I have a possibly unusual question. since I left high school and was no longer being forced to read I completely stopped looking at fiction and other books that are not math textbooks. this is partly because I fucking hated reading as an activity – I have adhd and asd, so not only my attention regulation causes a lot of problems, I also struggle with visualizing what's happening and imagining/undestanding the intentions and mindsets of the characters. now, I am properly medicated so attention isn't as much of an issue anymore and I remember enjoying some of the books I've been forced to go through. I miss reading, overall it had a positive impact on my thinking process, I miss analyzing the human experience, so to speak
I liked Dostoyevsky, Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Huxley, Kafka and some other "philosophified" authors. I also enjoyed war-themed books in general such as all quiet on the western front, and everything related to the soviet union
finally, my question is, what would you recommend for someone with this taste, who also likes math¹, has a hard time with visual imagination and people but enjoys analyzing human experience, who would possibly like to see a represenation of themselves in the characters of the novel? I would love to rebuild my reading habits, but I am lost as to where to start so I don't get discouraged
¹ I included math in here because maybe there is a book about what it's like to be a mathematician (or a scientist of some kind) that give some existentialist vibes or something, if it exists I want to read it lol
"Wow you're so naturally talented!" "You truly are gif-" biting you biting you biting you biting you die die die die I didn't work for thousands of hours to get called naturally talented fuck you fuck you fuck you I wasn't a particularly gifted beginner I just didn't stop doing it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
29 X 2022
another exhausting week finally over! fortunately I have two extra weekend days, so I can rest and do my homework without stressing over it
I found another promising youtube channel about learning. and "insanely difficult subjects" sounds about right when it comes to everything that's happening in math
I wish there was more content about learning math specifically. the tips I see, however good and useful for studying memory-based stuff such as biology or history, don't seem to work for math
for now my best method is to study the theory from the textbook, trying to prove everything on my own or if that fails, working through the proofs, coming up with examples of objects and asking (possibly dumb) questions that I then try to answer. afterwards I proceed to solving exercises
recently I've been studying mainly commutative algebra, in particular the localization
we didn't spend much time discussing local rings so I had to find some useful properties on my own. the whole idea of "local properties" is an interesting one and I definitely want to read more about it
I find it to be much more elegant to study localization through its universal property and exact sequences rather than through calculation on elements. it's funny how you can cheat so many of our homework problems by knowing basics of category theory and a little bit of homological algebra
I wonder if it's possible to learn math using mind maps, never actually tried. here is my attempt at doing that for one of the subjects in complex analysis:
other than studying I had to prepare a presentation for one of my courses
the topics were given to us by the professor so I thought it would be boring and technical, but I got lucky to discuss the possible generalizations of the Jordan theorem
now I'm gonna talk about something more personal
this week has been difficult because my brain doesn't enjoy existing. some days I had so many meltdowns and shutdowns, I could barely think and speak, let alone study difficult subjects in math. it's really disappointing, as I thought it got better after introducing new medication, but apparently I still can't handle time pressure and I break very easily when emotions become overwhelming (which they frequently do). one of the most discouraging parts of a neurodivergent brain is that you can't always say "alright then I'll just work harder" when you see that the situation requires it. you can't, because your brain has a certain threshold of "how much can you take before you snap" and no tips for studying when you're tired can change that. if you try, you'll just have a meltdown and your day is over, the rest of it must be spent regaining your strength and all you can do is hoping that tomorrow will be better
I wish I could always simply enjoy math and see it as an escape route from a confusing world of human interaction and unpredictable emotions, but whenever there is a deadline or grading criteria, I can hardly enjoy it anymore. I know that this is not what it's always gonna be, the further I go the less deadlines and exams we have, so I must wait and one day it might be okey
since june I've been trying to discuss accommodations regarding adhd and autism with my university but the process takes forever and I'm slowly losing hope that I will ever have it easier
nonetheless, I'm willing to do everything to achieve the goal of spending my days alone working on developing some new theory. just a few more years and I might start living the dream
I'm reblogging this to compare it later with 1.A from Hatcher's Algebraic Topology. in that chapter he defines the topology on a graph if anyone else wants to check it out
Intuitively, it seems to me that graphs should be some sort of finite topological space. I mean, topology studies "how spaces are connected to themselves", and a graph represents a finite space of points with all the internal connections mapped out. That sounds topological to me! And of course many people consider the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem to be the "beginning" of topology, and that's a graph theory problem. So graphs should be topological spaces.
Now, I vaguely remember searching for this before and finding out that they aren't, but I decided to investigate for myself. After a bit of thought, it turns out that graphs can't be topological spaces while preserving properties that we would intuitively want. Here's (at least one of the reasons) why:
We want to put some topology on the vertices of our graph such that graph-theoretic properties and topological properties line up—of particular relevance here, we want graph-theoretic connectedness to line up with topological connectedness. But consider the following pair of graphs on four vertices:
On the left is the co-paw graph, and on the right is the cycle graph C_4.
Graph theoretically, the co-paw graph has two connected components, and C_4 has only one. Now consider the subgraph {A, D} of the co-paw graph. Graph theoretically, it is disconnected, and if we want it to also be topologically disconnected, it must by definition be the union of two disjoint open sets. Therefore, in whatever topology we put on this graph, {A} and {D} must be open. The same argument shows that {B} and {C} must be open as well. Therefore the topology on the co-paw graph must be the discrete topology.
Now consider the subgraph {B, D} of C_4. It is disconnected, so again {B} and {D} must be open. Since {A, C} is also disconnected, {A} and {C} must be open. So the topology on C_4 must again be the discrete topology.
But these graphs aren't isomorphic! So they definitely shouldn't have the same topology.
It is therefore impossible to put a topology on the points of a graph such that its graph-theoretic properties line up with its topological properties.
Kind of disappointing TBH.
rb this with ur opinion on this shade of pink:
i'm a math student, currently persuing master's degree. this semester I'm taking courses on complex manifolds, category theory, equivariant cohomology and representation theory
my bachelor's thesis was about my partial result in the knot/link theory. right now I'm finishing that proof and hoping to publish it when (if?) I'm done. my interests include algebraic and geometric topology and the goal for this year is to get to know some algebraic geometry
I post updates of how I'm doing, photos of my ugly notes and sometimes share some study methods that proved to be useful to me
oh and math is my special interest, I take it way too seriously lol
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my posts with study tips:
tips for studying math
tips for studying math part 2: you have an exam but the course is boring
So the exponential function is given by
which evaluated at a real number x gives you the value eˣ, hence the name. There are various ways of extending the above definition, such as to complex numbers, or matrices, or really any structure in which you have multiplication, summation, and division by the values of the factorial function at whatever your standin for the natural numbers is.
For a set A we can do some of these quite naturally. The product of two sets is their Cartesian product, the sum of two sets is their disjoint union. Division and factorial get a little tricky, but in this case they happen to coexist naturally. Given a natural number n, a set that has n! elements may be given by Sym(n), the symmetric group on n points. This is the set of all permutations of {1,...,n}, i.e. invertible functions from {1,...,n} to itself. How do we divide Aⁿ, the set of all n-tuples of elements of A, by Sym(n) in a natural way?
Often when a division-like thing with sets is written like A/E, it is the case that E is an equivalence relation on A. The set of equivalence classes of A under E is then denoted A/E, and called the quotient set of A by E. Another common occurence is when G is a group that acts on A. In this case A/G denotes the set of orbits of elements of A under G. This is a special case of the earlier one, where the equivalence relation is given by 'having the same orbit'. It just so happens that the group Sym(n) acts on naturally on any Aⁿ.
An element of Aⁿ looks like (a[1],a[2],...,a[n]), and a permutation σ: {1,...,n} -> {1,...,n} acts on this tuple by mapping it onto (a[σ(1)],a[σ(2)],...,a[σ(n)]). That is, it changes the order of the entries according to σ. An orbit of such a tuple under the action of Sym(n) is therefore the set of all tuples that have the same elements with multiplicity. We can identify this with the multiset of those elements.
We find that Aⁿ/Sym(n) is the set of all multisubsets of A with exactly n elements with multiplicity. So,
is the set of all finite multisubsets of A. Interestingly, some of the identities that the exponential function satisfies in other contexts still hold. For example, exp ∅ is the set of all finite multisubsets of ∅, so it's {∅}. This is because ∅⁰ has an element, but ∅ⁿ does not for any n > 0. In other words, exp 0 = 1 for sets. Additionally, consider exp(A ⊕ B). Any finite multisubset of A ⊕ B can be uniquely identified with an ordered pair consisting of a multisubset of A and a multisubset of B. So, exp(A + B) = exp(A) ⨯ exp(B) holds as well.
For A = {∗} being any one point set, the set Aⁿ will always have one element: the n-tuple (∗,...,∗). Sym(n) acts trivially on this, so exp({∗}) = {∅} ⊕ {{∗}} ⊕ {{∗∗}} ⊕ {{∗∗∗}} ⊕ ... may be naturally identified with the set of natural numbers. This is the set equivalent of the real number e.
I neglected this blog like hell, sorry
I had a lot of work to do, that's kinda what happened. but I would like to go back to posting regularly, so maybe I could write about something people would want to see?
for now my ideas for posts include
more study tips
a quick intro to moduli functors, since a lot of sources are written in a way that requires advanced algebraic geometry. I could explain the basics using (almost) only commutative algebra
updates on my life and what I've been working on
books recommendations
interesting math problems I encountered recently
if you'd like to see any of that, let me know! and feel free to give me more suggestions in the comments
no fuckin way
hey guys quick question
Artificial intelligence makes accurate sheep counting.
⁕ pure math undergrad ⁕ in love with anything algebraic ⁕
292 posts