The Proof Is Left As An Exercise To The IRS

well, google, one of them is a giant fuckin red dog

ofc that's right, thank you for fact checking!

Me duele la cabeza

req'd by @strictly-script

sure we won't?

text: Abelian't

tips for studying math

I thought I could share what I learned about studying math so far. it will be very subjective with no scientific sources, pure personal experience, hence one shouldn't expect all of this to work, I merely hope to give some ideas

1. note taking

some time ago I stopped caring about making my notes pretty and it was a great decision – they are supposed to be useful. moreover, I try to write as little as possible. this way my notes contain only crucial information and I might actually use them later because finding things becomes much easier. there is no point in writing down everything, a lot of the time it suffices to know where to find things in the textbook later. also, I noticed that taking notes doesn't actually help me remember, I use it to process information that I'm reading, and if I write down too many details it becomes very chaotic. when I'm trying to process as much as possible in the spot while reading I'm better at structuring the information. so my suggestion would be to stop caring about the aesthetics and try to write down only what is the most important (such as definitions, statements of theorems, useful facts)

2. active learning

do not write down the proof as is, instead write down general steps and then try to fill in the details. it would be perfect to prove everything from scratch, but that's rarely realistic, especially when the exam is in a few days. breaking the proof down into steps and describing the general idea of each step naturally raises questions such as "why is this part important, what is the goal of this calculation, how to describe this reasoning in one sentence, what are we actually doing here". sometimes it's possible to give the proof purely in words, that's also a good idea. it's also much more engaging and creative than passively writing things down. another thing that makes learning more active is trying to come up with examples for the definitions

3. exercises

many textbooks give exercises between definitions and theorem, doing them right away is generally a good idea, that's another way to make studying more active. I also like to take a look at the exercises at the end of the chapter (if that's the case) once in a while to see which ones I could do with what I already learned and try to do them. sometimes it's really hard to solve problems freshly after studying the theory and that's what worked out examples are for, it helps. mamy textbooks offer solutions of exercises, I like to compare the "official" ones with mine. it's obviously better than reading the solution before solving the problem on my own, but when I'm stuck for a long time I check if my idea for the solution at least makes sense. if it's similar to the solution from the book then I know I should just keep going

4. textbooks and other sources

finding the right book is so important. I don't even want to think about all the time I wasted trying to work with a book that just wasn't it. when I need a textbook for something I google "best textbooks for [topic]" and usually there is already a discussion on MSE where people recommend sources and explain why they think that source is a good one, which also gives the idea of how it's written and what to expect. a lot of professors share their lecture/class notes online, which contain user-friendly explenations, examples, exercises chosen by experienced teachers to do in their class, sometimes you can even find exercises with solutions. using the internet is such an important skill

5. studying for exams

do not study the material in a linear order, instead do it by layers. skim everything to get the general idea of which topics need the most work, which can be skipped, then study by priority. other than that it's usually better to know the sketch of every proof than to know a half of them in great detail and the rest not at all. it's similar when it comes to practice problems, do not spend half of your time on easy stuff that could easily be skipped, it's better to practice a bit of everything than to be an expert in half of the topics and unable to solve easy problems from the rest. if the past papers are available they can be a good tool to take a "mock exam" after studying for some time, it gives an opoortunity to see, again, which topics need the most work

6. examples and counterexamples

there are those theorems with statements that take up half of the page because there are just so many assumptions. finding counterexamples for each assumption usually helps with that. when I have a lot of definitions to learn, thinking of examples for them makes everything more specific therefore easier to remember

7. motivation

and by that I mean motivation of concepts. learning something new is much easier if it's motivated with an interesting example, a question, or application. it's easier to learn something when I know that it will be useful later, it's worth it to try to make things more interesting

8. studying for exams vs studying longterm

oftentimes it is the case that the exam itself requires learning some specific types of problems, which do not really matter in the long run. of course, preparing for exams is important, but keep in mind that what really matters is learning things that will be useful in the future especially when they are relevant to the field of choice. just because "this will not be on the test" doesn't always mean it can be skipped

ok I think that's all I have for now. I hope someone will find these helpful and feel free to share yours

Astronaut sculpture from an ex-physicist (Source/Credit)

1 X 2022

new month huh

yesterday the commutative algebra teacher sent out the first homework assignment. you know, fuck the holiday, we need that grind

I have a week to solve it but I started yesterday as I was so excited

we need to prove some elementary properties of commutative unitary rings and I am enjoying it, I completed a half of the exercises so far. I can tell that the intuition acquired from studying module theory is paying off. many of the requested properties are the special cases of what I encountered during my module venture, so I feel like I understand them quite well. the problem I come across is how to write it down in a rigorous way, but I guess this is why we're supposed to do those exercises

I just got home from the math camp, it was so exhausting. I am not used to being around people all the time, so I my tolerance for interactions is low. I'm glad I went there tho, because I gained some teaching experience – my lecture, choosing contest problems and then grading the solutions

my university offers jobs as graders, older students can make some extra money checking homeworks of younger ones. the requirement is to have a decent GPA, which I don't have so I'm afraid they won't accept me. I don't know how decent exactly tho, so I'm going to try. in particular I might get bonus points for my extracurricular activities, giving talks at conferences and the grading I did at the camp. I'm so done with being poor, I hope I get in. otherwise I might start looking for some programming jobs, not for this academic year but in general, to find out what I could do at all

a few days ago I found a book that I wish I had found sooner: Vector Analysis, Klaus Janich

these are some of the chapters I needed a few months ago for my analysis course. the book is written like a novel and contains many interesting examples. on the bright side there are chapters about riemannian manifolds and other stuff that I haven't yet had an opportunity to study, so I plan to skim through the topics I already know and stay longer at those new to me

well, the sememster starts on tuesday so I don't have much time for that book, but as a sidequest it seems just right

this is kinda cool, I might do one of these when the semester starts

Studying can be a daunting task, especially when we're not feeling motivated or don't know where to start. Luckily you are on Tumblr, where the Tumblr Studyblr community lives!

A group of individuals who share their study tips, techniques, and challenges to help motivate and inspire others.

As a member of this community, I've compiled a master post of study challenges created by Studyblr bloggers. These challenges aim to help students stay on track, improve their focus, and achieve their academic goals. So you can join in and start achieving your academic potential!

>> 𝐍 𝐨 𝐭 𝐞

If you know any other challenges or you've created ones yourself and want to share them, do message me with the link to the post so I can update the list! I too will be creating some, more coding-related ones as I am a coding studyblr (codeblr) blog! That's all and hope you find a challenge you'd like to start!

@tranquilstudy's Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@sub-at-omic-studies' Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@wecandoit’s Study Challenege - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@cheereader's The “Back To College” Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@myhoneststudyblr's The Studyblr Community Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@ddaengstudies' Wabi-Sabi Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@hayley-studies' 30-Day Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@ddaengstudies' Zoomester Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@cheereader's Summer Studying Challenge: Southern Hemisphere Edition - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@cheereader's Horrortober Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@caramelcuppaccino's Autumn Studying Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@myhoneststudyblr's Winter Studying Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@ddaengstudies' Winter Wonderland Studyblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌  

@stu-dna's January Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@planningforpatience's February Study Love Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@littlestudyblrblog’s March Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@smallstudyblrsunite's The June Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@stu-dna’s October Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@alfalfaaarya’s 21-Day Productivity Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@work-before-glory's G's Productivity Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@moltre-se-s' 30 Day Langblr Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@drunkbloodyqueen’s The language challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌

@caramelcuppaccino's 20 Language Learning Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@prepolygot’s Langblr Reactivation Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌 

@xiacodes' 5in5weeks Coding Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌  

@friend-crow's Tarot Study Challenge - 𝒍 𝒊 𝒏 𝒌   

5 IX 2022

maybe once a month is a bit too seldom to post? I kinda want to form a habit of romanticizing my academic life, I see all those studyblr accounts with beautiful photos of their desks and notes and I'm pretty sure those images exist in their minds as well

maybe one day I will be considered studyspo lol

I'm just starting to work on some geometry problems for today, haven't yet decided what I will focus on, but there is this one problem that haunted me when I tried to sleep yestarday:

given a triangle ABC with ∠A = 60°, let P be a point in the interior of ABC such that ∠APB = ∠APC = 120°. prove that ∠APX = 90°, for X being the circumcenter of ABC

it's supposed to be solved using spiral similarity, which is a composition of a rotation and homothety. there was another problem that was listed as "spiral similarity exercise", but I proved it with angle chasing exclusively, creating some nasty drawings in the process

other than geometry I'm studying homology, at the moment the basics of homological algebra, such as the first proofs by diagram chasing and exact sequences

I made some notes for exact sequences induced in homology

my perspective on doing math is slowly changing I think, I feel inspired to search for problems that I would like to solve. I noticed that I have this mental block: before I start doing math for real, I need to learn all the theory. which is absurd, you can never learn all the theory

sure, obtaining truly groundbreaking results requires years of learning theory and mastering tools if you want to specialize in algebraic topology and geometry, but the mindset I have creates the comfort zone of "play safe, just read your textbook, no challenges for now" and I'm starting to see beyond that

right now I'm taking my first steps into understanding that reading textbooks and learning how to solve basic exercises is not enough. they are just methods that are supposed to help my creativity and curiosity do their thing. essentially what I've been doing so far is not math, merely the preparation to do math in the future. no wonder I've been feeling so bored recently, all I'm doing is just learning basic tools. the idealist in me is asking to be unleashed

I feel like I'm about to see something much bigger than me

moreover tiktok adhd content is not even good lol most of it is videos themed "things I didn't know were adhd" and they actually are personality traits and it's not helpful at all with anything

just saw a post complaining about how hard it is to find adhd resources for adults and one of the comments said “tiktok has a lot of adhd tips” as if telling someone with adhd to enter the algorithmic quicksand of perpetual dopamine hits isn’t the most insane thing you could suggest for someone with adhd

tips for studying math part 2:

studying for an exam but the course is super boring and you don't care about it at all, you just want to pass

start by making a list of topics that were covered in lectures and classes. you can try to sort them by priority, maybe the professor said things like "this won't be on the exam" or "this is super important, you all must learn it", but that's not always possible, especially if you never showed up in class. instead, you can make a list of skills that you should acquire, based on what you did in classes and by looking at the past papers. for example, when I was studying for the statistics exam, my list of skills included things such as calculating the maximum likelihood estimators, confidence intervals, p-values, etc.

normally it is recommended to take studying the theory seriously, read the proofs, come up with examples, you name it, but we don't care about this course so obviously we are not going to do that. after familiarizing yourself with the definitions, skim through the lecture notes/slides/your friend's notes and try to classify the theorems into actionable vs non-actionable ones. the actionable ones tell you directly how to calculate something or at least that you can do it. the stokes theorem or the pappus centroid theorem – thore are really good examples of that. they are the most important, because chances are you used them a lot in class and they easily create exam problems. the non-actionable theorems tell you about properties of objects, but they don't really do anything if you don't care about the subject. you should know them of course, sometimes it is expected to say something like "we know that [...] because the assumptions of the theorem [...] are satisfied". but the general rule of thumb is that you should focus on the actionable theorems first.

now the problem practice. if you did a lot of problems in class and you have access to past papers, then it is pretty easy to determine how similar those two are. if the exercises covered in class are similar to those from past exam papers, then the next step is obvious: solve the exercises first, then work on the past papers, and you should be fine. but this is not always the case, sometimes the classes do not sufficiently prepare you for the exam and then what you do is google "[subject] exercises/problems with solutions pdf". there is a lof of stuff like this online, especially if the course is on something that everybody has to go through, for instance linear algebra, real and complex analysis, group theory, or general topology. if your university offers free access to textbooks (mine does, we have online access to some books from springer for example) then you can search again "[subject] exercises/problems with solutions". of course there is the unethical option, but I do not recommend stealing books from libgen by searching the same phrase there. once you got your pdfs and books, solve the problems that kinda look like those from the past papers.

if there is a topic that you just don't get and it would take you hours to go through it, skip it. learn the basics, study the solutions of some exercises related to it, but if it doesn't go well, you can go back to it after you finish the easy stuff. it is more efficient to learn five topics during that time than to get stuck on one. the same goes for topics that were covered in lectures but do not show up on the past papers. if you don't have access to the past papers you gotta trust your intuition on whether the topic looks examable or not. sometimes it can go wrong, in particular when you completely ignored the course's existence, but if you cannot find any exercises that would match that topic, then you can skip it and possibly come back later. always start with what comes up the most frequently on exams and go towards what seems the most obscure. if your professor is a nice person, you can ask them what you should focus on and what to do to prepare, that can save a lot of time and stress.

talk to the people who already took the course. ask them what to expect – does the professor expect your solutions to be super precise and cuts your points in half for computation errors or maybe saying that the answer follows from the theorem X gets the job done? normally this wouldn't be necessary (although it is always useful to know these things) because when you care about the course you are probably able to give very nice solutions to everything or at least that's your goal. but this time, if many people tell you that the professor accepts hand-wavey answers, during the exam your tactic is to write something for every question and maybe you'll score some extra points from the topics you didn't have time to study in depth.

alright, that should do it, this is the strategy that worked for me. of course some of those work also in courses that one does care about, but the key here is to reduce effort and time put into studying while still maximizing the chances of success. this is how I passed statistics and differential equations after studying for maybe two days before each exam and not attending any lectures before. hope this helps and of course, feel free to add yours!