ursula: second-century Roman glass die (icosahedron)
Ursula ([personal profile] ursula) wrote2019-10-01 09:23 pm
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TQFT for vampires

My first AMS Feature Column, Topological Quantum Field Theory for Vampires is now live, with art from [personal profile] cassyblue. Thank you to everyone who helped me workshop this!
hamletta: (Default)

[personal profile] hamletta 2019-10-02 02:30 am (UTC)(link)
Yay! (Not that I understand, bot looks cool!)
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[personal profile] flippac 2019-10-02 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
Yay! Also, apologies for being a highly-wordy pain in the arse while workshopping!
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)

[personal profile] yhlee 2019-10-02 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
Congrats! (Over my head, I'm afraid, but still very cool.)
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)

[personal profile] yhlee 2019-10-03 12:34 am (UTC)(link)
Your article is actually very lucid. The problem is I know juuuuuust enough math/physics to know that I am hopelessly outclassed by all the things that you are eliding. For example, I've never done tensors (although I used to watch Joe reduce 100-term tensors for his 500-level gravitational physics course senior year, ugh). The last time I attempted to teach myself category theory in order to read an extremely ambitious cross-disciplinary book on...I think it was AI or some such thing, I didn't have enough background and ended up quitting. And I likewise ran away from quantum anything--I never got that far in physics, but I audited a quantum computation/cryptology course from Prof. N. David Mermin for about two weeks before dropping out because my actual courses were killing me.

...I am the world's most inept math B.A.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (d20 (credit: bag_fu on LJ))

[personal profile] yhlee 2019-10-03 12:57 am (UTC)(link)
Heh! I graduated with distinction in all subjects...I would have had a higher GPA if I'd been smart enough to get out of the CS classes before I really started having trouble. But I bombed the math GRE...I am a slow thinker, and the only reason I could do the weekly problem sets is that I literally read them as soon as they were assigned and then spent the entire week slowly cogitating over them. I'm not sure I would have gotten into a decent grad school if I'd pursued a doctorate.

I agree that the 100-term tensors looked horrifying and awful, but they were regular features of Joe's problem sets out of the textbook. One more reason I'm not a physicist!

(That, and I tend to break lab equipment.)

[personal profile] karalee 2019-10-02 05:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Congratulations!
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[personal profile] hilarita 2019-10-03 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Read. Turned brain inside out. May understand a few more things than I started off knowing :)