Fonken

Semiprofessional coffee addict.
Theoretical physicist in the making.
Opinions are delta correlated

[Jiikae @Jiikae]

It’s 2011. An Ocarina of Time and a Starfox remake are coming to the latest Nintendo system

It’s 2026. An Ocarina of Time and Starfox remake are coming to the latest Nintendo system

[Steven Strogatz @stevenstrogatz]

A beautiful example of an "optimal stopping problem" – Feynman's restaurant problem – with a great backstory behind it. This is a fun, well written article, and a fun math problem too.

https://t.co/0Nng9KLDHa

[Grant Stenger (hiring) @GrantStenger]

Local minima are rare in high dimensions because a strict local minimum has to curve upward in every direction, so all Hessian eigenvalues must be positive.

In a D-dimensional toy model where eigenvalue signs are independent, that’s a 2^(-D) event. In GOE-like random matrix models, positive definiteness is even rarer, roughly exp(-cD^2).

So as dimension grows, random critical points are much more likely to be saddles than minima. This is one reason high-dimensional optimization is often a saddle-escape problem, not a bad-local-minimum problem.

Wrote up some of the math here: https://t.co/vkaVqVD64N

[Fonken @Danefantom]

SSH is just magically convenient

[Fermat's Library @fermatslibrary]

On this day in 1906, André Weil was born in Paris. Number theorist, founding member of Bourbaki, and the W in the Taniyama–Shimura–Weil conjecture.

He spent the 1940 war in a French prison after refusing military service and used the time to do some of his best mathematics, writing his sister Simone that "my mathematics work is proceeding beyond my wildest hopes, and I am even a bit worried - if it's only in prison that I work so well, will I have to arrange to spend two or three months locked up every year?"

[Nathan is sometimes at Summer Camp (say hi👋) 🔎 @NathanpmYoung]

Worth a watch in full.

[Fonken @Danefantom]

@skdh Fantastic compilation of pseudo-scientific nonsense. Author was awarded "public misleader of the year" by the Swedish sceptic society (VoF)

[Fonken @Danefantom]

@martinmrmar You don't even need to calculate anything, a rotation preserves area -> 1

[MathMatize Memes @MathMatize]

Poor Jordan form

[Chris @chris_juravich]

These are among my favorite math books I’ve studied in the past two years or so. For newcomers to complex numbers, I recommend Nahin’s book on sqrt(-1).

[Fonken @Danefantom]

@engineers_feed Assuming the wheel axle is frictionless the conveyor belt makes absolutely no difference to whether or not the plane can take off....

[Jason Locasale @LocasaleLab]

This is a great example of the stranglehold academic institutions have on scientific identity.

They’ve created a belief system where if you leave, you are treated as if you’re effectively dead, as if your contributions no longer matter.

We must normalize being scientists first, and having institutions rank far down the list of what defines who we are.

This didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of billions in taxpayer revenue and resulting massive marketing power that shapes how the public thinks about science.

[Chris @chris_juravich]

Another shiny object to add to my math hobbyist rec room.
The sombrero function. 😎🤠

[Saint Javelin @saintjavelin]

Love it

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

What made Albert Einstein tick?

Popular myths about the physics laureate’s brain are as enduring as his impact on our understanding of space, time and gravity.

Perhaps the most common of them is that Einstein had an unusually large brain, but this simply isn’t true.

After he died in 1955, Einstein’s brain was removed by a pathologist named Thomas Harvey, who preserved, photographed, and measured it. It weighed 1,230g, which is at the low end of average for modern humans.

However, further examination of photographs by a team at McMaster University, Canada, revealed that Einstein’s parietal lobes were 15% wider than average. While these lobes are implicated in mathematical, visual, and spatial cognition and it is intriguing to think they may help explain Einstein’s remarkable abilities, this link cannot be proved.

One thing we can be sure of is Einstein’s work ethic, curiosity and humility, which helped him achieve great things.

"We have been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly just how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists. If this humility could be imparted to everybody, the world of human endeavours would become more appealing," he said.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921.

Learn more: https://t.co/ePOJS6lb0W

[Andrzej Kukla @Mathinity_]

Happy π-day! 🥳
To celebrate this day I’ve decided to show you how to prove the irrationality of π!

What is your favourite thing related to π? 🤔

Meanwhile, have a nice read!

🧵[1/8]

[Fonken @Danefantom]

@sdriks Kan ni definera vad ni menar med vetenskapligt stöd? St��d till vilket påstående?

[Ben Stiller @BenStiller]

Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip. We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie.

[Fonken @Danefantom]

@martinmrmar Vacuously true