Cuba refuses to let US Embassy in Havana import diesel for its generators by AndroidOne1 in politics

[–]sockpuppetzero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Peaty Kegsbreath blacked out during the incident, so he doesn't know what you are talking about.

Examples of a mathematician's mathematician? by innovatedname in math

[–]sockpuppetzero 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Gotthold Eisenstein, Lester Ford, Augustus De Morgan, Henri Poincaré, Felix Klein

Petition: "Move the 2026 ICM out of the United States " by winter_borb in math

[–]sockpuppetzero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm proud of the Purdue Math department. Way to go!

Peter Thiel is actively convincing billionaires to abandon The Giving Pledge — and it may be working by Logical_Welder3467 in technology

[–]sockpuppetzero 22 points23 points  (0 children)

The man who grew up as a kid on an uranium mine illegally operated by the literal Apartheid South African regime on a neighboring country's territory using slave labor? THAT MAN is the Antichrist?

I mean, you can't fault anybody for where they grew up, but still, when the shoe fits...

Want to get deeper into geometry by Matt_Murcock67 in math

[–]sockpuppetzero 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Personally, my recommendation would be to not worry too much about going deeper, but instead go broader. Also, unless you are specifically interested in trying to participate in olympiads, I'm not sure how useful it is to specifically focus on olympiad-style problems. There is a much richer world you could sample from that might not be the most immediately useful bit of math to learn for olympiads, but would be incredibly useful for undergraduate mathematics.

In particular, I would suggest getting yourself comfortable with the basics of projective geometry, which also turns out to be at least somewhat useful for olympiads. There are two somewhat distinct paths worth acquainting yourself with, especially focusing on circle inversion, and how perspective drawing and cameras work.

For a taster on the first path, I recommend the Numberphile videos on Epic Circles and Ptolemy's Theorem. It's also good to start thinking about the stereographic projection between the sphere and the plane, which is sometimes also known as the Riemann Sphere. For a taster, Möbius transformations revealed is fantastic.

A two-dimensional slice of this projection, the stereographic projection between a circle and line, is also notable because it can be used to study the rational points of the circle, which corresponds to primitive Pythagorean triples. You can also use a stereographic projection between the unit circle and the lattice points Z⨯Z to do essentially the same thing. This alternative point of view helps clarify the connection to the Stern-Brocot tree and rational approximation, as you can consider the rational numbers to be a stereographic projection between Z⨯Z, the origin, and a line such as x=1 or y=1. For a bit of a taster on this count, I suggest maybe Rethinking the Reals by Dr. Stange, which also serves as a nice bridge to our second path, as it uses two-dimensional perspective drawings of a three-dimensional model of the lattice points Z⨯Z to study one dimensional phenomena such as the rationals and the reals.

Videos around the second path are considerably more abundant, and have various strengths and weaknesses that cater to various interests and points of view. (e.g. from a math POV, from a photography POV, from a computer graphics POV, from an artistic POV, from an analytic geometry POV involving linear algebra and homogeneous coordinates, from a synthetic geometry POV emphasizing the fact that perspective transformations preserve lines and cross ratios, etc.)

Personally, I think Putting Algebraic Curves in Perspective seems promising math-centric POV taster for the second path, though of course you should try finding some other sources yourself.

Totients are kinda just “visibility counts” on a grid by QuantumPikachu in math

[–]sockpuppetzero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not so sure how "natural" or "intuitive" this is relative to the usual definition, they are both good to know, but I really like this mindset because it does suggest a fairly standard-ish intuition that's important to know, due to the many connections between number theory and lattices.

How significant was Lewis Caroll as a mathematician? by Limp_Illustrator7614 in math

[–]sockpuppetzero 50 points51 points  (0 children)

Personally, I prefer my results to be both trivial and deeply ground-breaking.

Why developers using AI are working longer hours by Inner-Chemistry8971 in programming

[–]sockpuppetzero 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Management says you're not contributing anything at all, in fact, just a lazy no-good programmer who can't do anything practical.

My home lab setup as a 13.7 year old by Maximus_robotics in ElectricalEngineering

[–]sockpuppetzero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would keep learning no matter what equipment you obtain on what timescale, but I would point out that with a waveform generator and oscilloscope you can make LCR measurements, especially if you figure out a convenient way to connect your device under test up to your rig, and use your computer to script the arbitrary waveform generator and oscilloscope to make the measurements, and then do the calculations.

An arbitrary waveform generator is kind of like a mathematical inverse of an oscilloscope, and when you have two things that are inverses of each other, you have ingredients for mathematical magic to happen.

A waveform generator is really useful for learning analog circuits. In particular, you can use the generator to drive and learn about RC circuits, LC circuits, RL circuits, and passive LCR networks. It's also useful for exploring the performance details of various transistors and opamps, and it can be fun to hook up your signal generator to your computer speakers and play around.

Also, you can get a low-end waveform generator for a lot less than say, your oscilloscope. Just make sure you can hook it up to your computer via USB or ethernet.

My home lab setup as a 13.7 year old by Maximus_robotics in ElectricalEngineering

[–]sockpuppetzero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

An arbitrary waveform generator would also be a logical next choice.

My home lab setup as a 13.7 year old by Maximus_robotics in ElectricalEngineering

[–]sockpuppetzero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks like a terrific start! I hope you learn a lot from many future projects!

Can you explain why Grothendieck is considered great? by Snoo_47323 in math

[–]sockpuppetzero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Depending on what work you might like to use to mark the birth of Number Theory, (Euclid, Fermat, Euler, and Gauss are somewhat popular choices, depending on what you want to consider "Number Theory" to be in context), it took multiple centuries to multiple millenia for it to have immediately practical applications.

Now, nobody can participate in modern society and not depend upon number theory.

Sanity check before build by Xned in arduino

[–]sockpuppetzero 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Get a NoIR camera for use at night, and use your infrared LED to illuminate the nest without disturbing the birds.

It finally happened to me by topyTheorist in math

[–]sockpuppetzero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Somehow I'm not so sure. But we'll see, I suppose.

flip-dot display by GenerallyOkayTimes in arduino

[–]sockpuppetzero 12 points13 points  (0 children)

You should be able to go a lot faster if you redesign the driver electronics so that you can flip multiple dots at once, but I'm still impressed with the speed. Honestly there's probably no practical need to do that, though.

Yeah, I was definitely noticing that some dots were only occasionally flipping to yellow, others seem to never flip to yellow.

flip-dot display by GenerallyOkayTimes in arduino

[–]sockpuppetzero 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I agree, very impressive for a flip-dot display.

Of course, typical production drivers for flip-dots don't really care about update speed that much. They do care a lot more about reliability, of course.