My Favorite Example Of Girl Math Is When David Hilbert And Albert Einstein Couldn't Solve How Energy

fields of mathematics

number theory: The Queen of Mathematics, in that it takes a lot from other fields and provides little in return, and people are weirdly sentimental about it.

combinatorics: Somehow simultaneously the kind of people who get really excited about Martin Gardner puzzles and very serious no-nonsense types who don’t care about understanding why something is true as long as they can prove that it’s true.

algebraic geometry: Here’s an interesting metaphor, and here’s several thousand pages of work fleshing it out.

differential geometry: There’s a lot of really cool stuff built on top of a lot of boring technical details, but they frequently fill entire textbooks or courses full of just the boring stuff, and they seem to think students will find this interesting in itself rather than as a necessary prerequisite to something better. So there’s definitely something wrong with them.

category theory: They don’t really seem to understand that the point of generalizing a result is so that you can apply it to other situations.

differential equations: physicists

real analysis: What if we took the most boring parts of a proof and just spent all our time studying those?

point-set topology: See real analysis, but less relevant to the real world.

complex analysis: Sorcery. I thought it seemed like sorcery because I didn’t know much about it, but then I learned more, and now the stuff I learned just seems like sorcery that I know how to do.

algebraic topology: Some of them are part of a conspiracy with category theorists to take over mathematics. I’m pretty sure that most algebraic topologists aren’t involved in that, but I don’t really know what else they’re up to.

functional analysis: Like real analysis but with category theorists’ generalization fetish.

group theory: Probably masochists? It’s hard to imagine how else someone could be motivated to read a thousand-page paper, let alone write one.

operator algebras: Seems cool but I can’t understand a word of it, so I can’t be sure they’re not just bullshitting the whole thing.

commutative/homological algebra: Diagram chases are of the devil, and these people are his worshipers.

10-12 VIII 2021

finished the basics of the measure theory and god am i in love

sleep: ok

concentration: good

phone time: good

yeah so now i know what a measurable set and a measurable function is, i'm on my way to lebesgue integration. however, i don't have the intuition for measurable functions yet, just the basics. there are those two theorems that i merely vaguely understand and idk barely can touch them. one of them is lusin, the other one is frechet. they seem very important as they deal with continuity of a function in the context of measurability. and do we love continuous functions my dude yes we do

tomorrow i plan to solve some problems concerning measurable functions and then do topo. i must admit, measure theory devoured me entirely recently and i had a break from topo. gotta fix that. and possibly do some coding

parents got a new cat they named lord montague and this morning i heard my dad in the other room say "i would have to advise against that decision, my lord" followed by a crashing sound

good point! I should add to my list the golden rule of asking yourself "does this thing that I'm currently trying actually work for me". in the meantine I had a conversation with a friend who said that for her not caring about the aesthetics of notes decreases the effectiveness of studying, my perspective definitely isn't The Only Correct One

the best method is the one that works. it's perfectly okay to benefit from notes, from making them pretty, it's also perfectly okay to limit the notes. it was a surprising discovery for me that taking notes doesn't help with my learning, because my whole life I've been told to always take notes. but of course this isn't going to work for everyone, thank you for pointing this out

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

maybe a littel late for Real’s Math Ask Meme 18, 6 and 3, please?

hi, thanks for the questions!

3: what math classes did you like the most?

tough choice! for the content itself I'd say abstract algebra, commutative algebra, analytic functions and algebraic topology. for the way the class was taught, a course on galois theory I took last semester was probably the best. the pace of the lecture allowed me to learn everything on the spot, not too fast, but not so slow that my mind would wander. the tutorials were also great, because the teacher found the perfect balance between explaining and showing the solutions, and engaging us to think about what should happen next. the courses I mentioned above were also taught well, but the galois theory one was absolutely perfect

6: why do you learn math?

I enjoy the feeling of math in my brain. I can spend hours thinking about a problem and not get bored, which doesn't usually happen with other things. when I finish a study session I feel tired in a good way, like I spent my time and energy doing something valuable and it's very satisfying

18: can you share a good math problem you've solved recently?

given a holomorphic line bundle L over a compact complex manifold, prove that L is trivial iff L and the dual of L both admit a non-zero section

this problem is quite basic, in a sense that you work on it right after getting started with line bundles, but I believe it to be a good problem, because it forces you to analyze the difference between trivial holomorphic bundles and trivial smooth bundles, so it's great for building some intuition

if you don't want to learn tikz but still need them arrows, check out quiver. it's super useful for complicated and unconventional diagrams

Learning LaTex has been a way more pleasant experience than I thought it would be this stuff is way simpler than it looks and the results fuck hard

" 'They' isn't singular!" Oh yeah? Show me its multiplicative inverse matrix then.

free recall

here I am sitting and trying to learn something from a textbook by making notes and ugh I don't think this is gonna work

what I'm writing down will probably leave my head the second I switch tasks

today I found a cool video about taking notes during lectures and a method called free recall is mentioned there:

to summarize: taking notes during the lecture is ineffective, because it requires dividing attention into writing and processing the auditory input. instead of doing that one should just listen and then try to write down the contents of the lecture from memory. I can believe that – this is how I studied for my commutative algebra exam and the whole process went really fast. I highly recommens this guy's channel, he is a neuroscientist and bases his videos off of research findings

I will try to do this with textbooks and after a while I'll share how it felt and if I plan to keep doing it. the immediate advantage of this approach is that it gives raw information for what needs the most work and what can be skipped, which is often hard to see when trying to evaluate one's knowledge just by thinking about it. another thing that comes to mind is the accountability component – it is much easier to focus on the text while knowing that one is supposed to write down as much as possible after. kinda like the "gamify" trick I saw in the context of surviving boring tasks with adhd

I'll use this method to study differential geometry, algebraic topology, galois theory and statistics. let's see how it goes

I am so fucking normal right now. *stands perpendicular to the tangent of the plane*

25 II 2023

I had an exam yesterday, one more to go. it was the written part, so 12+ hours of solving problems, exhausting just like before. I completed all of them, but of course I am not sure if my solutions are correct, I will find out on monday. I'm proud of the progress I've made

right now I'm studying for the second part, so the theory-oriented one, I can barely focus because I've already learned those things and now I have to relearn them again

I'm trying to prove all the theorems on my own. partly to see how much I remember, partly to see how much I'm willing to improvize. as they say, if you're using too much memory then you're doing something wrong so I'm hoping to be able to come up with the proofs without memorizing anything new

my technique for studying the theory for the exam is to first test myself on how much I remember by trying to write everything down and note where I'm unsure or don't remember at all. then I read the textbooks starting from the worst topics up to the better ones. when I encounter a long complicated proof I am trying to break it down into steps and give each step a "title" or a short description

for instance, the Baer criterion featured in the photo has the following steps:

only do "extenstions on ideals to R→M ⇒ M injective"

define the poset of extenstions of A → M, A ⊆ B and a contrario suppose there is a maximal element ≠B

use the assumption to define an ideal and a submodule that contradicts the maximality of the extension

it is much easier to fill out the details than to remember the whole thing. this is probably the biggest skill I acquired this semester, next to downloading lecture notes pdfs of random professors I find online lmao

a friend suggested that I could make a post about tips for reading math textbooks and papers. as for papers, I don't have enough experience to give any tips, but I can share how I approach reading the books

a big news in my life is that I got a job. I will be a programmer and I start in march. at first I am going to use mostly python, but in the long run they will have me learn java. I'm excited and terrified at the same time, this semester is gonna kill me