Vector graphics by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Smaller files, scalable image size, and editability. Why would you use anything else for programmatically generated images?!?!
IBM Personal Computer by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Agilent Technologies by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
In a way, Agilent represents the most grassroots electronics parts of HP from before they became overly invested in laptops and fell.
They spun out the electronics part as Keysight in 2014, becoming life science only.
Timeline of quantum mechanics by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Kudos by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Ahh, Ciro Santilli was certain this was some slang neologism, but it is actually Greek! So funny. Introduced into English in the 19th century according to: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kudo.
Delta (letter) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Nu (letter) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Why would physicists use a letter such that:
  • the upper case version looks exactly like an upper case N. At least that is the correct pronunciation/name/historical successor of .
  • the lower case version looks exactly like a lower case V
Why? Why?????????
Trainspotting (1996) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Tests of general relativity by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Finite general linear group by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
general linear group over a finite field of order . Remember that due to the classification of finite fields, there is one single field for each prime power .
Exactly as over the real numbers, you just put the finite field elements into a matrix, and then take the invertible ones.
Messier 49 by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Magnetic confinement fusion by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Once again, relies on superconductivity to reach insane magnetic fields. Superconductivity is just so important.
Ciro Santilli saw a good presentation about it once circa 2020, it seems that the main difficulty of the time was turbulence messing things up. They have some nice simulations with cross section pictures e.g. at: www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/937941.
Public domain by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Chomsky hierarchy by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
This is the classic result of formal language theory, but there is too much slack between context free and context sensitive, which is PSPACE (larger than NP!).
A good summary table that opens up each category much more can be seen e.g. at the bottom of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automata_theory under the summary thingy at the bottom entitled "Automata theory: formal languages and formal grammars".
Empirical formula by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Classification of finite fields by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
There's exactly one field per prime power, so all we need to specify a field is give its order, notated e.g. as .
Every element of a finite field satisfies .
It is interesting to compare this result philosophically with the classification of finite groups: fields are more constrained as they have to have two operations, and this leads to a much simpler classification!
GF(4) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli tried to add this example to Wikipedia, but it was reverted, so here we are, see also: Section "Deletionism on Wikipedia".
This is a good first example of a field of a finite field of non-prime order, this one is a prime power order instead.
, so one way to represent the elements of the field will be the to use the 4 polynomials of degree 1 over GF(2):
  • 0X + 0
  • 0X + 1
  • 1X + 0
  • 1X + 1
Note that we refer in this definition to anther field, but that is fine, because we only refer to fields of prime order such as GF(2), because we are dealing with prime powers only. And we have already defined fields of prime order easily previously with modular arithmetic.
Over GF(2), there is only one irreducible polynomial of degree 2:
Addition is defined element-wise with modular arithmetic modulo 2 as defined over GF(2), e.g.:
Multiplication is done modulo , which ensures that the result is also of degree 1.
For example first we do a regular multiplication:
Without modulo, that would not be one of the elements of the field anymore due to the !
So we take the modulo, we note that:
and by the definition of modulo:
which is the final result of the multiplication.
TODO show how taking a reducible polynomial for modulo fails. Presumably it is for a similar reason to why things fail for the prime case.

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