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No Fluo tribute title, a shameful thread
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Feb 3, 2016 11:19
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Guavanaut posted:It's neoliberalism and austerity. Also your local council, but chances are they're having their funding cut to the bone. "Chances are"? They all are.
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Feb 3, 2016 23:56
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Zephro posted:Wait, I missed this too. What happened? He died fairly suddenly at the age of 25
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Feb 4, 2016 15:46
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Pesky Splinter posted:What in the actual gently caress. Including previous flagship trust Addenbrookes, which is now reduced to stuff like not putting ice cubes in tap water to cut costs.
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Feb 4, 2016 21:52
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Tesseraction posted:Right, but it ionically bonds, which has always been the defining thing of inorganic chemistry, I mean like even going from the wikipedia page on 'inorganic chemistry' brings up salts almost immediately https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inorganic_chemistry#Key_concepts "Organic" vs "Inorganic" isn't "Covalent" vs "Ionic", which you learn after A-level is a massive oversimplification in any case.
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Feb 4, 2016 23:58
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All organic compounds contain carbon, but after that all bets are off. It's an entirely arbitrary distinction, and only really survives because the chemistry of hydrocarbons, amino acids and the like is so important a field it gets given a name to distinguish it.
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Feb 5, 2016 00:00
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If you really want to get into it we can start talking about orbital hybridisation, perturbation theory and band structure  OwlFancier posted:Personally I like biology because you can settle arguments like this by flicking bits of kidney at people until they stop arguing. You can do that in chemistry too if you're hardcore enough
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Feb 5, 2016 00:02
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Kokoro Wish posted:Mathematicians are useful for explaining how observed things work, but without the physical sciences they'd not really have much to explain. This is both inaccurate and irrelevant
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Feb 5, 2016 14:13
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ThomasPaine posted:e: Seriously though the humanities are absolutely necessary. Would anyone want to live in a world where the only knowledge of value was cold science? Science is far from cold. ThomasPaine posted:That all needs to be put into context, and most importantly scientists need to be reminded that their 'objective' disciplines are in fact nothing of the sort. Without philosophers and historians and sociologists (not a science jesus) and linguists we would sacrifice so much understanding of how civilisation works - which incorporates class systems and general power dynamics that I don't think anyone in this thread would disagree are vitally important. Academic slap fights over which displines are 'better' are just loving tedious. Nobody in the real world has slap fights over which subject is "better", that's pretty much restricted to undergraduates and younger (if anything, slapfights are between different subfields of a field of a subject  ).Your argument is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what working scientists/mathematicians are like and what they do and think. It's a very popular misunderstanding, certainly, but there was a polemic posted earlier in the thread attacking the core concept of your argument. Paul.Power posted:The problems are (as the lament itself notes): These are less of a problem than you'd think. There's a giant body of research into mathematics education (that I know a fair bit about, as I know a fairly leading person in the field) and the main issue is that the government doesn't want to do it, partially because the people making the decisions (eg Gove) think there isn't anything more to mathematics than just doing sums. These are the same people to whom "Teach children to code" means "Tell them how to make a website" because they fundamentally do not understand anything about the sciences. Tesseraction posted:Eh, I suppose the problem is when people can't do arithmetic, as opposed to mathematics specifically. The problem is when people can't multiply 50p by 7 or divide £4.80 by 8 because "I can't do maths!" not the people who don't know that dy/dx sin(x) = cos(x) Ahem I think you mean d(sin(x)/dx = cos(x) unless you're trying to solve for y (log sin(x) in this case)  Anyway, that's not the problem. The problem is much bigger than arithmetic. Who the gently caress cares about arithmetic, pretty much everyone carries around a powerful computer in their pocket nowadays (and it's not like it's a vital skill for doing mathematics). The problem comes more from that it's socially acceptable, even amongst the "intelligentsia", to be mathematically illiterate. Not arithmetically illiterate (unless you're referring to the field of mathematics rather than adding and subtracting), but mathematically illiterate. In general this means that people don't even try to appreciate something that is occasionally very simple but very beautiful, in practical terms it means that they feel vindicated in just ignoring anything to do with numbers and that makes it extremely easy for businesses and the government to lie to you through their misuse.
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Feb 5, 2016 20:16
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TACD posted:Wow, I'd not read this before but it rings very true. I distinctly remember the point at school when our good maths teacher (who took the time to make things interesting) left and was replaced by a miserable woman who literally told us to open to a page and do the problems while she tore up old exam papers. I gave up on maths (and later, physics) when the entire subject turned into learning the correct procedure for laying out sums. Calculus is ok, but it's pretty much just learning rules. In real calculus (ie not complex analysis) there's about a dozen things you need to learn and then apply in ever more confusing ways, and because to really get down to the nitty gritty of it involves a whole lot of detailed work (basically everything Weierstrass did) just learning how it worked was never very satisfactory to me. Something like Algebra (ie, the study of groups, fields and rings rather than the solving of equations) or Number Theory you can get right into the detail of it from first principles, and I find that's both more satisfying and easier to understand because you know why there are exceptions, rather than just being told there are and being expected to remember them. I would recommend something like DM Burton's Elementary Number Theory (pdfs are googlable) with the warning that it is written as a formal mathematics textbook and so there's lots of technical use of language. eg. quote:If a and b are any positive integers, then there exists a positive integer n such that na >= b This is straightforward and intuitive, but if you're not used to reading things like it it can be a bit tough.
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Feb 5, 2016 20:26
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TACD posted:Yea, it's very possible I'm coming at the whole situation wrong. Basically I work with a lot of differential equations and I have only a vague idea of what's going on in them, so that's the part I'd really like to get my head around. I don't doubt that learning everything from first principles is going to be much more satisfying and enlightening, but geez... where's my banner ad offering One Weird Trick to Understanding Calculus? (Mathematicians Hate This!) How much differentiation do you know? Differential equations are generally taught as "plug in the ingredients", but that can be a bit mystifying if you have no idea why they work. A quick precis to differentiation for general interest: Consider a function f(x). If (f(x+h) - f(x))/h is meaningful when you let h be very small (ie go to zero), and is the same as if you let h be very small and negative then that's your function differentiated. eg. What's x2 differentiated? ((x+h)2 - x2)/h = (x2 - x2 + 2xh + h[super]2[/super)/h = 2x + h -> 2x as h -> 0. What's sin(x) differentiated? (sin(x+h) - sin(x))/h = (sin(x)cos(h) + sin(h)cos(x) - sin(x))/h = sin(x)(1 - cos(h))/h + cos(x)*(sin(h)/h). First bit -> 0 as h -> 0, second bit goes to sin(0)/0 = 1, so you get cos(x) as expected. Product rule? (f(x+h)g(x+h) - f(x)g(x))/h = (f(x+h)g(x+h) - f(x)g(x+h) + f(x)g(x+h) - f(x)g(x))/h = g(x+h)*(f(x+h) - f(x))/h + f(x)*(g(x+h) - g(x))/h = f'(x)g(x) + f(x)g'(x) as expected. etc etc. This is obviously impractical to do when you have more complicated functions, but basically everything continuous is differentiable at most places (exception: the Weierstrass function, which is a deliberately pathological bit of maths:  ) Vector differentiation gets a bit more involved, but to be honest it's not that much more involved. Differential equations are more complicated as well, but the theory behind why they work isn't that difficult from first principles if you knuckle down to it. Integration is the hard bit, really. Very messy.
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Feb 6, 2016 03:12
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TACD posted:Not enough to understand most of your post You don't need to know any to understand my post, all you need is school level algebra and the sin double angle formula
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Feb 6, 2016 17:09
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hookerbot 5000 posted:Trigonometric identities are a nightmare when you're learning - there's a bajillion of them and you'll be reading something where it'll be going along nicely then just randomly mention one as if it is common knowledge. Sin and coses are a bit more fundamental than working through circles, from the equation: eix = cos(x) + i sin(x), where i is the square root of -1. Knowing that you can derive stuff like the compound angle formulae really easily: eg. cos (a+b) + i sin (a+b) = ei(a+b) = eia*eib = (cos(a) + i sin(a))*(cos(b) + i sin(b)) = cos(a)cos(b) + (i)2sin(a)sin(b) + i sin(a)cos(b) + i cos(a)sin(b) = cos(a)cos(b) - sin(a)sin(b) + i(sin(a)cos(b) + sin(b)cos(a)) equating the real and imaginary parts separately you get the usual compound angle formulae. Doing it without that is a complete nightmare in comparison (similarly with, say, cos(3x) - what's that in terms of sin(x) and cos(x)? Using the above method it takes 2 lines, using the double angle formulae it takes a dozen with lots of tricky multiplications) By and large "a mathematician" will try to: a) remember as little as necessary and b) be as lazy as possible. You can remember all the various trig identities... or you can use the above formula. eg2. cos2(x) + sin2(x) = (cos(x) + i sin(x))*(cos(x) - i sin(x)) = (cos(x) + i sin(x))*(cos(-x) + i sin(-x)) = ei(x + (-x)) = e0 = 1 as normal. Although I guess you have to remember that cos is an even function (cos(x) = cos(-x)) and sin is an odd function (sin(x) = -sin(-x)) too TACD posted:I don't know if I've even heard of the sin double angle formula sin(2a) = 2sin(a)cos(a), it's just One Of The Things People Are Made To Remember (although if you know a bit about complex numbers you can derive them, and pretty much any trig thing you care to mention). If you don't know about that just look at the x2 example Remember, the differential of f(x) (also called f'(x), f prime x) is the same as (f(x+h) - f(x))/h when h gets very small. Do it yourself for f(x) = 5x, say, and see what you get compared to the "normal" rules. If you're not fully au fait with functions, just consider the x in f(x) = whatever a placeholder - so if f(x) = 5*x, f(2) = 5*2 because you replace the x with a 2, similarly for f(x+2) = 5*(x+2) in this case. MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Feb 6, 2016 |
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Feb 6, 2016 19:32
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il_cornuto posted:Those posts are giving me bad flashbacks to the only part of maths I hated at school, can we get a trig warning on them please. See http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3198184 's thread title
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Feb 6, 2016 19:45
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Darth Walrus posted:What evidence do we have of corruption in the academy/free school system? It seems ripe for it, but I'd like specifics. The fact that school inspections stop when the academy chooses is, uh, unethical at best. (They stop after they get "Outstanding", never to be checked again)
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Feb 8, 2016 23:09
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[efb]Niric posted:MrL_JaKiri is half right. Just clarified this with more detail so no need for my post on it
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Feb 9, 2016 15:04
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serious gaylord posted:I imagine if the bike rider had been killed this wouldn't have stopped them bringing it to court I'd like to imagine that too, but...
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Feb 10, 2016 00:47
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Gonzo McFee posted:Personally I hope Sanders wins because It'd be hilarious to watch the right wing of America's reaction and also because it'd convince a lot of people to vote for Corbyn classic if AmeriCorbyn wins. Only problem here is that the senate is incredibly conservative by definition and most people don't understand that, so Sanders not implementing anything actually progressive would be blamed on him and used to discredit Ol Corbs
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Feb 11, 2016 13:47
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Pork Pie Hat posted:It has been confirmed that Gravitational Waves have been detected for the first time. This is a BIG DEAL. "The power put out [by the black hole colliision] was 50 times greater than all the energy put out by all the suns in the universe"
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Feb 11, 2016 17:18
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shrike82 posted:Aren't Scots even fatter than Americans? No. 65% overweight/28% obese vs 69%/36% for the Americans http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/TrendObesity http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx
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Feb 11, 2016 17:52
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nopantsjack posted:Why is this gravity wave business exciting? Science articles in newspapers are always either uninformative or simplify things to the point of nonsense i.e. one of the guardian livestream things being like "lemme explain it to you plebes, imagine you had a tv with one channel then suddenly it started playing other channels!" To quote me in the physics thread, It's an important experimental verification of a prediction of General Relativity and demonstrates that using Michaelson interferometers to detect gravity waves can tell us things about the universe. But unless you're an astrophysicist this will have very little day to day impact, if any. (Slightly less terse post to follow) shrike82 posted:Seemed like an incredible waste of money; it's good they're being defunded Are they?
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Feb 11, 2016 18:17
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So to directly respond to a few things: The universe being "4D" is more generally, in physics circles, referred to as being 3+1 dimensional; three spatial and one time. 3+1 rather than 4 because time and space are related but are not the same thing - this goes back to Special (rather than General - the gravity one) Relativity. The 11 (or however many, more than 3+1 anyway) dimension thing is to do with quantum gravity, and in particular string theory. While it also deals with gravity in practice the things are very different - quantum gravity is about the exceptionally tiny force of gravity at a very small scale, whereas General Relativity is about astronomical scale gravity which is much easier to observe. GR doesn't "do" quantum scale, which is why there's the hunt for a quantum theory of gravity instead of having two exceptionally good theories about how things work that are completely mutually incompatible. We've had indirect evidence for gravity waves (and that gravity travels at the speed of light) for a bit - if two heavy things are really close to eachother for a long time (most notably binary star systems) they send off gravity waves, and that takes energy out of the system that we can measure (the Sun also is sending off gravity waves - note that this is distinct from gravity the force, like the difference between a beam of light and an electric field - but only with about the same amount of power as a toaster, rather than something a thousand million million million times more or so like some binary systems). This was the first direct measurement. The main thing is that it demonstrates that hunting for gravity waves can tell us things (because they exist ) - we hadn't, for example, observed two black holes combining before but it happened just as theory suggests.The reason that it lets us study all the way back to whenever you like is that gravity waves don't get absorbed by things. Put a bunch of stuff in between you and something interesting and the light and other particles coming from it will be blocked but gravity waves just keep on trucking.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:29
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tooterfish posted:Are there any practical applications for this research though? Nope
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Feb 11, 2016 18:32
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MikeCrotch posted:I still maintain that he has some sort of deal with the rest of the cabinet as a human flak jacket in order to divert attention away from all the other poo poo that is being done while we are looking away. See also: Michael Gove as Education Secretary. The same as Gideon and the child tax credit cuts, I think a large part of it is to appear very right wing and unflappable in order to appeal to the
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Feb 11, 2016 18:49
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tentish klown posted:Seems highly unlikely, unless we rebuild Hadrian's Wall. And leave Alnwick to the Scots???
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Feb 11, 2016 19:04
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big scary monsters posted:This cannot be true. It is just way beyond parody, no self-respecting comedy writer would even go for this it's so laughable. Bears set up inquiry into presence of poo poo in woods
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Feb 11, 2016 19:51
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TACD posted:Trying to think of a way to explain this other than 'Hunt really is that stupid'. The best I've got is that perhaps he's planning to do an inquiry into morale now, find out it's poo poo, and then do another one this time next year and discover hey, it's improved (because the most upset doctors will have quit)! My enforced contract was the best deal, I told you so. Remember the Hunt Line through this has been that the problem has been the BMA for lying to its members
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Feb 11, 2016 20:09
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shrike82 posted:And what're the pay grades like? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_doctor All the information you seek is here
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Feb 11, 2016 22:08
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Don't forget you need to pay exam fees etc for continued training
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Feb 11, 2016 22:11
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A lot of people are forced to commute for multiple hours each way other day, because otherwise they won't be able to live.
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Feb 11, 2016 22:29
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And just before that one https://twitter.com/DaftLimmy/status/698129303196848128
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Feb 12, 2016 14:29
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Renaissance Robot posted:I'm just getting an error message, I don't suppose anybody took a screenshot? My one was him posting about how playing L4D2 makes him treat his friends and teammates really badly
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Feb 12, 2016 16:27
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Namtab posted:Worth noting that the abolition of the bursaries is the second step in creating a nurse recruitment crisis, the first step already happened and it was the inexplicable decision to require all nurse trainees to complete a three year degree, thus ensuring that the future generation of nurses gets less practical patient contact but can write essays really well. The third step, the second step was setting up deporting all the foreign nurses
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Feb 13, 2016 02:09
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OwlFancier posted:Why on earth does the Labour party not support strikes? Because the party exists to neuter the trade union movement
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Feb 13, 2016 02:10
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Robot Mil posted:I have been all for Corbs but loving hell his inability to focus on the current important political issues and actually challenge the madness competently is driving me up the wall. He has missed so many golden opportunities, and I don't care if he doesn't produce a fancy soundbite but any sounds would be good really. You appear to be confusing "The news isn't covering Labour's attack on the government over this" with "Labour isn't attacking the government over this". To quote the man himself, Corbyn posted:Jeremy Hunt's decision to impose a contract on junior doctors is provocative and damaging. Rather than helping to resolve this difficult dispute, his action will only inflame it. NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:He does absolutely need to shut up about Trident, though, almost nobody agrees with him either in his party, his membership or the public. I understand that it's his life's work and this is the biggest platform he'll ever have to push his agenda, but it's a complete waste of time. Do you think he goes to the press and shouts "NO I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NHS I'M TALKING ABOUT TRIDENT"? nopantsjack posted:He's got distracted fighting the same battles he did when he was a young man. I was really excited when he was just coming in and had this cool team of modern left economists and policy wonks because the fundamental issue in my mind is the selling off of everything and an unworkable top-down economics strategy. I didn't know extremely selective - and anti-Corbyn, largely - reporting was part of Corbyn's strategy. What an idiot! Trident only keeps on coming up so much because it's helpful to both Corbyn's opponents in the media (of which there are many - if memory serves the Indie was the least anti-Corbyn paper, and now it's dead) and in the Labour party (...again, of which they are many). eg. From the Telegraph front page: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ap-Trident.html Do you think the BBC would, on hearing that a shadow minister was resigning, work with him to make his announcement as politically damaging to his party as possible if the Labour party wasn't being lead by Corbyn?
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Feb 13, 2016 13:24
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NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:No, but he does spend an awful lot of time loving about trying to steer the party into an anti-Trident policy despite his party, the party conference and the wider public telling him not to. He doesn't though? Corbyn could say 10 words about Trident a month but get a dozen news stories from each word (which is pretty much what happens). In any case, I don't think the party, party conference and wider public are telling him not to. Certainly public polling on nuclear weapons is exceptionally dependent on the precise wording of the question. NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:It's the biggest remaining internal squabble and it's as embarrassing as it is pointless. Trident is going to stalk Labour and make convenient headlines until it's resolved, and it's only ever going to go one way. He needs to hold his hands up, mutter a few words about the new democratic Labour Party and the New Politics and how he's very disappointed but the people have spoken and he will listen then shut up about it forever. That's what he did do. The problem is that everyone else won't stop talking about it. Ignore the article, just watch the clip: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/17/jeremy-corbyn-trident-compromise-no-nuclear-warheads Andrew Marr asked a question about Trident, Corbyn gave a reply that was merely stating fact. Paraphrasing, "The submarines don't have to have nuclear warheads on them. Anyone using nuclear weapons would be a disaster for the whole world, and I don't believe David Cameron would use them either."
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Feb 13, 2016 14:09
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The flip side is that this is a vote that is happening soon. It's not an issue for if Corbyn becomes PM, the Trident renewal vote is happening in March (or possibly June if Cameron pushes it back). It's not a pie in the sky issue, it's an issue for today.
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Feb 13, 2016 14:12
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Cerv posted:Someone in student politics being really stupid is a low bar I know, but this is truly special Why is that "truly special"? A person who disagrees with someone doesn't want to speak from the same platform as them because they don't want to appear to be supporting them. She's not called for a boycott, just said that she's not going to speak.
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Feb 14, 2016 15:08
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The argument Tatchell makes - that by sharing a platform she can argue with him - would hold more water if it was a debate or more free form and not a talk with a stated topic. If she appeared and used her speech to criticise Tatchell then that would be the news story, and she'd be vilified for using an unrelated event to criticise Tatchell. So what should she do? Just shut up and not do anything?
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Feb 14, 2016 15:11
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lmaoboy1998 posted:As far as I can tell from the reporting on this Tachell's 'transphobic views' consist solely of signing a letter against no-platforming. He said 'I believe we should try to debate transphobes like Germaine Greere', and that's offensive enough that this woman can't possibly share a stage with him? gently caress me. Agreed, she should absolutely have to appear on stage with him. She is not allowed to make her own decisions.
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Feb 14, 2016 16:39
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