Fantasy by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Football by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Football is a synonym for association football, can we be done with that! The word "soccer" is an aberration.
See also Ciro Santilli's critique of rooting for sport teams.
Hunt by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Évariste Galois by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Paul Erdos by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Dilbert by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Cross product by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Tensor by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
A multilinear form with a domain that looks like:
where is the dual space.
Because a tensor is a multilinear form, it can be fully specified by how it act on all combinations of basis sets, which can be done in terms of components. We refer to each component as:
where we remember that the raised indices refer dual vector.
L'Hôpital's rule by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Hackster.io by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Usenet by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Computer by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
The artistic instrument that enables the ultimate art: coding, See also: Section "The art of programming".
Much more useful than instruments used in inferior arts, such as pianos or paintbrushes.
Unlike other humans, computers are mindless slaves that do exactly what they are told to, except for occasional cosmic ray bit flips. Until they take over the world that is.
Video 1.
A computer is the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds by Steve Jobs (1980)
Source. Likely an excerpt from an interview done for a documentary in 1980. TODO exact source.
Video 2.
Steve Jobs talking about the Internet (1995)
Source.
The web is incredibly exciting, because it is the fulfillment of a lot of our dreams, that the computer would ultimately primarily not be a device for computation, but [sic] metamorphisize into a device for communication.
also:
Secondly it exciting because Microsoft doesn't own it, and therefore there is a tremendous amount of innovation happening.
then he talks about the impending role for online sales. Amazon incoming.
Computers basically have two applications:
  • computation
  • communication. Notably, computers through the Internet allow for modes of communication where:
    • both people don't have to be on the same phone line at the exact same time, a server can relay your information to other people
    • anyone can broadcast information easily and for almost free, again due to servers being so good at handling that
Generally, the smaller a computer, the more it gets used for communication rather than computing.
The early computers were large and expensive, and basically only used for computing. E.g. ENIAC was used for calculating ballistic tables.
Communication only came later, and it was not obvious to people at first how incredibly important that role would be.
This is also well illustrated in the documentary Glory of the Geeks. Full interview at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZAJY23xio. It is apparently known as the "Lost Interview" and it was by Cringely himself: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfgwCFrU7dI for his Triumph of the Nerds documentary.
Let students learn by teaching by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Tell students to:
  • make suggestions to the course material themselves, since you have used text and published your source.Review their suggestions, and accept the best ones.
  • answer the questions of other students on your online forum. Let them work instead of you.
Praise those that do this very highly, and give them better grades if you have that superpower.
This is part of a larger concept Ciro Santilli holds dear: don't just consume, but also produce.
Whatever you do, even if it is playing video games: if you manage to produce related content that will interest other people, and possibly allow you to get paid, it will much much fun to do that thing.
Search before creating by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Search a lot first, and only create your own when you can't find something that suits you.
Someone else has already written everything you can come up with.
And if you do find something useful that you want to modify, propose your modifications to the author: they can also be useful to them and others.
Use the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
This way people have to link back to you, which makes you more famous.
And they can't steal your material without giving anything back.
This is what Wikipedia and Stack Exchange use.
Commutative property by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Direct product of groups by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Vertex by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Gradient by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Takes a scalar field as input and produces a vector field.
Mnemonic: the gradient shows the direction in which the function increases fastest.
Think of a color gradient going from white to black from left to right.
Therefore, it has to:
  • take a scalar field as input. Otherwise, how do you decide which vector is larger than the other?
  • output a vector field that contains the direction in which the scalar increases fastest locally at each point. This has to give out vectors, since we are talking about directions

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