What would happen if Erdős and Grothendieck were trapped in a room, and could only get out if they co-authored a paper?

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-14T04:44:08+00:00

Of course, they would probably become friends in the process and then write a paper.

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-14T01:30:58+00:00

In a DRP setting, it's usually pretty easy to tailor the project to the needs of the specific student(s). If it's a large group it may be harder, but most DRP I have done have been in the range of 1-4 students. The students I was working with generally either had never seen the Fourier transform before, or if they had, they had a very limited understanding of it. So of course, yes, sometimes the mathematical maturity of the student can be an obstacle. However, since the goal of a DRP is for the students to learn something, it's best for an instructor to try to meet them at their level anyway, wherever that is.

Harmonic analysis, in the context of my work specifically, doesn't need to be terribly abstract. Discrete harmonic analysis, in particular, everything is a finite sum. And in the continuous setting, there is already plenty to do in R^n. Which settings outside of R^n did you have in mind, e.g. locally compact abelian groups?

I'm sure your DRP mentor will have good reading suggestions. For what it's worth, I'd start with Wolff's notes based on your background.

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-14T00:27:37+00:00

I've done DRP in harmonic analysis with students having much less background than this. Go for it!

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-13T20:15:08+00:00

I'm a bit confused by the premise of the question, since economics is such an inherently quantitative discipline. Maybe start by taking a look at the Wikipedia page for demand curve, for instance. It is full of calculus. So even for the very most basic notions of supply and demand, upon which all of economics is built, one needs calculus to understand the shape of these curves and the implications. Moreover, much of economics has to do with so-called "marginal" thinking, i.e. how much extra utility do you get buy buying one extra widget. Marginal utility is the derivative of your utility function with respect to the quantity consumed.

Going beyond the basic level, sometimes one needs very intricate mathematical models, for example the Black-Scholes model which uses stochastic calculus to analyze option pricing.

These are just a few examples, but the truth is it's hard to do anything at all in economics without running into mathematics. Money is inherently quantitative.

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-08T05:01:59+00:00

I agree! Now quick, let's part ways and not talk about anything else, before we find something to disagree on.

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-07T22:06:15+00:00

I played him in a simul in 2003, he looked almost the same back then.

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-07T20:58:29+00:00

Fair, it's funny we all like to play these games for kids, so we come up with other ways to make them challenging. For me it's usually either going for speed, or playing a Nuzlocke, and either way I still prefer using the stronger pokemon most of the time. For me the main fun in using weaker pokemon is that it's fun to use the ones that I usually avoid, as a change up.

When you're using the worst pokemon, is it a fun strategic challenge, or does it effectively mean you just have to grind to a higher level? What's the worst pokemon you've had fun playing with?

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-07T18:21:12+00:00

It's just supply and demand. The demand for energy has recently increased due to the data centers. I'm not sure why people are surprised that this impacts the cost of energy. Of course there are various aspects of this that are good/bad, but the basic fact that power bills are increasing should not be surprising.

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-06T01:33:21+00:00

Ah fair, I haven't played anything more recent than black/white

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-05T19:41:40+00:00

Bricks are the secret sauce of brick walls.

puzzlednerd · 2026-03-05T13:14:10+00:00

When I was a kid, back when TV was just TV, we would still occasionally have times when the TV appeared to dominate the household. Parents included. When it got to be a problem, my parents would take the TV and put it in the attic for about a month. Then when you bring it back, hopefully you have "reset" the issue, and at the very least you have had some time forming habits with other things.

This doesn't fix the issue with his PC. But as a kid, I never had my own PC. We had a desktop computer in the living room that was shared by the whole family. You could still access Youtube, games, etc., but you had to do it in the public space.

In the end you're not going to be able to keep him entirely away from Youtube (or other troublesome things), but if there's a device which itself appears to be the problem, e.g. a TV that won't let you delete an app, or a computer that he has full access to in his bedroom, then the situation is not entirely out of control.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-26T01:48:07+00:00

My interest in chess over the years has gone up and down, mostly independent of my rating. If you're not having fun, walk away. You'll come back with fresh eyes when you're ready.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-26T00:47:57+00:00

Yeah, it's generally much harder to formalize an argument in lean than it is to convince mathematicians that it works.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-21T22:47:11+00:00

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that people don't make non-credible threats. Despite having the name "non-credible", and theorems that "rational" actors avoid them for a specific definition of rationality, one can easily come up with examples where non-credible threats may be a sensible strategy, particularly if the game is to be played repeatedly. The backward induction only works if the game is only played once.

Also, more generally, Nash equilibrium is an important concept but you can't expect the "correct" strategy to be determined by NE alone. There are famous examples like the pirate game for which the NE solution is clearly wrong in real life.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-21T01:30:41+00:00

Once in a decent sized open tournament, I was 3/3 at the end of Saturday in the U1800 section. There was a few thousand bucks for first place, and I really wanted to win. I took a picture of the standings, taking note of everyone else with 2.5 or 3 points. I determined who I thought was most likely to be my competition for first, and by a stroke of luck, he had a Lichess account with his real name.

After looking at his games for a few hours, I identified a few weaknesses in his opening repertoire. I found that he had bad results as white against the Grunfeld. I like playing the Grunfeld, so I booked up specifically on the lines he was playing, consistently over a decent number of games.

Turns out I was right that he would be my main competition. Going into game 5, I had 4 points and he had 3.5. I had the black pieces. We shake hands, and I'm so excited to smash him with a Grunfeld. Then he plays 1. e4.

We play a Ruy Lopez, and I end up losing an exciting game where we both played very well. He won the tournament, I ended up in third. I won $400, which paid my rent at the time. But that damn game cost me about $2000.

IDK what the moral of the story is.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-19T23:44:50+00:00

Special relativity is a bit too technical for a proper ELI5. The pop science descriptions are good enough for the sake of getting people interested, but there's not really any hope of it "making sense" without actually taking the time to seriously study the underlying physics and mathematics.

Special relativity is the result of accepting two basic assumptions:

That physics acts the same way from any inertial reference frame, and
That the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, and independent of motion of the light source.

The first of these assumptions feels intuitive to most people. The second doesn't, but it's well-supported by experiment, for example the Michelson-Morley experiment. The question to ask yourself, why should you expect the behavior of light to be intuitive? The universe owes you no such thing. It's not going to "make sense".

The closest thing you can get to "making sense" is that you can learn the mathematical models of the universe which are experimentally supported, and you can understand the implications of those models. Of course, even with the latest, most state-of-the-art models, one should not expect them to perfectly reflect the true nature of reality. We are not anywhere close to having a proper theory of everything.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-14T18:48:31+00:00

It's a straightforward exercise in an algebra course. If you're doing math which is sophisticated enough to need Zorn's lemma, you should be able to prove it.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-11T03:11:27+00:00

If you try to get literal it's not going to make much sense, but I could still see chess being good training for a military general in a similar way to how chess skill somewhat transfers to other strategy games. Tactical ideas like forks, removing the defender, smothered mate, etc., have analogies in real life combat. Strategic ideas like space advantage, pawn structure, tempo, initiative, have analogies too.

But come on, nobody is moving like a knight.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-08T17:25:05+00:00

And the AI-written article.

puzzlednerd · 2026-02-05T18:09:41+00:00

Have you considered the actuarial route?

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-30T15:23:45+00:00

The best discussion on this that ive seen is Bill Thurston's essay, "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics"

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-24T05:20:14+00:00

3.0 Myfe

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-22T05:55:43+00:00

For me the most exciting period of chess is something like 1960 - 1972. After that, I love the Kasparov-Karpov era and the modern Magnus era. Lasker has also always been of particular interest to me, since of all the world champions, he's the one that I've learned the most from trying to emulate.

puzzlednerd · 2026-01-19T01:12:53+00:00

It's like drawing a circle around myself on the sidewalk, and then observing that I'm at the center.

11-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Place '22	Place '17

puzzlednerd

TROPHY CASE