#hypertwistoploppic pseudotheomorphisms

[future-less-vivid]

What is this? Is it some kind of uncertainty principle? It can be reproduced, I hope? I'm not erasing the last best hope of mankind?

a Latin professor encounters vector calculus on his whiteboard

[future-less-vivid]

You probably all know the the webcomic xkcd. Well, there's an xkcd comic called 'Nerd Sniping,' where you give a mathematician an interesting problem to think about and they wander into traffic and get hit by a car. We don't want to be responsible for that! So please be careful when you're crossing Comm Ave. Also, tonight at 7 in this room we'll be proving 0*a=0; attendance is mandatory for first-years.

morning announcements at PROMYS

[future-less-vivid]

If you start thinking really hard about what “random” really means, first you get a little nauseated, and a little after that you find you’re doing analytic philosophy. So let’s not go down that road.

an article about the 70-million proof

[future-less-vivid]

But actually, given 1. doing this anthropology project or 2. reading Brown's math syllabi, there's clearly one that's a better use of my time.

[future-less-vivid]

gender bias:

We all tend to think of women’s work as somewhat smaller, derivative, inferior. We do so unconsciously and involuntarily. We are not aware of it, nor do we notice it in others. That’s what all these studies are saying. 

in mathematics:

Here’s an actual real-life situation from my experience. Professor X is against having Y, a woman, as a plenary speaker at a conference. His explanation is that Y has very few papers listed on MathSciNet, while an alternative candidate Z, a man, has many more. On the surface, this sounds unrelated to gender. The context, however, is that Y is a rising star whose most important work to date has not yet been listed on MathSciNet because of the time lag, even though it is widely known in the field. Z, meanwhile, is in his 60s, so of course he would have more papers. Situations like this arise often in organizing conferences, I’ve seen it many times, except that Y is usually a man and everyone loves the prospect of having him speak about his exciting new work. I’ve never seen the paper-counting argument invoked when Y was a dude, nor could I imagine it happening.

for mathematicians:

How much proof do you want, exactly? Because nothing ever seems to be enough. It’s almost like we actually have to deduce sexism from the axioms of real numbers, and even then someone might tell us to go back to the axioms of set theory, and without the axiom of choice, either.

(This was linked to by someone on LessWrong. Hopefully that's sufficient credit for them, since I didn't quote anything they wrote.)

[future-less-vivid]

Downton people: chance likelihood probably possibility chance unlikely could have probably not possibly chance

Me: Are you all allergic to numbers.

Downton person: infinitesimal

Me: You're not helping.