Heebie's trying to make me feel dumb. And it's working!
Probably should have waited till 5 pm to break out the bourbon but at least I waited till a quarter to.
I feel stupid too! And am also drunk. But at a far more respectable hour.
No, no! The whole point of this dissertation is to combat the way math usually makes people feel stupid, and to explain it to a lay audience. See the introduction!
The link is a PDF. No. Too many of those already.
Heebie wins the thread if she's drunk too.
Although the writing style could perhaps be less cheese-blog.
3 In my not quite yet drunken defense Thursday is Friday in these here parts. Think I'll have another.
I work nights. I don't even have to wake up before noon.
7 I like cheese. I would read a cheese blog.
Quitting time is 3:30 pm here too. Government hours.
The whole point of this dissertation is to combat the way math usually makes people feel stupid
It has successfully discovered an entirely novel way of making me feel stupid, viz. by realising that even when mathematicians try to talk down to my level I still can't follow them.
I don't have the attention span to find out if I'm stupid or not. Unless than answers the question.
Maybe I should have led with her actual blog explanation of the thesis, here. She's very likable. This is just a blog post.
Were I sober I might click that link. But alas, no.
You probably should have, but my brain is already blown. It's too late to reach me.
I'm going to go eat my lunch now. It's after 12 o'clock somewhere.
I'd never before developed a crush from someone's dissertation.
2,3: A wave of drunkenness, a sort of alcohol-infused terminator*, is sweeping (correctly) from east to west and will no doubt soon be landing at Thanet.
*COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO GET A KEBAB
I submitted my dissertation to my advisor yesterday, and have two weeks more to work on it until the whole committee gets it. Should I rewrite it completely in cheese-blog?
It already has like 3 jokes in it so I wouldn't be starting from scratch.
21 I have a felafel for later. And more bourbon.
23 Congrats Kymyz! (Also, great pseud)
21: Congratulations! However, yes, you should start over and write the whole thing in cheese-blog.
Speaking of a wave of drunkenness, how unseemly is it to have beer on your breath at school pick-up*. It's an after-school care program, so you have to go in to the school and talk to a person.
* For a parent, not the student,
3:20 here, had lunch hours ago. Get stuck in.
I used to work for a guy who always brought a packed lunch because it was healthier than what he could buy on site, with the result that he usually ate his packed lunch about 10:00 in the morning and got stuck into the junk food from about 1:00 onwards. Guy is dead: be warned.
28: I'm just going to buy a second lunch at 2:00. Or go for beers when I leave to do school pick-up.
26: Just to be safe, peep, you're not my advisor, are you?
Thanks! Both for the congratulations and for collectively writing years of Internet things the procrastinatory lurking concerning which has delayed this occasion considerably.
26: Congratulations!
This looks fun, and worth a read. Guess I'll noodle over it throughout the day when I don't have the focus for anything else.
Me too. On skimming, it's hilarious (I guess I'm a sucker for cheese-blogging?) but today I'm trying to learn convex optimization.
I'M A FRIEND OF SARAH CONNOR. SHE'S MY BEST MATE. SHE'S LOVELY. I REALLY LIKE HER. ... CAN I SEE HER PLEASE?
GIVE ME YOUR CLOTHES, YOUR BOOTS, AND YOUR MOTORCYCLE. WHAT? YES, OF COURSE I'M OK TO DRIVE. I'M FINE. LEAVE ME ALONE, MAN.
NOT A ROBOT. CYBORG. ORGANIC TISSUE OVER A METAL ENSKOLETON. ENDOSLETON. ENDOXOTLLE. SHIT. A METAL FRAMEWORK. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
"I don't know, officer. His marksmanship was fine, but his Greek radicals were a total shambles."
I'LL BE BACK. I REALLY HAVE TO PEE.
Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator, would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and GODDAMNIT
I KNOW NOW WHY YOU THROW UP. BUT IT IS SOMETHING I CAN NEVER DO. OH, WAIT.
...WRONG.
I'm worried about Mossy. Specifically, I'm worried he's drinking baiju when I've got some fine Kentucky bourbon.
There have been mornings when I've woken up with nuclear bombs detonating behind my eyeballs while I mutter, "No fate but what we make."
He's in Roc Island, not the mainland. Hopefully he has access to better stuff than baijiu.
Anyway, baijiu covers a multitude of evils. Zhuyeqing is quite nice. Still poison, but poison with flavor.
31.1 You found me out! I am your advisor!
Now, please remind me, what department are we in?
By the way, do you know where my keys are?
47: Yep, you're him alright! Forget your keys and get psyched to read the pile of trouble I sent you! As I say, there are c. three jokes in it for you to look forward to.
48: Tell me what pages the jokes are on. I don't have time to skim through the rest.
Thanks for posting this-- both the thesis and her post explaining why she doesn't talk math with mathematicians are interesting, and her perspective and clarity in explaining where she's coming from are really valuable.
I'm finding the stylistic choice makes its harder to read. I think that's because it's generally lower information density than I expect from math, which tempts me to read it more quickly and I end up missing things and have to backtrack. It's harder to tell what's important than well-written regular math. Has anyone who doesn't usually read math made a go at it?
I got annoyed reading this because she went for so long without explaining what a number field is. Big fan of the idea of writing papers so that people can actually understand them though. Have you guys seen distill.pub?
I saw this when it first came out. Personally I found it unclear, difficult to read and somewhat off-putting, but I think it's really interesting as an example of what we can do to make it easier for Ph.D. students to write their thesis without going insane. No one reads Ph.D. theses and if this helped her graduate then that's awesome and we should think more about that. My impression is that Bhargava really is an unusually good advisor, and I wish I had a better understanding of what he does as an advisor. Everyone in my facebook feed was so excited about this thesis, and it's one of the things that gives me reverse imposter syndrome ("everyone else feels like an imposter, but I don't... which means I must be the real imposter!"). Anyway, gotta run, I'm off to a talk by one of the mathematicians thanked in the introduction.