rb this with ur opinion on this shade of pink:
25 XII 2022
this chunk of the semester is finally over, sweet jesus I'm so exhausted. I'm getting the well-deserved rest and later catching up with all the things I put on my to-do list that I kinda learned but not really
the test I had last week went fine. frankly I expected more from it after solving more than 50 problems during my prep, but I scored 74%, which is objectively great and more than I predicted after submitting my solutions
here is my math plan for the break:
in algebraic methods I started falling behind a few weeks ago when I missed two lectures while being sick. they were about resolutions, derived functors and group homology and afterwards I wasn't really able to stay on top of my game like before. high time to get back on track. in commutative algebra I was doing ok, but there are some topics I neglected: finite and integral maps and Noether's normalization. for complex analysis everything is great until we introduced the order of growth and recently we've been doing some algebraic number theory, which btw is a huge disappointment. don't get me wrong, I understand the significance of Riemann's ζ, but the problems we did all consisted of subtle inequalities and a lot of technical details. I am doing mainly algebraic stuff to avoid these kind of things lol
when we were doing simplicial sets I stumbled upon some formulas for the simplicial set functor and its geometric realization and I thought it to be a nice exercise to probe them, so here it is:
I won't know if this proof actually works until I attend office hours to find out, but I am satisfied with the work I put into it
I already started making some notes on the derived functors
other than that I have this nice book that will help me prepare for writing my thesis, so I'd like to take a look at that too
as for the non-math plans, I am rewatching good doctor. my brain has this nice property that after a year has passed since finishing a show I no longer remember anything, the exponential distribution is relatable like that. this allows endless recycling of my favourite series, I just need to wait
I wish you all a pleasant break and I hope everyone is getting some rest like I am
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.
I have a bunch of followers and mutuals that I never even talked to and I know some of you guys are very into math too, so let's get to know each other, shall we?
if you feel like you'd enjoy talking to me then go ahead, write me a message! I just realized I never said something like this and I would really love to have conversations with like-minded people
if this feels familiar, you can reblog this post to invite people to talk to you
15 V 2022
I have a topology test this friday, not gonna lie I'm kinda stressed. this is my favourite subject and I am dedicating a great deal of time to learn it so if I get a low grade it undermines the efficiency of my work. everyone thinks I'm an "expert", but internally I feel like I lied to them. it's ridiculous, because I can solve all the theoretical problems fairly well but the moment I have to calculate something for a specific example of a space I am clueless. and it's about applying theory to problems, right? so what is it worth
other than that tomorrow is a participation round in the integral competition at my university. I am participating. I don't have any high hopes for this, because it's been a while since I practiced integration and I am not motivated to do so because it's not an important skill – wolfram exists. either way could be fun, that's why I decided to go there
I am dreading the fact that I'll have to sit down and learn all the material from the probability theory until the exams. I've been ignoring it completely so far, because it's boring and complicated. the last homework broke me, it's high time to get my shit together
Master Control Program
A minimal 74 knot on the simple cubic lattice
(source code)
http://proof.ucalgaryblogs.ca/
This is the best resource for studying math that I've found in a while! It's 300+ pages of flawed/incorrect proofs on topics including logic, analysis, and linear algebra. Each flawed proof is followed by a classification of its errors, and a corrected version.
28 V 2022
topology and analysis tests are over, both went I think alright
if I don't get 100% from topo I'm going to be very frustrated, because I studied hard and acquired deep understanding of the material – so far as to be able to hold a lecture for my classmate about any topic
analysis ughhh if I get ≥40% I will be overjoyed. but that's just the specifics of this subject, you study super hard and seem to be entirely ready, you solve all of the problems in prep and then best you can do is 40%. my best score so far was 42%, so anything more than that will be my lifetime record lmao, I want this so bad. I solved two problems entirely I think, which should give 40% already, and some pieces from two more, chances are I get 50%, which would be absolutely amazing
here are some pictures from me transforming math into an art project
stokes theorem
topology
I was thinking about how annoying I find what people say to me when I tell them that I'm not happy with how I'm doing at math. their first idea is to tell me how great I am and how all I do is good enough and shit like that. it doesn't help, it just feels like I am not being taken seriously. when I barely pass anything, am I really supposed to believe that everything is actually good? it feels like they skip getting to know my situation and just tell me what they would tell anyone, automatic
when I try to calm myself down and think something that will keep me going I don't try to force myself to be happy, fuck that, not being content with one's achievements is very fine, I believe not being happy all the time is fully natural and all that positivity feels so fake
instead what seems to work is asking myself where the rational threshold of being ok with how I'm doing is. the thing is I will never be satisfied, whatever I have, I always want more. but I can set the limits in advance and that stops me from falling into self-loathing loops
although what has really changed the game for me was getting a few good grades, finally I am achieving something, anything. people tell me that I should learn to be alright without this external reliance on achievements but how am I supposed to do that when the source of my low moods is precisely getting less than I want? I don't understand why I should brainwash myself into thinking that this is actually not what I want. the trick here is to separate the goal-orientedness from the sense of self-worth. the groundbreaking realization of mine was figuring out that I believe I deserve more than I get, that's why I am unhappy. so now that I am getting what I think what I deserve I obviously feel much better
30 VII – 1 VIII 2021
done some stuff
sleep: I'm on it, gonna get better soon
concentration: alright
phone time: alright
did some multivar calculus today, didn't do any topo unfortunately, finished the functionality in the coding project, finished the art comission, watched some lectures from MIT
tomorrow going to a different city, gotta wake up early so will be dead all day ugh. plan to do some coding and finish the chapter from the multivar calc book. at the end of it i will find out what the manifold actually is and some of what can be done with it, pretty excited
7 XI 2022
I think I found an advisor and a topic for the bsc thesis! or rather they found me
one of the teachers that prepares us for writing our theses approached me and started asking about homology I mentioned during our presentation, he wanted to know what courses I took and how familiar I am with that stuff. I told him that I know a bit about homology only from self-study but I enjoyed everything from algebraic topo so far and I would be happy to write about something from that. "ok then I'll find the right topic for you" was his response. then he suggested I read Groups of Homotopy Spheres by Milnor and Kervaire and write about surgery theory. I was sold the moment I heard that name, it's almost as funny as writing about the hairy ball
so there she is, very high level, very complicated. I barely skimmed the first half of that 34-page paper, it's gonna take a lot of work before I learn the basics necessary to even comprehend what is going on. it feels good to be noticed tho, I'm so happy to start writing asap
other than that my mood hasn't been in a great place, because commutative algebra is super hard and I am struggling to find the right resources to study. the last thing we did was tensor product and I've been procrastinating actually studying it by making pretty notes lol
I found a textbook that seems decent. the theory is very thoroughly explained here and there are plenty of exercises ranging from easy to difficult ones
recently I've been trying a new method of tracking, which is instead of writing to-do lists, I write down what I did each day, here is what it looks like for now:
I find it much less anxiety-inducing than the to-do approach because I know damn well what I need to do and writing down what I actually completed feels much better than crossing things off of the list
this week I hope to study the tensor product, representable functors (yoneda is still not done with me) and probably start the complex analysis homework. if I have time I will study the prerequisites for the Milnor's paper
13 X 2022
I dedicated the weekend to meeting with people from the machine learning club, helping my friend through her analysis homework and studying category theory for one of my subjects. then I did mostly the complex analysis homework
here are some wannabe aesthetic notes
my main goal at the time was to truly understand yoneda's lemma and the main intuition I have is that sometimes we shouldn't study the category C, but thw category of all functors from C to Set
after studying for a few hours I can say that the concept became a bit more intuitive
one of the problems in my "putnam homework" was to calculate the product of all differences of distinct n-th roots of unity – or so I thought. for a few days I believed that my solution doesn't work. I ended up with a disgusting fomula interating cosines of obscure angles but the visual intuition is neat, especially for an odd n. aaand that's no surprise since it turns out I'm fucking illiterate. not distinct roots, just differences of distinct roots, so that the whole thing is symmetric and there is no distinction of n odd vs n even
anyway I finally solved it, so that's nice!
I completed 5 out of 10 problems, which was my goal, so I should stop now and do my commutative algebra homework. there is one more exercise I want to solve:
the complex polynomial P with integer coefficients is such that |P(z)| ≤ 2 ∀z∈S¹. how many non-zero coefficients can P have?
I'm almost there with it and it's really cool
ofc the opportunity to include pretty drawings in my homework couldn't be wasted
during my category theory tutorial the professor asked me to show my solution on the blackboard. I was kinda stressed because now is the first time when I have my lectures and tutorials in english and on top of that this is a grad course. that whole morning I was fighting to stay awake, after the blackboard incident I didn't have to anymore
this is what I did
this week is likely to be the hardest out of many proceeding ones, because I won't have the weekend for studying (it's my grandma's birthday) so I need to use the maximum of my time during the week and get as much done as possible. I still need to do two homeworks, and study the theory. I am trying to learn how to prioritize and plan things, this is still a huge problem for me
I found an interesting youtube channel: Justin Sung. he talks about how to study/ how to learn and I like what he says, because it just makes so much sense. it's been a while since I started suspecting that methods such as flash cards or simple note-taking don't work and his content explains very well why they indeed might not work. it's very inspiring to see a professional confirm one's intuition
⁕ pure math undergrad ⁕ in love with anything algebraic ⁕
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