How Failing to Meet My Goals Made Me Happier

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Lila Greco

At the beginning of this semester I set some goals for myself. The previous semester had been stressful, and I wanted to become a better, healthier, happier, more efficient version of myself. My goals included things like “be on campus and working 9-5 every day,” “close your laptop by 10 pm every night,” and “don’t do homework in bed – use a desk like a real human.”

Needless to say I failed to meet just about all of these goals – not just a handful of times, but pretty regularly. And yet I think I have succeeded in becoming a healthier and happier version of myself, just not in the ways I expected.

The biggest change in my emotional well-being came from really establishing friendships. I started making more time for friends and the activities that make me happy. I sometimes went to karaoke on a weeknight. I went to cookouts to take a break from endless homework on the weekends. Grad students are not robots. We need more than just fuel to be productive. Having fun times to look forward to (and reflect on) makes the hard work of being a grad student so much more bearable. Continue reading →

Posted in Advice, Grad student life | 2 Comments

Tupper’s Self-Referential Formula

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Matthew Simonson

Thanks to Nelly Cheboi for bringing this formula, and all the accompanying links, to our attention.

In his humorous 2015 Numberphile video, Matt Parker discusses a remarkable formula by Jeff Tupper of the University of Toronto whose graph is the letters, numbers, and symbols in the formula itself.  More precisely, this formula:

eq.1(1)produces this graph:

Screenshot 2016-05-16 12.18.13

To find out how it’s done, check out Parker’s video, plus this background explanation and generalization by Shreevatsa R. You can use Tupper’s formula to plot your own name (or anything else you like) using this Python code provided by Kaito Einstein.

(image courtesy of Weisstein, Eric W. “Tupper’s Self-Referential Formula.” From MathWorld–A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuppersSelf-ReferentialFormula.html)

 

Posted in Math, Math Games | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Summer’s Here: Time to Organize All Those Papers!

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Matthew Simonson
Zotero_logo

Zotero is free open-source software to help you organize your research references across multiple platforms and devices. Image is in the public domain.

The start of summer is a great time to get organized: perhaps you finally have time to focus on something other than the next problem set, or perhaps you’re too burned out from finals to do anything else productive.  Back in the good old days of undergrad, mathematics was a mysterious substance that emanated from textbooks, whiteboards, the mouths of my classmates, and occasionally, Wikipedia. Now that I’m in graduate school, more and more of what I learn comes from journal articles, which can prove difficult to organize. When I wrote my undergraduate thesis, my papers were all printed copies stored in an accordion folder, but as a graduate student reading hundreds of articles, this system is hardly practical.  Luckily, there are several reference management programs that keep track of papers you’ve read and generate bibliographies for you.  After searching through many options last winter, I finally settled on Zotero, which I highly recommend (and no, I am not being paid to write this).

I chose Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] because of the following features: Continue reading →

Posted in Advice, Grad student life, staying organized, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Hey There, Grad Student, You’re in Good Company – Part 2

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Alexi
Math3ma

Guest post by Tai-Danae Bradley, a second year PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center and founder of Math3ma.com.

By Tai-Danae Bradley

Welcome to part 2 of our series where we’re taking a candid peek into the world of mathematical research. Last time we chatted about the often laborious process of doing math which, as we heard from Andrew Wiles, is much like stumbling in a dark room while searching for a light switch. The late William Thurston also described math in a similar fashion in his Math Overflow profile. Perhaps you’ve seen it? Here’s a screenshot: Continue reading →

Posted in Advice, Grad School, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Hey There, Grad Student, You’re in Good Company – Part 1

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Alexi
Math3ma

Guest post by Tai-Danae Bradley, a second year PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center and founder of Math3ma.com.

By Tai-Danae Bradley

A while ago at my blog Math3ma, I wrote a post in response to a great Slate article reminding us that math – like writing – isn’t something that anyone is good at without (at least a little!) effort. As the article’s author put it, “no one is born knowing the axiom of completeness.” Since then, I’ve come across a few other snippets of mathematical candor that I found both helpful and encouraging. And since final/qualifying exam season is right around the corner, I thought it’d be great to share them here for a little morale-boosting.

The first comes from a fantastic post written by University of Illinois at Chicago’s recent PhD Jeremy Kun (also blogger at the excellent Math ∩ Programming) in which he answers the question What is it ‘really’ like for a mathematician to learn math? In short, his answer is contained in the post’s title:  “Mathematicians are chronically lost and confused (and that’s how it’s supposed to be).”

Of course, he means this in a good way and elaborates by sharing this colorful metaphor of mathematical research by Andrew Wiles: Continue reading →

Posted in Advice, Grad School, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Hey There, Grad Student, You’re in Good Company – Part 1