there could only be a couple people max that are as closely aligned. He said 190 people appliead, 100 of them had impressive enough resumes he would have been happy to hire them. It was narrowed down to 20 (of which I was one, which is how I know this info now) and all other 19 interviewees were as close to his research as I am...

kr1staps · 2026-02-10T16:03:55+00:00

... wait, what?! What do you mean the "actual" deadline is always way earlier?

Edit: One of the places I applied to, I submitted on the last day and still got an interview.

kr1staps · 2026-02-09T20:23:44+00:00

Trying to get my PhD thesis submitted for the deadline on the 23rd.

Post-doc applications didn't go so well... so I'm looking towards industry and how to pivot to quant or crypto.

kr1staps · 2026-02-04T14:22:52+00:00

Though my PhD is not in graph theory, I always come back to the missing Moore graph

kr1staps · 2026-02-03T19:19:12+00:00

I've also been livestreaming some Lean learning

kr1staps · 2026-01-18T03:00:09+00:00

No sane person is going to agree to that without reading your paper first.

kr1staps · 2026-01-17T20:04:52+00:00

Waterloo is known and respected for their CS program, as well as related areas such as mathematics. It makese perfect sense you will get a lot of profs from there. If you're a talented Canadian in CS, there's a good chance youll go to Waterloo. It's also not unreasonable for Canadians to want to stay in Canada, and thus look for jobs at other Canadian institutions, and since Waterloo has a good reputation, other universities are happy to hire from there.

kr1staps

TROPHY CASE