Hello! Seeing the first problem instantly brought a smile to my face. I'm a 3rd year undergrad student of physics. This exact problem was in one of our problem sets in calculus 1 in our first year. I was very proud to have solved it by myself even though retrospectively it's a fairly elementary problem once you know what idea to apply. Thanks for the book recommendation :)
I'm almost positive that this isn't the intended solution to the second problem, and so I'll post it as a joke: go upstairs immediately (with the switches off!), unscrew the lightbulb and tie the wires together to short the circuit. Then, turn the switches on one at a time. When you lose power (or die in an electrical fire depending on your home's wiring), you'll know you flipped the light switch!
What’s your opinion on taking a gap year before grad school? Especially if one wants to specialize in a vast field like algebraic geometry? Meaning that someone builds the necessary background before they rush into it.
My personal opinion is, if you want to take a gap year in order to travel around India, make an internship in bioinformatics or immerse into the Gaga dance movement, it is totally cool! But if you are sure that you want to spend that year studying math anyway, then it is much easier to do while attending lecture courses and conferences and talking math to your peers and professors, which all naturally happens when you're enrolled in a PhD program. Don't worry, during PhD you'll have plenty of time to freak out about not having the right background in algebraic geometry, and yet end up with writing a worthy thesis!
Hi ! We would love a video about your life as a postdoc at ETH. There are lots of international students who are concerned about the life, work culture, salaries, accomodation, cost of living etc. in Zurich and whether postdocs are paid enough to sustain their families. Please consider making a video on the same. Thank you.
hey! these are all reasonable questions, but I know little about it, unfortunately. For example, a postdoc salary is more than enough to support one postdoc, but I don't have a family to sustain so don't know how would that go (I think one postdoc salary suffices for 2 adults, but I heard that having small kids in Switzerland, e.g. sending them to kindergartens, is very expensive). The life at ETH seems to be great overall, but again, since I only spent the pandemic year here, there wasn't much to take part in, to make a non-superficial impression. but thanks for the questions -- I'm thinking of making a live stream around Christmas time where I can try to answer random questions that aren't covered in videos! :)
hey, I sympathize with your suggestion, but I need to create some sort of a safe space for my interviewees, who are already put in a vulnerable position when asked difficult, personal questions on camera. I am sorry about it, but this is the compromise I have to make in order to be able to produce such interviews. By the way, I open comments under most of my videos that aren't interviews.
@@math-life-balance Thank you for clarifying and for creating great math content. I can’t imagine the workload of being an academic in addition to creating these videos. Also, I really love the cozy background in all of your videos! :)
@@math-life-balance a proper balance might be reached by asking individual interviewees if they would prefer comments to be open or closed. i apologize for filling the air with such sentiments for the second time on your channel, i grew up in a very suppressive environment which causes me to view comment restrictions as the opposite of safe. the analogy here is to that of the agora, where a center of artistic, spiritual, and political life is upheld, where anyone is empowered to speak freely so long as they respect the humanity of their fellow citizens, this is what safety means in my view.
@@math-life-balance In hindsight I could have exercised more tact here. My views have changed somewhat given that a comment is not a discussion since UA-cam has chosen a structure that encourages something closer to graffiti than Socratic dialogue. Actual discourse is needed which requires bravery.
Given a hexagon, assign to each vertex a number 1, 0, 1, 0 , 0 respectively. You may add one to two adjacent numbers as a move. You may make as many moves as you want. Is it possible to make all of the vertices equal? This is a fun one and not too hard!
I like the Königsberg bridge problem. I believe it was the problem to introduce graph theory in the first math book I ever picked up, or read digitally: Distilling Ideas: An Introduction to Mathematical Thinking.
Hello! Seeing the first problem instantly brought a smile to my face. I'm a 3rd year undergrad student of physics. This exact problem was in one of our problem sets in calculus 1 in our first year. I was very proud to have solved it by myself even though retrospectively it's a fairly elementary problem once you know what idea to apply. Thanks for the book recommendation :)
Great fireplace😌 and bean bag and ur laugh
I remember coming across this book a few years ago and I absolutely loved it !! Great to see you talk about it, and hope you have a blast reading it 😀
I'm almost positive that this isn't the intended solution to the second problem, and so I'll post it as a joke: go upstairs immediately (with the switches off!), unscrew the lightbulb and tie the wires together to short the circuit. Then, turn the switches on one at a time. When you lose power (or die in an electrical fire depending on your home's wiring), you'll know you flipped the light switch!
What’s your opinion on taking a gap year before grad school? Especially if one wants to specialize in a vast field like algebraic geometry? Meaning that someone builds the necessary background before they rush into it.
My personal opinion is, if you want to take a gap year in order to travel around India, make an internship in bioinformatics or immerse into the Gaga dance movement, it is totally cool! But if you are sure that you want to spend that year studying math anyway, then it is much easier to do while attending lecture courses and conferences and talking math to your peers and professors, which all naturally happens when you're enrolled in a PhD program. Don't worry, during PhD you'll have plenty of time to freak out about not having the right background in algebraic geometry, and yet end up with writing a worthy thesis!
Hi ! We would love a video about your life as a postdoc at ETH. There are lots of international students who are concerned about the life, work culture, salaries, accomodation, cost of living etc. in Zurich and whether postdocs are paid enough to sustain their families. Please consider making a video on the same. Thank you.
hey! these are all reasonable questions, but I know little about it, unfortunately. For example, a postdoc salary is more than enough to support one postdoc, but I don't have a family to sustain so don't know how would that go (I think one postdoc salary suffices for 2 adults, but I heard that having small kids in Switzerland, e.g. sending them to kindergartens, is very expensive). The life at ETH seems to be great overall, but again, since I only spent the pandemic year here, there wasn't much to take part in, to make a non-superficial impression.
but thanks for the questions -- I'm thinking of making a live stream around Christmas time where I can try to answer random questions that aren't covered in videos! :)
The best book !!!!
Just a suggestion, it would be better if you keep the comment section open just to feel like discussion is allowed.
hey, I sympathize with your suggestion, but I need to create some sort of a safe space for my interviewees, who are already put in a vulnerable position when asked difficult, personal questions on camera. I am sorry about it, but this is the compromise I have to make in order to be able to produce such interviews. By the way, I open comments under most of my videos that aren't interviews.
@@math-life-balance Thank you for clarifying and for creating great math content. I can’t imagine the workload of being an academic in addition to creating these videos. Also, I really love the cozy background in all of your videos! :)
@@math-life-balance a proper balance might be reached by asking individual interviewees if they would prefer comments to be open or closed. i apologize for filling the air with such sentiments for the second time on your channel, i grew up in a very suppressive environment which causes me to view comment restrictions as the opposite of safe. the analogy here is to that of the agora, where a center of artistic, spiritual, and political life is upheld, where anyone is empowered to speak freely so long as they respect the humanity of their fellow citizens, this is what safety means in my view.
@@Israel2.3.2 that is an easy way to create negativity towards interviewees who prefer closed comments, and I cannot let that happen, sorry!
@@math-life-balance In hindsight I could have exercised more tact here. My views have changed somewhat given that a comment is not a discussion since UA-cam has chosen a structure that encourages something closer to graffiti than Socratic dialogue. Actual discourse is needed which requires bravery.
Check out Paul Zeitz’s course on Wondrium.
Ahh a maths olympiad classic
and what are your favourite recreational math problems? :)
Given a hexagon, assign to each vertex a number 1, 0, 1, 0 , 0 respectively. You may add one to two adjacent numbers as a move. You may make as many moves as you want. Is it possible to make all of the vertices equal? This is a fun one and not too hard!
I like the Königsberg bridge problem. I believe it was the problem to introduce graph theory in the first math book I ever picked up, or read digitally: Distilling Ideas: An Introduction to Mathematical Thinking.