Mathematics (assistant) professor at the University of South Carolina. Worked for a technology startup way back in the day. I'm interested in analytic number theory (and math in general), mathematics education, the publishing industry, and discovering that Columbia is less boring than everyone keeps telling me.
thorne [at] math [dot] sc [dot] edu
Submissions
Ask HN: What are service providers' responsibilities to prevent fraud?
2 points·by impendia··2 comments
Ask HN: However little television you watch, watch less."
6 points·by impendia··7 comments
Ask HN: How have you pushed back against overmeasurement in your workplace?
3 points·by impendia··4 comments
Ask HN: "Check email/internet less often" resolution that is easy to keep?
1 points·by impendia··1 comments
Ask HN: Technology for a Meeting Room?
2 points·by impendia··4 comments
Ask HN: What do you do in a moment when you're stumped?
5 points·by impendia··7 comments
Ask HN: Ethical issues marking email as spam?
4 points·by impendia··4 comments
Ask HN: Best chat software for an online university class?
1 points·by impendia··0 comments
As a math professor, how can I help grad students find nonacademic jobs?
19 points·by impendia··23 comments
Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?
135 points·by impendia··103 comments
Share HN: Some schleps in academia that might be fixable with software
8 points·by impendia··4 comments
The Solitary Leaker
nytimes.com
63 points·by impendia··53 comments
Are there good HN-like forums for discussing sexism, racism, and the like?
4 points·by impendia··3 comments
Is there any good general manners/advice forum with a "HN slant"?
1 points·by impendia··0 comments
Whiteboard paint recommendations?
2 points·by impendia··2 comments
Legalize Airbnb
slate.com
49 points·by impendia··76 comments
Share my pain point: I want dead easy version control.
12 points·by impendia··13 comments
Friedman: Come the revolution
nytimes.com
5 points·by impendia··0 comments
Ask HN: "The audience is never wrong" and university teaching
I can see that you're arguing in good faith, and indeed I have a lot of respect for anyone willing to argue an unpopular position. That said, I do find your suggestion to be completely farfetched.
The Jacobian Conjecture was one of the most notorious open problems in algebraic geometry, something that generations of grad students have daydreamed of solving. I've seen more immediate buzz around the Jacobian conjecture than around any other mathematical breakthrough of the last five years, at least. For example Terry Tao, arguably the most famous mathematician in the world, dropped what he was doing to study Alpoge/Fable's counterexample in detail, and wrote this blog post:
For Alpoge to have solved it on his own, and then falsely claim to have used AI? That's like an athlete winning an Olympic gold medal, and then falsely claiming to have cheated and used illegal steroids. I agree that it's not completely out of the question, but it's beyond the bounds of human behavior that I can reasonably fathom.
I have no idea what actually happened behind the scenes, but the human prompter, Levent Alpöge, indeed has deep math expertise. Princeton PhD, Harvard postdoc, and some excellent research (prior to this) to his name.
For the Jacobian determinant to be constant is a massive coincidence, in general it is some complicated and messy polynomial. The conjecture was that this coincidence couldn't happen, except for simple special cases.
So Alpoge and Fable found an example of a function that was believed to be too strange to exist.
That said, if it's possible to do better than random guessing, then does this reflect the fact that the five charts are presumably hand-selected to be "interesting"?
My naive guess, and I'd be very curious to learn if this were wrong, is that something very close to the efficient market hypothesis is true; that, if it were possible to beat the monkeys on randomly chosen stocks on random dates, then someone would have figured this out already and deployed bots to capture whatever profits are available.
Indeed, I find this story quite interesting (and disturbing) from the Belgian point of view.
Suppose the Belgian government declared the ambassador persona non grata, and sent them on the next plane to Washington. Presumably this would raise their popularity with their own voters, although if Trump noticed he'd throw another temper tantrum. What then?
Math professor here. If you want to learn math, then for the most part I recommend choosing time-tested avenues, using popular materials.
There are two reasons for this:
(1) Popular materials are usually popular for a reason: they reflect an approximate consensus, across a significant fraction of the mathematical community, that their approaches are more-or-less the best.
(2) If you learn the same way everyone else does, you'll have an easier time talking to others and finding materials on the internet.
I know some very innovative books which I highly recommend, for example Visual Group Theory by Nathan Carter:
But the innovation is pedagogical, in what Carter chooses to emphasize and how he presents everything. At the book's core, Carter agrees with everyone else about what the foundations of group theory are and should be.
Even Sheldon Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right (another excellent book), with its hilariously provocative title, only differs in its choice of emphasis and order of presentation. His choices are quite compatible with everyone else's.
I'll be trying to solve some problem, half-remember an email conversation from several years ago on something relevant, and want to look it up.
This feels like the most natural thing in the world to me, and it's not like the ability to save emails is new. Why, exactly, would a forced change of habits be for my own good?
Some drivers seem to resent the idea that they should have to share the road, or slow down for anyone. Even if cyclists do everything right, they're still slower than cars, and so will present at least a minor inconvenience for drivers.
In Canada the fight has gotten nasty, with governments in Alberta and Ontario putting forward legislation that could remove existing bike lanes.
When I go to research lectures, I sometimes hear that in response to audience questions, although not especially consistently. Some speakers do this more than others, I don't think anyone does it all the time.
These are very good questions, but it was a long time ago and I'm afraid I don't remember well enough to answer.
I'm not even sure I could have answered you at the time. In my memory, it was mostly students promoting the honor code. But I have to imagine that the university was quietly doing things to keep this going.
> I’m skeptical that there’s anything special about high trust communities other than a higher baseline of morale
Strictly speaking I'd agree with you -- but I would consider a higher baseline of morale to be itself quite special! Especially when it is shared amongst the entire community.
I went to Rice which had a similarly strong honor code, and it absolutely inspired pride. In me, and from what I could tell in many of my classmates.
Is it propaganda? In some sense, yes, the only way to maintain such a culture is to repeatedly insist on its importance to prospective and current students. But if so, then it is self-fulfilling propaganda, and in my opinion the honor code made my experience richer.
I live in South Carolina, about half an hour from Congaree National Park.
It's not a place you'd drive across the country to see, but it's beautiful and highly worth a visit. There are some freaky trees -- with knobs of roots that stick out from the ground, like nothing else I've seen. The place is kinda creepy, as if you're about to be attacked by zombies, and I love that.
There is a two mile elevated boardwalk which takes you around some of the most scenic areas of the park, and further hiking trails which branch off of that. There is also a river that goes through the park, and it's quite atmospheric in a canoe.
When I started my Ph.D. program, there was a weekly seminar that I started going to. At first, I instinctively left each week immediately after the talk was over. But I noticed that a lot of people would hang around afterwards and chat. Even though I found it a bit awkward, I started following their lead -- a habit I'm very glad I developed!
Personally, I've enjoyed classes in yoga and in group fitness.
This has several advantages: exercise is obviously good for you, and you can meet people while you're there. But more subtly, once you show up, someone is constantly telling you what to do. For me, this has meant much less of a drain on my mental energy and discipline than if I tried to work out on my own.
Academia, at least in math, has a tradition of being public. Conferences will advertise at least the list of speakers, and sometimes the full list of attendees. This is widely considered a good thing; people trying to decide whether to go to a conference will want to know who else will be there.
Moreover, the conference organizers have sent out multiple emails to the attendees warning that scammers were targeting them, and emphasizing that there were no third parties legitimately involved.
thorne [at] math [dot] sc [dot] edu