Off-topic ramblings from the "FALL 2008 acceptances&quo

fermiboy · Post by **fermiboy** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:59 pm

So the mail comes...there's a big white envelope in the mail box...I rip it out of the box and look at it...

....and it's from my school. Just my stupid honors certificate from last semester.

grae313 · Post by **grae313** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:50 pm

who's we?

nef7j · Post by **nef7j** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:55 pm

I guess that would be me and VT, and anyone else who has heard from Minnesota about being nominated for a fellowship

vicente · Post by **vicente** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 11:40 pm

deleted

grae313 · Post by **grae313** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:31 am

my bad, nef7! Somehow I missed all the earlier posts and only saw yours out of the blue. Sounded like you were refering to yourself as "we" in the third person... lol

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:25 pm

How many people got laid or smoke weeds this weekend?( after hearing sev acceptances from Cornell)

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:29 pm

.........

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:32 pm

twistor · Post by **twistor** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:48 pm

This forum needs more sexy girl-on-boy rape and less talk of grains and hunger.

goodfromfar · Post by **goodfromfar** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 2:08 pm

what about a starving, ravenous girl who is so consumed by hunger that she rapes RG? And then steals his food...

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 2:23 pm

hahahahhahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahaha

hilarious!

goodfromnear, your sentence is inconsistent and contradicts to itself.
How can a starving girl rape "RG" ( I am not using me coz, I don wanna be raped by a starving girl) if she is already so weak and hungry? From where will she bring all that strength to fight a guy and rape him( assuming that she was able to fight)! of course there would not be the fighting sequence on this scene if the hungry girl were hot!

hahahahahhha

Ps. I am pretty sure with the comment like this one I must have warded off many people on this forum.
But hey, this is all fun people, nothing personal!
physics students should ALSO know how to "play" like football player ( the other way would be quite miraculous though)

I am pretty sure there does not exist any Jessica Simpson who would be attracted to 990 PGRE!! no offense people, but this is the truth!

DigitallyCrazy · Post by **DigitallyCrazy** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:28 pm

RG & Twistor - EXACTLY, FREAKING EXACTLY. I can't do my research, I can't study, I can't even spend my money!!! (Will I be in a cold place? What if I buy shorts and I never wear them again? What if I buy a huge parka and it sits in my closet?)

I've been driving my gf up a wall, it's all I can think or talk about. EVERY SINGLE DAY. I don't even know how I'll be notified. I've been checking Stanford and Caltech, because they're really the only ones I have any hope of showing up online before I get snail mail or e-mail.

Edit: Although I think trying to sleep with professors' daughters is a combination of ridiculous and the perfect way to get yourself kicked out before you even get accepted, lol.

DigitallyCrazy · Post by **DigitallyCrazy** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 3:57 pm

Lol, Marten, we might as well demistify it, although I bet we're preaching to the choir.

Suppose the probability of getting into any one of your schools is p. (Remember, 0<p<1.) Then the probability you won't get into one school is (1-p). Then the probability of not getting into any of n schools is (1-p)^n. Since you either will get into at least one school or no schools:

P(getting into at least one school) + P(getting into no schools) = 1

=> P(getting into at least one school) = 1 - P(getting into no schools)
=> P(getting into at least one school) = 1 - (1-p)^n.

There ya go! No need for excel or open office. Enjoy!

Also, if you want a custom probability for each school, it's going to be
P(getting into at least one school) = 1 - [P(not getting into a) * P(not getting into b) * ...]

marten · Post by **marten** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:40 pm

Yeah, no need for excell, (or OpenOffice, but I'm at work, and it's a MS world....) but I wanted to visualize my probability distribution, and quickly look at many different probabilities.

Marten

twistor · Post by **twistor** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:40 pm

I do too!! j/k

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:42 pm

do what twistor!

vroomfondel · Post by **vroomfondel** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:46 pm

vroomfondel is one of the two philosopher after the ultimate question, this is from Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by douglas adams.

the other one's name is Magickthise

twistor · Post by **twistor** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:24 pm

Nevermind

grinjones · Post by **grinjones** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 6:46 pm

I dare RG to make a post without a single exclamation mark.

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 6:50 pm

Wus up grinjones?

Here you go, grinjones.

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 6:53 pm

"my research group will focus on how to cultivate weeds and also design and run experiments that will allow us to distinguish several kinds based on thier smell, taste etc.
( hahahahaah, alrite, people, I am NOT weedoholic and have tried ONLY once when I was home last summer)"

Neither did this post had any exclamation mark, grinjones. So what next?

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 9:44 pm

yeah u r rite, money and girls!
physics is already there, but we gotta 'play' hard to make these two come along with us.

vicente · Post by **vicente** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:17 am

We're on a roll guys, over 200 replies and it's not even February! Keep posting.

- Vince

jdhooghe · Post by **jdhooghe** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:15 am

I've got a bubbly bunch of coconuts....deedaadeeleee
Here they are all standing in a row....
Pick one, small one!
One has big as your head

..............Who took my cheese!?!?

phoenix · Post by **phoenix** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 9:48 am

@RG, DigitalCrazy and all other guys/girls who are getting freaked out by waiting process:

hey, guys..i know that it's hard at this point to work on any study material or any course work..then just don't...
i recently devoted myself to picking up skills in cosmetics and make-up...(well..i have to admit that i love shopping and dressing myself up now and then...since i am a girl)..but there are a lot of things you guys can do just to forget about the admission process a little bit...e.g. video games...dating with your girl friend(s)....throw on thousands of parties...etc....there is too much tension on this post...let's just relax and wait till Feburary...i mean at least most of us...

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 9:58 am

throw parties- I do not want to throw parties, but throw myself

video games- hahaha, that is the most sucking thing I would ever do!
date a girl- i wish there were some hot chicks around ( remeber beauty and brain, of course)

I cannot dress up every now and them or do cosmetics like you phoenix coz I am a boy. o/w I think that would be a good stress releiver! hahahaha.

I am just working out and build some muscles so that after I get into 'the' school i would find some Prof's daughters (who will be business majors) and sleep with them.hahahahaha

schandre · Post by **schandre** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:30 pm

Neither did this post had any exclamation mark, grinjones. So what next? Wink

So RG, out of your 250 posts so far only three don't have exclamation marks?

DigitallyCrazy · Post by **DigitallyCrazy** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 7:50 pm

phoenix: Yeah, it's just that that's not gonna happen, lol. I've tried video games, hanging out, etc., but they're all just a temporary fix, and when I wake up in the morning, I'm still freaking out as much as ever. And if I fail my classes, they won't let me in even if I've been accepted - after all, I do need to complete my degree!!! It does help to blow steam every once in a while though, or I'd go insane.

The bad thing is I'm starting to hope. You know, I've promised so many people I'll call them as soon as I get in, that I'm starting to imagine what it'll be like. I don't want to get my hopes up and be crushed, yanno?

Anyway, my departmental adviser says we all should find out in a couple weeks - "If they want you, you'll know right away, and if they don't want you, you'll know right away. ...and if they're not sure, you'll be on a list." So yeah, a glimmer of hope that we won't have to wait another full month, I hope she knows what she's talking about.

twistor · Post by **twistor** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:39 pm

The only thing it's lacking is completeness... (remember 1420 Peach's post, haha) So yea let's get some more posters soon... gradQ, KB, woooster, vicente, mork, vk5qa, physicsstudent even physicsdude...

Let's not forget about garden.

quizivex · Post by **quizivex** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:55 pm

Undergrad Institution: Yes
Major(s): Fizics
Minor(s): Tofu
GPA in Major: MajGPAor
Overall GPA:
Over
All GPA
Length of Degree: 6 letters
Position in Class: i sit up front
Type of Student: special

TOEFL Total: 0

(*** off the school with damn committee)

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Winner of "Best Post" award on Physicsgre.com

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:14 pm

LMAO

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:15 pm

LMAO

zxcv · Post by **zxcv** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:41 am

Funny that you're interested in theoretical optics. The classical/quantum optics course I took last semester was a bad experience that soured me on the field. Actually, the worst part of it was just the book we had for classical optics, Modern Classical Optics by Geoffrey Brooker (for example, he thought "unitary" meant a matrix had determinant 1).

I almost did an REU last summer at Rochester on theoretical quantum optics but I turned it down for San Diego. That research was on making lasers coherent through long distances in the atmosphere and funded in large part by the DOD

. Not the sort of thing I'm going for...

butsurigakusha · Post by **butsurigakusha** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:52 am

. That research was on making lasers coherent through long distances in the atmosphere and funded in large part by the DOD

Kind of reminds me of the movie Real Genius, with Val Kilmer. Anyone seen it?

fermiboy · Post by **fermiboy** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:54 am

I like my optics class. We used Hecht: Optics. This wasn't the greatest text, but it's definitely complete. The optics course (and lab) is required at my school for a physics major. I'm not really interested in hard core engineering optics like lasers and such, I'm more interested in entanglement, decoherence, cavity QED, cold atomic gases, etc. Basically I would be happy doing research at the "place" where condensed matter, AMO, and quantum information "meet", if we thought of each field as having boundaries. The triple point, perhaps?

physicsdude · Post by **physicsdude** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 6:38 pm

quizivex · Post by **quizivex** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 6:55 pm

@ Physicsdude

You haven't posted anything in nearly a month but you come back just to say that...

I will never be satisfied in a school where 90% of the people cannot take the square root of 1, nor would I be satisfied at an "elite" place if the admissions people there cannot comprehend my justified dissatisfaction with it... Getting rejected from all 6 schools is just what I need to confirm my existing suspicion that I may not belong in academia.

dlenmn · Post by **dlenmn** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 7:26 pm

@ quizivex

Is this a reference to a deleted comment?

BTW, "the square root of 1" should be plural... there's more than one of them...

cancelled20080417 · Post by **cancelled20080417** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 10:37 pm

BTW, "the square root of 1" should be plural... there's more than one of them...

I am pretty sure quizivex knows that very well, dlenmn! He is 990 with 93 questions CORRECT in PGRE!!

dlenmn: u have got toooo many n's on your user name. It is so fraking hard to type your name.

quizivex · Post by **quizivex** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 12:21 am

Is this a reference to a deleted comment?

Actually yes, clever guess... On another thread there was a lengthy debate about the tolerability of state schools. Many of us agreed to some extent that the atmosphere at (certain) state schools is demoralizing, and even if they offered good physics, we may not want to put up with the environment for 6 years.

I included a little story about a college science major who was taking one of the ~40 sections of "college algebra" my school offers, which is the same algebra intended for middle school. A student making me do review questions for the final exam had to do a quadratic formula problem but couldn't get the right answer(s) because he couldn't simplify the sqrt(1) in the numerator. Physicsdude took that as an obscene elitist remark. Apparently he had no problem with your post where you were slightly irked grading papers that had too many mistakes in differentiating polynomials. Shame on you

I doubt physicsdude's school even offers petty arithmetic courses...

BTW, "the square root of 1" should be plural... there's more than one of them...

The convention I learned is that the square root of K is defined as the positive solution to the equation X^2 = K... and then that's why solutions to equations often are written like: 5 +/- sqrt(7)

We want all functions, log(x), sqrt(x), arcsin(x) to be "functions" by the defnition that each x yields a unique answer. That's why the arc-trig functions have a restricted domain...
arcsin(x) is not the same as {y: x = sin(y) }, by the real definition.

Whenever you see a length written as a square root (such as the diagonal of a rectangle) you see sqrt(z) not abs(sqrt(z)) right?

shouravv · Post by **shouravv** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:09 am

Which thread did you refer to? Can you please specify, I'd be very interested to read that.

{{{
On another thread there was a lengthy debate about the tolerability of state schools.
}}}

quizivex · Post by **quizivex** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:19 am

It was in the "admission selection process" thread.

Edit:

It is bit of mystry to me that how suddenly fermiboy realized that he was talking to a Prof. once the person who claimed himself/herself to be a Prof. posted another post with his/her Professorial majesty, none of which are the tangible evidences sufficent to give me the same realization or a shock wave as it did for fermiboy!

Haha RG, I just realized what you meant by this comment. HAHAHAH so funny!!

Edit2:

Maybe fermiboy is a prof too...

dlenmn · Post by **dlenmn** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 10:09 am

@ quizivex

Chill out, I'm just trying to give you a hard time

PS If you want to be technical, the function you're looking for is known as the "principal square root" (and that's what's meant when you use the symbol). The regular square root is multivalued. Now you can impress the ladies with your knowledge...

shouravv · Post by **shouravv** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 10:58 am

dlenmn · Post by **dlenmn** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:03 am

@ shouravv

No problem. Here's a link to quizivex's deleted comment. The relevant discussion starts a ways before that (probably best to scroll up and start reading at the first comment).

http://www.physicsgre.com/forum/post-56 ... ight=#5656

physicsdude · Post by **physicsdude** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 7:18 pm

grae313 · Post by **grae313** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 7:24 pm

quizivex didn't say his surroundings had anything do to with his sense of self-worth, so why would you bring that into the conversation? Your post is filled with not-so-subtle chest-thumping. Can everyone just settle the &$!# down and stop trying to show how smart you are in every post?

quizivex · Post by **quizivex** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 7:32 pm

Thanks grae313, I was hoping somebody would defend me against this abuse... I like constructive debates and don't mind mild criticisms, but physicsdude has just been plain rude.

I never said my self worth is derived from the IQ's of my fellow students, but part of my desire to go to a better school is... that was the idea behind many past discussions on the forum... and it's not even IQ that I value as much as common sense.

nvanmeter · Post by **nvanmeter** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:01 am

i've read these discussions, and i think i have to just jump in here...

quizivex, i couldn't agree with your sentiments more. being at a mediocre school with mediocre (usually less than mediocre actually) classmates can get very annoying and makes me want to go to a top grad school even more (not just for the research, but for the higher average intelligence of the students).

the simple fact is that some people aren't as bright as others and it gets annoying after a while when it affects your own education...like teachers have to drastically slow down the courses just to accommodate the slower kids in the class. it gets especially aggravating when the class average on a test is like a 30% and they curve the grades so that a 40% is an A when you have a 100% on the test. and maybe what we're saying is elitist in some sense, but why not be elitist with our education. we're not saying we won't be friends with people who don't know square roots, but we're saying that we would like a challenge. we would like to have to try in classes to get the highest grade instead of coasting by. we would like to see the teachers try to challenge us by introducing tough material instead of having to review basic math every time they use it because the guy on my right forgot how to take a derivative. isn't that a good characteristic for a scientist...wanting a challenge? you really lose motivation when you don't have a challenge...in some of my classes i just stopped doing homework altogether b/c it was only worth 20% of the grade and i knew that with the class averages on tests, a 75-80% would be curved to an A and i could get that from tests alone. it shouldn't be like that.

in summary, i think my point is...we are not calling them inferior people b/c their math skills aren't good. we're simply saying that we chose physics b/c we like challenges and schools where the students are mediocre (in our field) end up not being challenging. that's why schools in the top 5 (even if there are big state schools with just as good of research) appeal to us so much...

grae313 · Post by **grae313** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:06 am

I could have said the exact same thing about my school, nvanmeter. Well said!

Off-topic ramblings from the "FALL 2008 acceptances&quo

Which thread?