Box

Open Box

Everything inside the box

This will fit great with my newly organized room. Basically I made my room into one compact space. Bed + Study = same place :)

General Overview of the bookshelf + window

The human genome wall poster

Dirty light.

Bookshelf level for testing material and math and a WPI cube ;)

Bookshelf level for advanced math material, computer science and web development with some Chinese pens. I love those Chinese pens.

Bookshelf level for small books and some math resources

Magazines, include PC magazine, PC world, Game developer, Computer shopper and two other game magazines.
I got them all for free.

Collection of problems sets.

There will be future posts on this topic too :)
I offer a solution if I can think of one.
No standards or too much standards in one field:
If there is more than one standard, it basically destroy the point of standards.
Why don't US start to use SI like every other developed country in the world?
Solution: Get congress to pass a law so all textbooks only use SI.

Uneducated people:
It's interesting that uneducated people often think they know a lot about the world when they in fact, knows nothing.
Solution: Everywhere is education oriented. Like say, Jail. People in Jail have to learn enough stuff and have to take the standardized test so they can get out.

Extreme nationalism and racial pride
That's the cause of a lot of incidents in this world.
Grace Wang is a true hero. It take balls to do what she did if you know what Chinese nationalist extremist(which is a different name forfascist) are like.

These are the Chinese people in Hefei(where I lived most of my life) protesting against the Olympic Torch Relay incident in France by boycotting Carrefour and not allow anyone enter the store because Carrefour is owned by French people.
I think China is the country with most racial pride I have ever seen. They automatically make everything an issue of "The pride of our nation!" If an outsider(say, Japanese dude) punched some Chinese guy in the face for w/e reason, it is going to be a storm of "Protect the national pride and start attack other countries with curse words and hack their website" everywhere around the web.
BTW I have been to that store... the item in their is expensive
Carrefour is going to half price everything in the International Workers Day, where everyone will have a 7 day off in China. The "Carrefour boycott day" is also on that date. I would like to see what happens. I wish I'm in China so I can buy a lot off nice goodies for even cheaper price. But I heard there is a possibility I get beaten by extremists if I bought anything. Anyway.

Solution: Force people to breed with other race. US conquer the world.

Debate though personal attacks or ignoring the other side

Ok, but do you have any support of what you are saying?
Your mom told me, you fag.

According to [some place] [something] have [some chance] of [w/e].
Umm, I don't care what you say or w/e the entire world says, I'm ALWAYS right.

More examples can be found on here.
Solution: None, unless we kill 99.99% of humans...

Biased Media
Not everything you see on the news is unbiased or the whole truth. Something is covered up to sway the audience to another side. Happens in China and every other country.
Solution: None. Media will always have bias.

Many languages
For god's sake, everyone pick up one language and forget the rest. We are making the world more complex by having so many languages! Start use Lojban!
Solution: Force people to learn Lojban after all humans are multiracial and under one government's control

Culture
People fear lose of culture, that's why they don't make changes to many things. Like language! There are thing acceptable in one culture but not the other.
Solution: Make people think culture is a bad thing, make it only something humanities study. Or create a standardized culture.

History
History made who we are, and it decides what we will be.
Solution: none. We will always have history

Education system
There is still too little freedom in education system, it doesn't suit the need of everyone.
Solution: More specialized education system, like a student can study nothing but math for 4 years.

People who think computer science is learning about word/excel
That includes my mom. She think everyone knows computer science because it is so easy. Everyone can work on a computer.
Having the word computer in it doesn't make it word/excel!
Solution: Get people educated. They should stop making assumptions.

People who live their dream by letting their children accomplish them
My dad says he will not pay for my college tuition if I chose to major in Mathematics. because he think I can't earn good money if I'm a math major. He just want me to be rich and live the life he can't live.
Solution: None.

People who get offended by many things
I hate sensitive people. Get some lotion.
Solution: None, they are born sensitive

Humanitarianism
Why don't we obey the law of nature and do natural selection? You should stop interfere with other countries. Let people die, because it will be for the good of themselves and future people. How can we save everyone when the resource is clearly getting used up?
Solution: None, they have their freedom of religion

Humanities
I hate all Humanities classes except philosophy. I don't care about arts, literature, languages and music. Humans don't have to study them to live on. What did the humanities ever do to contribute to the invention of better technologies. What did essays like "Why Hamlet made w/e choice" can help the humans in general?
Solution: Make the world emphasis more on science.

Spam
Nuff said.
Solution: Nuke Nigeria. Fine spammers. Jail Spammers.

Noobs
Solution: None.

People who group math into the big category "science"
If you really have to group math, it's Formal Science. But I don't like math been called a science. Because usually science require the "scientific method" and experiments.
Solution: Call the combination of science and math. Mascienth.

People who believe if I like math, I must like science
No. Doesn't work like that
Solution: Tell them I DON'T like science. I DON'T like to do experiments.

The Game
You just lost The Game.
I can never escape that game. That's like fate. I hate fate.
Solution: Win The Game by never think about it.

Syosset High School
Syosset High School(SHS) is the most overpaid high school in Long Island. There are a few things I hate not because those things are bad. it's because I'm jealous.

1. They have very fun math class that actually EXPLORES many math never mentioned in normal high school curriculum. They learned about fractals, graph theory and other kind of "OMG I wish my school is teaching that." I believe if I'm in that class, I'm just going to relearn what I already know, but that's not the point. I want to have something fun to discuss in my math class instead of learning derivative for days and do simplest practice possible.
2. They have AP classes we don't have. Like AP Calculus BC. We stopped at AP Calculus AB.
3. Natalie Portman is from SHS.
4. People in SHS knows there is AMC test, student in our school don't even know what that "A" stands for.
5. They enter FIRST Tech Challenge, and they have a club called "Technology club". In our school, we don't know what technology is... technology is an abstract idea... like facebook poke...
6. They have more than one smart board in classroom, and they use it for math.
7. There was a girl in SHS I found very cute, now she is in Jericho high school, btw I hate that school too.
8. SHS have a better wikipedia article than my school. And I started the wikipedia article.
9. No one in my school have done AIME this year. SHS has.
10. SHS have more Siemens/Intel semifinalist/finalist than my school
11. They have better quiz bowl and Long Island Challenge team..
12. There is a dash in my school's name. WTF.
13. SHS students actually cares about academics.
14. My school spend 10K on a internet blocking device and it blocked mathworld while I can buy guns and drugs online. One more reason to hate SHS.
15. Our hall pass system is a failure, it waste my time... me.. the never cut class person. If I want to cut one class I cut the whole day, screw hall passes.
16. My school's always don't have money for anything.
17. SHS student government funds other clubs... our student government focus mainly on... dances. Which proves that most students in my school doesn't care about academics, again.
18. My school rarely win any competition in scientific, computer science and mathematic field. SHS is the complete opposite.
19. MIT!!!!
20. There are more linux users in SHS than mine... it's usually directly proportional to average awesomeness density of students.
22. OMG I hate how suck my school is compare to SHS.
23. Most of the above applies for Ward Melville too

Bye taxonomy...
jk. There is not enough development in ontology yet to completely discard taxonomy. Even if ontology had more development, taxonomy will still dominate because it's simplicity.
I'm going to use Taxonomy for taxonomy schemes below unless I specifically address it.

I'm interested in classifying data due to my need of creating a system that can find a particular math problem fast when all math problem are provided with description. Mathematics has concrete definitions of each of it's individual elements. It's the ideal model to test any classification system.

My previous views on classification are in fact restricted on the taxonomy system. It's simple, but can get really complicated. There is something extremely difficult to address. For instance. The problem between how to exactly describe a term.
My confusion with taxonomy is: Does terms intended to be the only object describe terms?
In the most common taxonomies, only terms can be used to describe terms. Because it only have terms and parent-child relationships. There is nothing else, it's easy to implement and get the job done.
I tried to divide term into quality and quantity, which is like creating attributes to extend the taxonomy. I'm not a genius, there are shortcomings in the model. Include using taxonomy to describe attributes, which I think it's a problem in all models ever created by man.

An example:
Triangle is a child term of Polygon.
Triangle have 3 sides but Polygon can have [positive integer between and include 3 to infinity] sides.
So sides should be an attribute. The different quantities in attribute created the difference of terms.
In fact, even without manually associate Polygon as the parent of Triangle. After examine all the possible attributes of the two term, the computer can see that Triangle is a child of Polygon.
So side is an attribute. But side(synonym of edge) is just a 1-face. So side can have the attribute of n-face set to 1. So an attribute is getting described by another attribute. Replace the word "attribute" with "term" in my last sentence. It would be the standard model of taxonomy. The attribute+term model of taxonomy seems like the normal taxonomy system forced to create a unnatural border between completely same concepts. I get confused and I really want to understand if attribute and term can be used interchangeably or not.

But worry no more... I start to focus my attention on ontology.
All the quotes are from wikipedia

Definition of Ontology:

An ontology is a representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts.

Review what Taxonomy means.

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification.

We can't compare ontology with taxonomy. The definition shows compare them are like comparing water with kittens1.
We can compare ontology model and taxonomic schemes. They both can do the essential thing I want: Show the relationships between items and their properties.

If there is unlimited system resource. A taxonomy can really in fact classify everything by exhaustively convert all attribute and associated values into terms. Like the following one:

With unlimited computational and storage resource. I would tell you right now that the current multi-inheritance taxonomy scheme is perfect. There is no need of develop a specific ontology model for anything. We can all sleep at night knowing another great challenge is defeated.

But obviously no one is going to represent every single number as a separate term in taxonomy. You can, if you have relatively few attributes and value combinations. Each combination requires 3 slot for storage. One refer to the attribute, one refer to the value and one refer to the term that's the combination of those two. It construct a huge web, and need huge computational power.

A ontology model basically solved that problem. Ontology is almost like the math we see everyday! It has three significant advancement compare to normal taxonomy--Attributes, axioms and restrictions. Refer to Wikipedia on these, because I'm not as expert as Wikipedia in this particular topic. Wikipedia is like the living proof of a very loose ontology.

I'm looking forward to OWL become part of Drupal one day. Then, when it start to have service APIs for distributed Drupal and data, Drupal will be the perfect CMS for everything.

What is beyond the current ontology?
Humans start to talk in constructed language that's syntactically unambiguous(The only one known to me is Lojban) so machines can now, seriously, understand what we are talking about. Then all the ontology and taxonomy structures are built by machines automatically.

1. 1. No, they are not both eatable

The Game is a popular(really?) game played by anyone who is in this game. There are a lot variations but you can just follow the Wikipedia rules.

Since everyone is in this game, we should come up with a rigor definition of everyone.
Any organism that is currently alive and homo sapien.

Because the condition for losing is to think of the game, there have to be some definition of thinking.
What is thinking? how can we define if someone is thinking about something? I don't know. You are the one to judge.

Losing is think of the game, but should they be a gap between losing? What if I continuously thinking about the game for 10 hours, is that only one lose?
People come up with different gaps. Like 30 minute since last lose is the same time.

The loser have to announce he is lost. In any form, include spam.
Is there a way aware of the game but never lose?
Yes, in theory. But in practice no.
Some people have suggested that one can isolate himself in a place where no human can contact, so there is no way a outside influence can make him lose.
But a common man will ask himself why is he here, and then he will think of the game and lose, all the time.

While the primary goal is hard to achieve. Making other people lose are quite easy. All they have to know, is to aware that about the game.
Advertisement!
Use all the marketing skill you are aware of.
Facebook wall posts
Discussion groups
Forum signatures
Spam
Tatoos
Blog posts
School Newspaper hidden message
Super bowl ads
and of course, spam.

What's the point of this game?
Nothing...
But there might be some mathematical model hidden worth investigating... Anyone want to suggest one?

Problems
more philosophical + mathematical + deep questions I come up with when I have nothing else to do...
I'm enrolled in The Game without my knowledge, is that still enrollment?
Does I have a free will?
if I don't, why don't I?
If I think I'm not playing the game, am I still playing the game?
Is your mom losing The Game?
Why if someone else define something, I have to be restricted by their definition?
Is freedom subjective or objective?
Who will win this presidential election?
Is free will really free will if it's controlled by the outside?
Is life subjective or objective? If people want to win, why do they post stuff like this?
Does the original creator imagined this?
Is he still alive and using this as a way to test human psychology?
Is he LOLing?
Is he a communist? is he Mao? Is the Chinese trying to take over the world? Is Mao still alive but we just believe he is dead? Is Mao who we think he is? Is Mao actually a conspiracy created by the US government? Does China even exist?
What is the consequence of cheating?
Why don't people cheat?
What make people cheat?
Can I get into USAMO?
Does people shout "I lost the game" during tests? Is it allowed? If it's not allowed, is it against the freedom of religion?
Does inform people that one lose is a way of spam?
Is this the world largest spam network?
Will this game ever be forgotten? ...in bed?
What's the possibility that no one in the world ever remembers this game?
Can other organisms join this game?
Is lose really bad? Is win always the best goal?
If win is impossible, is lose really means anything? or should we redefine win?
Is Latex the best material for condoms?
Why should anyone lose?
Can't everyone just win?
Can dead people still have minds?
What happens if one change the word "lose" to "win"?
What sociality impact would it create?
Am I in the Matrix?
What if both game present at the same time?
What if one create -(The Game), where think of the game wins?
What if think of -(The Game) will also considered lose for The Game?
What if there is a constant amount of time required to think of The Game to lose once?
What if that is not a constant but a variable?
what is more important? winning the win able one or not lose the lose able one?
What if there is more states than just win and lose?
what if there is n games create win situation and m games create lose situation when n and m have what property create people tend to favor the winning instead of losing?
If each of those game have different weights, does individual game score matters to people or just the combined weighted average?
What's for dinner?
What if it become a point system?
Making other people lose you get point and if other loses, they lose point?
How should the points be added?
Adding constant points?
or should it add points with specific property?
Should it only use addition?
Can it use w/e other function out there?
Can the points be complex or even higher extension of numbers?
Can the point be vectors, matrix or even tensors?
Is Facebook behind all these? BTW Peter and Pelle if you are reading this... Get a Facebook!
Is it true that the professor who taught Math 254A course in MIT become immortal?
Can there be randomness in the game? for example throw a dice and if it land 6 then no point is subtracted?
What if each player have an armor points?
How can player gain armor points?
and a dice roll below the armor points can get armor save, where their armor get removed and they points get lowered down?
Should the player chose when to use the armor save?
Can this game prove logic?
When should a player use a armor save if he can make the choice?
Does math major get laid more often than theoretical physic majors in college? If so, why does math majors get laid more often than theoretical physic majors in college?
Can we establish some rule that can use all humans who play this game part of a huge calculator?
If so, how to distribute it and how to make these plays generate information, exchange information and in the end make the people who cares about these information get these information?
Is this calculator a Universal Turing Machine?
Can it in the end create a mind control system?
If people are mind controlled, when they think of the game, do they still lose?
If it's a mind control system, how to break out of it?
Can one inside the mind control system manipulate the system?
If one can, how to prevent them not to manipulate the system?
Can I use this system to rule the world?...in bed?
Did anyone read the "evilplan" word file in my flash drive?
Does The Game make sense at all?

Endless of questions there...this is such a provocative game of mind...
Someone, answer me at least a few of them.
I will do research too.

This post arises due to Paul Lockhart's work -- A Mathematician's Lament

The current math education
I have lived and experience the mathematical education system in three countries. China, Australia and US. Australia is quite the same as US.

While each system have it's own curriculum and it's own strong point, I found non of them really lead students to their full potential.

I only know China's middle school math, but I can imagine the high school level math too.
Chinese math focus on math itself. It rarely find real applications. These years, the Chinese government are changing the textbooks(yes, textbooks are dominated by a few publishers, and under great influence by the Ministry of Education) to make it more applied and filled with very lame cartoons.
The textbooks become colorful and more applied. But trust me, teachers don't teach those applied stuff, at least never in my class. They teach the pure mathematics. They talk in mathematical terms. Applied math problems show up on tests once in a while, but it's worded so easily, you have to be retarded to not set up the equations.

The teachers does go into depth into topics, but all the topics are created for the most important test for Chinese high school students--National College Entrance Examination(NCEE). How difficult are those tests? VERY. You have to know almost every possible method of mathematical object manipulation(vectors is a big part of the test)

The teachers basically doesn't teach ANYTHING ELSE except the ones important for the NCEE. Let's say, functions. Teachers will teach you 9 different techniques to solve values of a function. I can't remember all of them, because Chinese math class is 50% stuffing information into the brain. The condensed notes can take up a 60 page notebook. I suck at remembering, but all those questions requires a great handle of the techniques to solve them.

In China, not just math, the entire High school years is preparing for a test. The eventual application of math is for the test and the test only.

They are not allowed to use calculators for tests. How interesting that I can use a graphing calculator for my AP calc test in US.

Some NCEE problems are more difficult than AIME problems.

From what I see, the 100 getting Chinese students can basically solve any problem with-in the NCEE skill level, but I don't know about their strength outside NCEE material. For example, elementary number theory. But they are equipped with so much tools(they are the math cheat sheet and almost human calculators), it's not difficult for them to apply their technique on something new.

I believe the NCEE math overall skill requirement is not any where lower than AIME.

In US and Australia, the math education concerns about it's application more than China. They are always questions in an chapter ask students to solve a real world problem. But, still, it's very little compare to math classes for engineers.

US and Australia, math is basically for yearly final test and college related tests like the SAT andHSC
I don't have a lot unique things to say about the US math system. It's basically featured in A Mathematician's Lament

Why I don't agree with Lockhart and what math education should be like
First of all, I have strong disagreement with Lockhart's idea.
I don't believe math is an art.
Math is NOT an art. Math require creativity, inspiration. That doesn't make it art. Everything requires creativity and inspiration, should everything be art?

Notations are important.
Notation are used to explain ideas.
Natural language can explain ideas too.
But only students who can express idea with English should be ones good with math?
Why is notation ever invented? its used to make sharing ideas easier. People agree upon on certain notations, idea sharing can move beyond natural language.

Please express that in Chinese natural language.
Or start proving everything with English, lets see how long the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem can ever be generated.
In the old days, there isn't anything like algebra. Why isn't there? because there isn't a notation. Let's from now on, stop using notations. or everyone use their own notation... I will use "1231sda123asd" for the first positive integer. Someone else use "1aaasss"
Numbers are notations.
English is also a notation. Let's not learn English all together and use something more natural. Everything written is a notation. Let's abandon writings and find a new way to store notion.

Basic techniques should be learned.
Grammar are best learned while reading.
How about alphabets...?
How can one learn reading without alphabets.
Did anyone read English out loud by first reading novels then understand how to pronounce each alphabet?
Basic concepts have to be learned. There isn't learning unless there is something to learn. Lockhart is not suggest learning, he is suggesting researching and experimenting.

Rigors proofs can be helpful
Like me, I have problem understand words. I found rigors proofs are step by step, leading me to the final solution. That's what I like. I like ideas, but I like ideas I can understand.

Lockhart basically makes math education a intellectual conversation.
That's NOT education. That should be something out side education. That should be some small after school activity.

Math education should like the current one. Except teachers are more a observer than an instructor. A teacher gives student problems, students try to find solutions. If no one have an idea, teacher can give hints until someone find a solution. The process of finding the solution is done, so students actually practice their skills of exploring new areas or make use of what they learned before. Teachers can then expand the thinking process by adding informations on each step of the solution student demonstrated.
Everything valued currently should still be valuable. Include those definitions Lockhart believe should not be given directly to the student but make them find out themselves.
No, student don't find definitions. Definitions should be taught. Maybe with some additional info on why did mathematicians decide on a definition. There is no way people can communicate when definitions are too different.

That's what I believe math class should be.
Feeding students are definitely not what math is about. A class created just for tests is even worse. But make math an art and let all students create w/e they want is also what I don't want to see.

Someone should set up a trial. Let Lockhart(he is a high school teacher) design his perfect class and start feeding students in there and see what become of the students.