29 posts
Maths professors be like " Oh no class we have only three minutes left but it's okay it's fine we can just prove a tiny little theorem" and then proceeds to prove the longest most abhorrent and repugnant theorem ever know to mankind.
A video can have a log scale that's misaligned with both the time AND space axes.
Log Alignment [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Distorted bar graph on top of gray log scale lines in the background that are somewhat tilted, with the lower ends on the left]
[Caption below the panel:] There's actually no rule in math that says your log scales have to be aligned with your graph axes.
girl math this. girl math that. put some RESPECT on their names
(pictured: Emmy Noether; Sof'ja Vasil'evna Kovalevskaja; Katherine Johnson; Maryam Mirzakhani)
Gotta love mathematicians for never being able to name concepts normally
It's so funny to me that people think of Math/Mathematicians as being hyper-logical and rational. Like, have you seen some of the wild things hiding in the Math?
Did you know there are non-computable numbers?? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant)
Did you know that there are things that are true, but we can't prove them??? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)
Did you know that we can prove that something exists, and yet never actually figure out what that thing is?? (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/NonconstructiveProof.html)
Math is crazy. Math is wild. Math hardly makes sense, and when you think you understand the weirdest parts of it, everyone who hears you explain it to thinks you're a gibbering lunatic.
"In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them." - von Neumann
(please share more unhinged math with me, i want to see more scary math)
It's so funny to me that people think of Math/Mathematicians as being hyper-logical and rational. Like, have you seen some of the wild things hiding in the Math?
Did you know there are non-computable numbers?? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant)
Did you know that there are things that are true, but we can't prove them??? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)
Did you know that we can prove that something exists, and yet never actually figure out what that thing is?? (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/NonconstructiveProof.html)
Math is crazy. Math is wild. Math hardly makes sense, and when you think you understand the weirdest parts of it, everyone who hears you explain it to thinks you're a gibbering lunatic.
"In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them." - von Neumann
(please share more unhinged math with me, i want to see more scary math)
My favorite example of girl math is when David Hilbert and Albert Einstein couldn't solve how energy conservation worked in general relativity, so Hilbert asked Emmy Noether about it and she solved it for them.
Here's the link to the video
👏 SAY 👏 IT 👏 LOUDER 👏
In the remote Arctic almost 30 years ago, a group of Inuit middle school students and their teacher invented the Western Hemisphere’s first new number system in more than a century. The “Kaktovik numerals,” named after the Alaskan village where they were created, looked utterly different from decimal system numerals and functioned differently, too. But they were uniquely suited for quick, visual arithmetic using the traditional Inuit oral counting system, and they swiftly spread throughout the region. Now, with support from Silicon Valley, they will soon be available on smartphones and computers—creating a bridge for the Kaktovik numerals to cross into the digital realm.
Today’s numerical world is dominated by the Hindu-Arabic decimal system. This system, adopted by almost every society, is what many people think of as “numbers”—values expressed in a written form using the digits 0 through 9. But meaningful alternatives exist, and they are as varied as the cultures they belong to.
Continue Reading
My latest cartoon for New Scientist
“Suppose, god forbid, that you find yourself as a physicist…”
I love my pure lecturers
this equation is NOT cute. numbers actually hate being under a square root symbol and it distresses them
The thing about the philosophy of mathematics is that there's no articulable position so absurd that some influential mathematician hasn't genuinely held to it. You 100% cannot troll these people; you could walk up to a mathematician and say "I'm a radical finitist, I reject the existence of all numbers larger than 1", and not only would that turn out to be a real thing, some maniac has worked out how to construct set theory under its constraints.
let pi=9
Geologist: I do more math than you might think
Chemist: I mean, chemical equations are basically mathematical equations. If you think about it (I also do math math)
Physicist: Oh, yeah, it’s all math but we just handwave it
Mathematician: YOU DO WHAT!?
Quantum Physicist: *regularly does math that is literally beyond human comprehension* *now resides in a higher plane of existence*
Engineer: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL DIE
Military Scientist: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL SURVIVE
Topologist: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL BE MOSTLY UNAFFECTED
Philosopher: But what even IS math, really? No seriously, what is it?
Organic Chemist: I kinda forgot how to do math, to be honest
Biologist: I literally only chose this field so I wouldn’t have to do as much math. I love stamp collecting
Biostatistician: wtf
Problem: Maths (& Physics) have too many cases where a symbol is used, confusingly, to mean multiple different things, leading to ambiguity and headaches. Sensible solution: Use a key or just simply clarify the meaning in context, so v here is velocity, or v here is an arbitrary vector, or v here is specifically final velocity, or v here is the harmonic function for the complex part of a complex function f(z) for the purposes of the Cauchy-Riemann & Laplacian equations, or v here is the potential V(x) differentiated with respect to time (yes i have seen this once, it was disgusting). My solution: add new characters. invent new scripts. steal syllabaries, acquire abjads, and abduct alphabets until we have enough squiggly lines to give literally everything its own unique symbol. This will help nobody and ruin everything. I will not rest until I am doing theoretical physics with these bad boys:
[Image ID: The 120 base Sitelen Pona of Toki Pona. They are simple, black and white, cartoonish, almost child-like drawings that act as logographic characters for the base words of the conlang Toki Pona. Each one has its corresponding name/word in Latin script beneath. End ID] Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
My favorite example of girl math is when David Hilbert and Albert Einstein couldn't solve how energy conservation worked in general relativity, so Hilbert asked Emmy Noether about it and she solved it for them.
Things my extremely Italian physics professor has said:
“If you are walking in the woods nearby Chernobyl, you will probably be fine. But if you pick something up off the ground and eat it, you will die of radiation poisoning. Of course you may die if you eat things from the ground in other places, also, but likely not of radiation.”
“Unfortunately there is nothing I can teach you that will prevent you dying if there is on your house a hydrogen bomb. That is a politician problem. If any of you are president later, please do not hydrogen bomb my house.”
“Radioactivity could perhaps be used by terrorists, but it has not yet. Likely this is because terrorists do not study much physics.”
“Why is it that physics graduate students cannot make a nuclear bomb? It is not that they do not want to. They simply have not the money to buy the materials. Or anything else.”
one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become
i cant find NEARLY enough radiation themed blinkes so i made some myself
(make on blinkies.cafe)
Michael Collins