FB_init

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Is there life?

Is there life after a Master's thesis?

Error

No wonder people don't know how to use computers. Right now, MS Word is telling me "Error! Objects cannot be created from editing field codes." What did I do to you, Mr. Word, for you to tell me that?

Friday, March 10, 2006

categorical nonsense

"3.1. The language of categories is affectionately known as abstract nonsense. This
is essentially accurate, and not necessarily derogatory: categories refer to nonsense
in the sense that they are all about the ‘structure’, and not about the ‘meaning’, of
what they represent. The emphasis is less on how you run into a specific set you
are looking at, and more on how that set may sit in relationship with all other sets.
Worse (or better) still, the emphasis is less on studying sets, and functions between
sets, than on studying ‘things, and things that go from things to things’ without
necessarily being explicit about what these things are: they may be sets, or groups,
or rings, or vector spaces, or modules, or other objects that are so exotic that the
reader has no right whatsoever to know about them (yet). "
http://www.math.fsu.edu/~aluffi/courses/2005-6/MAS5307/GRV.pdf

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Trinity

Math is like God the Father, Music is like God the Son, and Computer Science is like God the Holy Spirit. They are three persons, but one God under the Godhead.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Therefore, G*d exists

When you see complex ideas, when you are amazed by it and kind of understand it but doesn't quite get it, you can try to put a "Therefore, God exists" at the end. Maybe you can even contemplate its mystery, but you probably don't get it. Try it, and you will get interesting sentences. Maybe that will comfort you.
For example, there are symbols, signs, syntax, grammars, Chomsky categorization of grammars, rules and semantics. It's all related. Therefore, God exists.
Another one: a problem can be NP-complete, computable in polynomial time, etc. Therefore, God exists.
There is category theory, abstract algebra, topology, discrete geometry without any figures (!), morphisms, generators, homotropy, cohomology and the Yoneda lema. Therefore, God exists.
You can transform matrices into polynomials into equations. Therefore God exists.
All of a suden you'll begin to admire science and believe in something by faith.
Or you can end a sentence with "therefore, the world will end". For example,
you can completely understand one object through all morphisms or something like the Yoneda lema. Therefore, the world will end.