Sum 1 to N

Sorry about not making any posts in awhile. I found a place that gives me that green papery stuff in exchange for my participation in a chair-sitting competition. It goes like this. If I can sit in a chair for eight hours, tapping my fingers against lightly-springed buttons according to certain specified rules, I get to take home some of that green papery stuff. And then I get to trade it for foodstuffs, propellant for my vehicle, and many other luxuries.

OOH OOH OOH! And I have a whiteboard. A really big whiteboard. I puts maf on it. Hehehe…

Anyways, I’ve had to adjust my sleep schedule a bit, which is why the posts are lacking. I’ll get right back on that.

(Edit: The video’s been taken down by YouTube. Whoops)

This video is pretty lulz, as the kiddies say.

I wonder what happens if you were to, say, make a censorable image using those censor bars. Would that, too, be censored?

Just let it happen..

Y’know, after an academic year, one feels, well… less than academic.

A housemate of mine in College Park has what might medically be termed ‘leaky bucket syndrome’. After even a full week’s absence from ‘Teh Learnin’, knowing full well that a whole summer’s worth of procrastination awaits him, everything just starts leaking out. He literally does not recognize the content of a topic he studied a mere week or two earlier. And he is, or aspires to be at least, an engineer of some sort (cringe). I’m sure I’m exaggerating a tad here, but still.

Aside from descrying the wellspring of my life’s sustenance (also known widely as a very emo way of describing the process of finding a job. And yes, I realize that emo jokes are no longer in style. And I’m sure you realize that I realize. How meta do you want to go here, huh?), I think that leaky bucket syndrome is my topmost worry.

I know, mid-swing into the semester, especially what might be my last semester of higher education ever, I don’t feel like picking up the dense manual of obscure cuneiform fuck-all that is a mathematics textbook ever again. But right now, at the end of the gauntlet, with no foreseeable intellectual challenges ahead, I can feel ‘teh smart’ draining out of me. I mean, just today it took me a whole fifteen minutes to solve a simple freaking 3 by 3 eigenvalue problem. Worrisome, innit? How the hell was I supposed to remember that symmetric matrices have orthogonal eigenvectors? (All you non-math people are probably saying to yourselves right now: “Yeah.. uh huh.. yeah I always forget that.. Yep.. *cough*”. Well think how I feel, bitches!)

So I have two general strategies going forward. One is to read lots of science and math blogs. But that’s too easy. I already do that. So, checkity-check. My other strategy, then, is to work my way through five or more pages of a math textbook every single day, preferably on a topic I’ve not explicitly encountered before. That oughta show ‘em! Or something.

So yeah. Anybody have any other suggestions? How do I keep my math skills fresh? Or am I doomed, unless I teach or work in academia, to mathematical-Alzheimer’s-land?

Look what was posted on my online transcript today…

** Degree Information **
COLLEGE OF COMPUTER, MATH & PHYS SCIENCE
Bachelor of Science
Awarded 05/22/08
MATHEMATICS

Muahahaha… Victory!

Yesterday, the University of Maryland College Park officially churned out about fifty or so mathematics undergraduates, one of them being me.

The ungrateful bastard in me couldn’t help snicker at the priestly robes and gewgaw I had to wear (and could not, by university decree, rent or otherwise obtain without buying), sigh repressively at the cramped folding chair lattice I had to sit in for two hours, and squint in disbelief as a Catholic priest uttered the word “God” and the word “grateful” in my presence together within a seven second interval. But okay, yeah, it was pretty exciting.

I was not, as I imagined should happen in such a circumstance, struck in the eye by the corner of a graduation cap. In fact, no one threw their cap. Which has me questioning every movie with a graduation ceremony in it I’ve ever seen. Now that I think about it, nostalgic, coming-of-age pop music didn’t start playing as I descended the stairs of the ceremony building either. Not even a Pachelbel’s Canon. Such a let down.

It feels good though. What am I going to do with myself now? Hmm..

I need to start finding some of that green papery stuff, don’t I? Hrmph.

Hillary Clinton practices her hand gestures
I can has exercise?
OM NOM NOM?

…back to studying…

*Grumble grumble*

*grumble*

Finals..

Projects..

Job applications..

*grumble*

I was reading a book yesterday called The Emergence of Number by J. N. Crossley, and it got me wondering: Is there a way to write any natural number, no matter how large, inside of a fixed finite writing space (say a 1 by 1 cm square) using only a single notational convention?

For example, you could write the number as , and that would be one convention. Or you could write it as , and that would be another. Clearly the first wouldn’t work. It would eventually lead me to a number that runs over the side of my 1 x 1 box. For example, I might get . What about the second? For example, I might get something like . Depending on what the ratio of size of the exponent to the size of the base numeral is, it may be possible to answer yes to my question. There is a practical problem, though. Once you get smaller than the atomic scale, how would you represent the succeeding exponents? Even assuming that you could reduce the size indefinitely, limiting toward zero, this answer seems unsatisfactory. It’s like proposing to make an automobile more aerodynamic by simply shrinking it to the size of a marble. Well, it’s not really useful for driving anymore, so what’s the point?

I wonder, is there a convention which automatically rescales naturally as the value of the number in question increases? Besides the obvious, of course, which is to simply invent a new convention when the number hits the side of the box. My gut feeling is no, such a convention couldn’t exist. Maybe an evolutionary algorithm of some kind would work. But that seems to me to be stretching the rules of the problem–it’s not really deterministic in the everyday sense. I couldn’t rederive such a convention, for instance.

What if we alter the question so that an arbitrary, finite number of conventions can be used? Is it possible then? I don’t think so. We’d have to cycle through the conventions eventually. Even if we take the set of conventions and derive new conventions combinatorially (i.e. cycle once through the conventions one by one, and when you reach the one you started with, combine it some way with a second convention to form a convention .), we’d eventually run out of combinations.

This is giving me a headache, honestly. :p

Honestly, who watches TV anymore when you can watch YouTube instead? Aside from Battlestar Galactica last Friday, I haven’t turned a TV on once in the past three weeks. And here’s another reason to perpetuate that habit.

There’s a bloke on YouTube named Paul Harrison. He’s a former Christian (as of six years or so ago, I believe), and he runs a channel where he discusses his former Christianity, atheism, and intelligent design, and reviews Christian apology books. Take a look see.