Cap'n Refsmmat

So I've just received my first acceptance letters for graduate school; it looks like this fall I'll be heading off to study statistics. I'm finishing my undergraduate physics degree this semester with an undergraduate thesis on statistical methods of mapping radiation. Obviously graduate school will be somewhat different than undergrad, but all I ever hear are jokes about never sleeping or grooming. So: Any advice for a future grad student? Anything I should mentally prepare for before plunging in? Should I flee for my life?

Do the tags stay deleted once you submit the post? They don't seem to show up in the editor.

I've just upgraded us to 3.4.2, which fixes numerous bugs, including several that I reported based on feedback in this thread. Please poke around and let me know if various problems persist.

You may want to look into the Stern-Gerlach experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern-Gerlach_experiment

No, that's just the way it is. Incidentally, wavefunctions typically have complex (i.e. imaginary) values.

Free particle wavefunctions can be trigonometric functions, but, say, hydrogen atom electrons have much more complicated wavefunctions. Curl doesn't enter into it. Spin is represented as vectors (spinors) in a vector space.

This makes no sense in the context of quantum mechanics. Spin has nothing to do with a particle's wavefunction spinning, or unit circles. Spin is intrinsic angular momentum, and its name has nothing to do with how it is modeled (unfortunately).

I think I fixed it. The new software tends to do that at random. They're not big believers in testing.

You can try some videos from the Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics They try to mix conceptual intuition with the mathematics; you might find that helpful.

Phi is exactly right. Who's Online is part of the members module, so when you search for new content, it defaults to searching in that module. Same thing happens if you hit View New Content while you're viewing someone's profile.

Okay, try three. Let's see how this goes.

But how often do we actually replace duds? Most incumbents are automatically reelected by their constituents; everyone approves of their representative but thinks Congress as a whole is terrible. Also, since representatives tend to be renominated by their own party, it's unlikely that a dud will be voted out because the district would rather have someone of their party over electing the opposing candidate. Restructuring the primary system may be necessary.

Another thought: what about terms of office? For instance, what if the House of Representatives had longer terms, so they weren't constantly fighting for reelection? Or what if there were mandatory term limits built into the Constitution? For instance, suppose representatives were given six-year terms, with elections staggered so a third of representatives would be up for reelection every two years. And there'd be a one-term limit. Staggering reelections means there wouldn't be wholesale turnover, and the term limit would discourage a class of career politicians from forming. On the other hand, you wouldn't end up with elder statesmen types who've known each other for twenty years and can cut deals and negotiate with foreign nations. Is it worth the tradeoff?

How many negative points per day do you think is a reasonable quantity? Currently the limit is one.

Suppose you got the opportunity to rewrite the United States Constitution. You've been invited to a new Constitutional Convention and you can propose anything you want. What would you put in? What would you omit? There's a lot of hot issues, like gun control, gay marriage, government surveillance, and money in elections, which could be addressed. But you could also restructure the government entirely. What if Congress were more like a parliament? What if redistricting was taken out of the hands of the legislature? I'm thinking of redesigned elections (no more first-past-the-post), a stronger 4th Amendment, and some sort of proportional representation in Congress. Hard to decide.

Przemyslaw.Gruchala, please do not hijack threads with your own personal speculations. You have your own thread for it.

People arguing that armed citizens with guns will prevent liberties from being taken should watch this video: Replace nuclear deterrent with guns and the Soviets with a government taking away your liberties.

Well, that's brilliant. I think the workaround is to go to the dialogue box first and paste the code there; otherwise, it tries to paste it with all its original formatting, resulting in the HTML leaking into the LaTeX. You can also use the "Paste as Plain Text" button.

I filed the bug and the developers have confirmed it, so hopefully the next update will let us use LaTeX properly. http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/bugs.html/_/ip-board/custom-bbcode-aliases-eaten-by-editor-r40661

With Python you could look at something like Django, which includes all the various parts you'd need: templating, database connectivity, user authentication, and so on.

Thanks for catching that. I hadn't noticed that the latex code works when the math one doesn't; I'll file a bug. Noparse not working is a known bug; they've already fixed it, so when we make another update it should work again.

It should. I just tried it on your content and got results back to January 2011, so it seems to be doing 2 years correctly.

I've just upped the limit to two years, and upped the advanced search limit from 400 to 1000 results.

This is mathematics, not methamphetamines. Given the speculations forum rules (rule 1), I think this thread has run its course. Closed.