i spent a very enjoyable math binge day learning about waves and what i learned is that waves are extremely fucked up
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This is like the tip of the iceberg of wavy fuckedness
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For some absolute cosmic bullshit, look into: Huygen’s principle, “optical lenses as Fourier transforms” and, maybe especially, like: “fourier transform wavefunction”
It’s been a while, but yeah the universe is wild and waves are cool
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one thing i’m starting to suspect is that linear algebra is much more insane than it looks to students in an intro course but you don’t really see the insanity unless you do computations with gigantic matrices that, like, approximate differential operators
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Yes! Eigenvalues are magic. I only grokked differentiation of functions when I realized it produces the locally best fit linear transformation. And many vector spaces are way, way stranger than the R^n we tend to imagine...
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I felt pretty annoyed when I realized in GRADUATE SCHOOL that calculus was just the art of using linear algebra on things that aren't flat. Why oh why did it take until GRAD SCHOOL to realize that???
(I mean, I get it… but still!)
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fucked up how we have students take multivar before linear algebra
I think they are often side-by-side (at least it was for me at Stockholm University). But that means the courses don't talk to each other, since they cannot be certain a given concept has been introduced in the other course.
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