arvearve

Mathematics: What do grad students in math do all day?

by Yasha Berchenko-Kogan

A lot of math grad school is reading books and papers and trying to understand what's going on. The difficulty is that reading math is not like reading a mystery thriller, and it's not even like reading a history book or a New York Times article.

The main issue is that, by the time you get to the frontiers of math, the words to describe the concepts don't really exist yet. Communicating these ideas is a bit like trying to explain a vacuum cleaner to someone who has never seen one, except you're only allowed to use words that are four letters long or shorter.

What can you say?

masak

class Constraint {
    has Real %.coefficients;
    has Real $.sum = 0;
}

sub unknown($unknown) {
    return Constraint.new( :coefficients{ $unknown => 1 } );
}

multi infix:<+>(Constraint $l, Constraint $r) {

istepanov

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8

"""
Search longest common substrings using generalized suffix trees built with Ukkonen's algorithm

Author: Ilya Stepanov <code at ilyastepanov.com>

(c) 2013
"""

xee5ch

#!/bin/env ruby

require 'rexml/document'
require 'digest/md5'

xml = File.read('ff-passwords-export.xml')
doc = REXML::Document.new(xml)

head = ""
foot = ""

winterz

#/bin/sh -f

# things to do for travis-ci in the before_install section

if ( test "`uname -s`" = "Darwin" )
then
  #cmake v2.8.12 is installed on the Mac workers now
  #brew update
  #brew install cmake
  echo

krzyzanowskim

// Playground - noun: a place where people can play

import Foundation

typealias Byte = UInt8

protocol GenericIntegerType: IntegerType {
    init(_ v: Int)
    init(_ v: UInt)
    init(_ v: Int8)

MattOates

#!/usr/bin/env perl6
use v6;
use Stats;

#Tim's original times:
#primes-inline-loop(1000) ran in 2.425 seconds (σ = 0.213 seconds).
#primes-inline-loop-upto-sqrt(1000) ran in 2.311 seconds (σ = 0.131 seconds).
#primes-inline-loop-upto-int-sqrt(1000) ran in 2.274 seconds (σ = 0.161).

sub bench($name, &code) {

bishboria

These links no longer work. Springer have pulled the free plug.

Graduate texts in mathematics

duplicates = multiple editions

A Classical Introduction to Modern Number Theory, Kenneth Ireland Michael Rosen

A Classical Introduction to Modern Number Theory, Kenneth Ireland Michael Rosen

coffeemug

- Inexplicable perversity of human nature.
- The clever machinations of MongoDB's marketing people.
- The AGPL license killed it.
- We spent too long development before monetizing.
- Bad performance.
- Numeric types limited to a 64-bit `float`.
- Great product, but didn't/couldn't translate to revenue.
- Bad business model.
- Failure in timezones/timestamp nuances.

timvisee

Falsehoods programmers believe about time

This is a compiled list of falsehoods programmers tend to believe about working with time.

Don't re-invent a date time library yourself. If you think you understand everything about time, you're probably doing it wrong.

Falsehoods

• There are always 24 hours in a day.
• February is always 28 days long.
• Any 24-hour period will always begin and end in the same day (or week, or month).