irchans

6 ms·

1.
by irchans 16d ago
Here is another list of ideas in math made by a lesser math person. (top 100 most useful) counting zero integer decimal positional notation 100, 1000, … the four arithmetic operations + – * / fractions decimal notation 0.1, 0.01, … b
2.
by irchans 26d ago
For years I've had an idea in my head to add a Forth to the old game Master of Orion so that I could automate some of my common actions in the game. There is an open source GIThub called 1oom with source code for the game and I though
3.
by irchans 2mo ago
I remember seeing the Amiga bouncing ball demo and being amazed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ga41edXw3A The Amiga was the second computer that I ever owned. The first was a C64 that I bought freshman year. (My father
4.
by irchans 3mo ago
Certainly most universities now have a very strong liberal bias. I think most science departments were left leaning in the 1950s, but it is stronger now. (I think colleges and universities have always been more progressive than the general
5.
by irchans 4mo ago
I'm retired. I hope to get a 3% per year income from my savings every year after inflation and taxes. If my state implemented a 1% wealth tax on savings each year, I would go bankrupt in 20 years. I am hoping that I will live 20 yea
6.
by irchans 4mo ago
I also "had an Iron Man moment last week" as a mathematician. I've been doing joint math research with two friends (professors) on a project for several years. Last week, I decided to explore part of our research using chat
7.
by irchans 5mo ago
ikrima, Do you have any links to your research or paper titles?
8.
by irchans 6mo ago
How about: (* Mathematica Notation, Assume x>0 ) If[ x < 10^(-10), 1+ x/2, ( order x^2 error ) If[ x> 10^10, Sqrt[x], ( order 1/Sqrt[x] error ) ( else ) Sqrt[x +1] ] ] ( I guess the If statements
9.
by irchans 6mo ago
Us humans do have difficulty with safety. Sometimes we are able to overcome that problem to an extent. Here are some the few examples where humans have done well with safety: FAA commercial airlines, Soyuz, ISS, Shinkansen trains, US Nuc
10.
by irchans 6mo ago
I think that finding proofs for open mathematical questions should count as critical thought. (See https://medium.com/%40cognidownunder/three-erdős-problems-fe... )
11.
by irchans 6mo ago
AI makes it possible for someone who has never written code to generate a program that does what they want. One of my friends wanted to simulate a 7,9 against a dealer 10 upcard in the card game blackjack. GPT was able to write the simula
12.
by irchans 6mo ago
This morning a person posted a question to the Reddit group r/Mathematica ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Mathematica/comments/1s1fin2/can_ho... ). I asked GPT to write code to address their question and t
13.
by irchans 10mo ago
Type "Polar plot 6 curves of the form r = (1 + Sin[2^(k - 1) t]/2^(k - 1)) where k =1, 2, .., 6 and t=0 to 2 Pi each curve should be a different color" into ChatGPT5. https://chatgpt.com/share/690f6
14.
by irchans 10mo ago
I think this 6 set Venn Diagram is nice because I made it. :) http://162.243.213.31/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Ven3.png
15.
by irchans 1y ago
> I became a mathematician. From this childhood exposure, entropy was the first mathematical "concept" beyond arithmetic that I understood. Very cool.
16.
by irchans 1y ago
So, I think that I can avoid a lot of the data leak problems. There might be a simple way to do this with a crypto-currency. If possession of a credit card is considered proof of age, then possession of cryptocurrency should also be consid
17.
by irchans 1y ago
Even after reading the article, I think there are reasonable ways to set up a low cost system that uses zero-knowledge proofs to "prove" your age without disclosing your identity. I do think that you will need trusted entities an
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by irchans 1y ago
My son accidentally brought a knife to school at age 12 -- maybe a 4 inch blade. When he realized that he had a knife in his backpack, he told his teacher. He was suspended from school for about 3 days and we had a fairly pleasant convers
19.
by irchans 1y ago
When I was in eighth grade my advanced algebra teacher said "I wonder if you always did your homework in pen, would you make fewer mistakes." That was 45 years ago. Now I am a mathematician and I have done 95% of my math in pen
20.
by irchans 1y ago
This might be the best article that I have read this year. It might change the way that I program. I really want to write up examples for each of the ideas presented: Monotonicity, Pre- and post-conditions, Invariants, Isolation, Inducti
21.
by irchans 1y ago
Forth :) It's been like 30 years since I the last time I wrote a Forth program that was more than 10 lines long---fond memories.
22.
by irchans 1y ago
I believer there is an error in "Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All b
23.
by irchans 1y ago
I also wrote a brute force, kinda dumb, depth-first Suduoku solver. I think it took me a few hours in C or C++. At every node in the search tree, I just checked to make sure no constraints were violated. If I remember correctly, it would
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by irchans 1y ago
The article is a very enjoyable history of how Cuneiform was deciphered by a small group of often competing scholars.
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by irchans 2y ago
Oh yes, I also will listen to NPR and other radio news when I'm driving.
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by irchans 2y ago
I forgot. I also watch NBC Nightly News and "What about it?" on YouTube.
27.
by irchans 2y ago
Mostly I read Slashdot, HN, and the Wall Street Journal. I read the Economist when I feel like paying for it (sometimes I get a deal like $50 for the digital version for a year). I did Ground News for a year.
28.
by irchans 2y ago
What kind of chocolate ? :) (humor)
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by irchans 2y ago
Interesting "fact" - The total amount of lead in the universe is a somewhat less than a cubic light year.
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by irchans 3y ago
I liked the article and I hope that I can understand it more with some study. I think the following sentence in the article is wrong "Applying Noether's theorem gives us three conserved quantities—one for each degree of freedom in

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