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New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

quantamagazine.org

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Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#131

Post by volemo »

dsaalgo wrote: post #84
dkarl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found it's best to explain my job using unintelligible jargon. There are three choices, really: You can give a quick explanation in terms they understand, which makes your job sound easy and makes them wonder how anybody gets paid to do it. You can explain what you do and why it's important in terms they understand, but it'll take so long they'll get bored and wish they hadn't asked. Or you can give a quick expl…

> There are three choices There is another: Give away as little information as you can about it. Don’t say or agree that it’s secret or that you can’t talk about it- just be tight-lipped, and don’t divulge. If you do it right, you will seem mysterious. If you do it wrong, they probably won’t talk to you much again. Win-win.

— Hi, and what do you do?

— What’s your security clearance?

Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#132

Post by 9dev »

nurettin wrote: post #130
pseudocomposer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I meet people who immediately use hyper-specific jargon with strangers, I either distrust them, or assume they’re not emotionally intelligent (because it’s a choice demonstrates little respect for the person they’re addressing). It also projects that they may be compensating for some emotional insecurity on their own end, trying to assert intellectual “superiority” in some way. The first option (explaining thing…

> When I meet people who immediately use hyper-specific jargon with strangers, That is 90% of the professors I asked questions to. If they go full jargon and don't want to explain any of it, they don't want you near them ( or they want you to improve before even having a conversation ).

That just makes them awful professors. They should stick to WWFD (what would Feynman do!)

Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#133

Post by vanderZwan »

fcanesin wrote: post #99

I feel like mathematicians should be able to do a second doctorate level degree a few years after their first PhD, that must be in a adjacent field of their own, but not the same.

I feel like most sciences should have this, it would accelerate science a lot via the cross-pollination of ideas and techniques.

But I can imagine that drawing connections between different branches of maths would be especially powerful, yes

Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#135

Post by volemo »

clickety_clack wrote: post #7

I have trouble explaining to my parents how my job is a real thing. I can only imagine trying to explain ‘I study shapes, but only ones that don’t jut inwards’.

I usually struggle not with the “what is it you do?” question but with the following “how is it useful/applicable?”

How do I concisely describe the long chain between a fundamental research and something tangible?

Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#136

Post by vanderZwan »

> Klartag is convinced that this makes them extremely powerful: Convex shapes, he argues, are underappreciated mathematical tools.

I agree with this and I'm not even a mathematician, I've seen convex hull algorithms pop up in unexpected places to solve problems I would never have thought of using convex hull algorithms for, like a paper on automatic palette decomposition of images.

https://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/cs/csse451/Papers/DILvGRB....

Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#137

Post by karmakurtisaani »

fcanesin wrote: post #99

I feel like mathematicians should be able to do a second doctorate level degree a few years after their first PhD, that must be in a adjacent field of their own, but not the same.

It's possible! From somewhat famous mathematicians, at least Bela Bollobas has 2 PhDs: one in discrete geometry and one in functional analysis.

Try doing that in the modern academic environment tho..

Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#139

Post by tsunamifury »

hansvm wrote: post #107
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #9

Neat. I spent a month trying to use sphere packing approaches for a better compression algorithm (I had a large amount of vectors, they were grouped through clustering). Turned out that theoretical approaches only really work for uniform data and not any sort of real-world data. EDIT: groped -> grouped

The usual trick is to use domain-specific knowledge to translate that asymmetry to uniformity. E.g.: Suppose the data has high-order structure but is locally uniform (very common, comes about because of noise-inducing processes). Compute and store centroids. Those are more uniform than your underlying data, and since you don't have many it doesn't really matter anyway. Each vector is stored as a centroid index and a…

Intelligence is compression

Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source

#140

Post by ykonstant »

dkarl wrote: post #12
clickety_clack wrote: post #7

I have trouble explaining to my parents how my job is a real thing. I can only imagine trying to explain ‘I study shapes, but only ones that don’t jut inwards’.

I've found it's best to explain my job using unintelligible jargon. There are three choices, really: You can give a quick explanation in terms they understand, which makes your job sound easy and makes them wonder how anybody gets paid to do it. You can explain what you do and why it's important in terms they understand, but it'll take so long they'll get bored and wish they hadn't asked. Or you can give a quick expl…

>You can explain what you do and why it's important in terms they understand, but it'll take so long they'll get bored and wish they hadn't asked.

Yes, don't fall into this trap. The other two options are still better. Everyone says, "no, no, I really want to know" and then tunes out two minutes later; then four minutes later they start doing the George Carlin lean: "Surgery! I am having my ears sewn shut!".

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