Jean Lagacé

Lecturer in mathematics @kcl | Science communication

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@_georgina666 It's part of what made me feel at home when I immigrated

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@RWuesthofen @wtgowers Mucho in spanish comes from multus, and in turn Proto-Indo-European *ml̥tos, meaning crumpled.

Much in English comes from old English Mycel (big) and in turn Proto-Indo-European *meǵh₂-, (big).

Maybe inform yourself before being arrogant

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@martinmbauer The problem though the letter ψ should not rhyme with sky but with ski... Both answers are the same no?

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@MGCTrekkie @lightediand To be fair, when I treated waves and heat in PDEs, there was little more physics to it than the fact the equations were called heat and wave. The point was not to derive the equations from physical principles but o analyse them once they're equations.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@matloff @kareem_carr Well, that's just spicy counting though

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@Lorenzo58157286 @katiedimartin When I learned to fly, the technical aspects were very good but there were plenty of stories like that they taught us that I later learned were crap.

Their goal was to instill a way of working, there was no science behind it.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@taz_chu You can also not bother, in the sense that the element a_0 being bounded by 1/0 means it's just arbitrary.

While it may sound formally wrong, if you're building a sequence presumably you only care about what happens 'far' in the sequence.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@sofiavictoriad Thanks for sharing, it will make it easier to detect!

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@Jess_E_Bells Signed up ~a month and a half ago for the waiting list, looks great!

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@katerhardy @leedsucu Same thing happened at Laval University, also in Canada. We have a lot to learn in how to strike from them, and I'm glad to see the experience repeated at @leedsucu

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@taz_chu The point to me is that blaming/banning tools is rarely the right option. I'd rather teach the limitations and uses of a tool rather than just a blanket ban.

Generating a text with GPT-4 is formulaic and meh. Generating a skeleton and improving on it can be fine, for instance.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@katiedimartin I find that it's those words which are the exact same in the other language that are the hardest

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@DrGrahamLJ Skin, liver, heart, kidneys, bladder

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@lightediand For the "not good enough part": whenever I find something easy, I pause and think about that time where I found that thing hard. This confirms to me that I am, in fact, able to learn and will continue to be.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@bowmanimal @themaxj They're just secretly working base 9

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@mathnaudrey In the end it's the correct gambit I think. I became much more productive as soon as I reduced my working hours to something manageable. There is no quality in super long hours.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@littmath @boarders__ @plain_simon @lisyarus I guess this is where I do disagree with you, I think that a good impressionistic explanation requires a deep understanding of the phenomenon.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@boarders__ @plain_simon @littmath @lisyarus I was not saying there's a lack of care, I was saying that the debate is really around what constitutes an explanation, and that the reason both sides disagree(d) strongly was this lack of meeting on this definition.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@plain_simon @littmath @boarders__ @lisyarus I mean, I do think that everything *is* communicable --- at an impressionistic level. To me this does constitute an explanation in laymen's terms. I don't think that other sciences can delve more than mathematics in the nitty-gritty details.

[Jean Lagacé @eigen_fun]

@littmath @plain_simon @boarders__ @lisyarus Sorry to revive this old thread but: what sort of science communication is not at best impressionistic? I think that in this debate the only real point of contention is that many mathematicians seem to not value much this type of communication and other scientists do.