psyche

The main highlight was Will revealing that he was stalking one of the students who was giving us a tour. However, the interview was also pretty good. We discussed - very informalulzily, sort of how my conversations with friends go if they’re in a good mood - my A-level computing project, the Collatz conjecture (my interviewer’s wife had worked on it) and Last.fm. It turns out that Dr Paul Garatt, the admissions tutor who happened to sit in on my interview, supervised Richard Jones’ third year project - Audioscrobbler. Also, Tim Berners-Lee* lectures at Southampton occasionally and has set up web groups etc. there. There was some pretty awesome-sounding semantic web stuff there.

It made me think: what if universities integrated web science properly with informatics? Wouldn’t that be better? Otherwise, it takes extreme determination on the part of web developers to fashion themselves into experts. While people like Jeremy Keith are testament to how motivated - and as a consequence, skilful - people get with (semantic) web stuff, it’d be nice if people had their eyes opened without having to start from the angle of commercial web design. Also I wonder: if people like me, who are genuinely interested in the semantic web and aren’t either i) ignorant or ii) extremely dismissive, don’t work on it, who will? Perhaps someone will come along with a web messiah complex and fix it for us.

Pretty good!

Pax

* am I omitting the “Sir” as a sign of respect?

Not sure if this is correct, but I thought this was quite good (done while procrastinating about doing Mr Miller’s Cosmology prep):

Consider an object whose initial speed, u or v₀, is zero. A constant force F then acts on it (and continues acting on it). I will (attempt) to find an expression for the speed v(t) of the object. I will use u’ to mean du/dt. Please ignore terrible interchanges between functions of stuff and such like - don’t really know what I’m doing.

Remember, v₀ is zero.

First, use the crunched version Newton’s second law: F = ma, so a = F/m, so v’ = F/m. Integrating both sides with respect to t gives v(t) = Ft/m + k. Since v(0) = 0, k = 0 so v = tv’ (cf. suvat stuff, v = u + at when u = 0… it’s all fine so far).

Now consider the relativistically tweaked version of Newton II: F = ma/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2). Using the same juggling as before, this gives:

v’ = Fsqrt(1-(v/c)^2)/m

Rearrange and use separation of variables/whatever to get:

int(1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2))dv = int(F/m)dt

which gives (remembering the boundary condition v(0) = 0)

csin^-1(v/c) = Ft/m

sin^-1(v/c) = Ft/mc

v/c = sin(Ft/mc)

finally:

v(t) = csin(Ft/mc)

This looked promising (note the maximum value of v is c)…

To try to convince myself that this was correct, consider the sin small angle approximation: sin(x) is approx. equal to x for small values of x. Well, Ft/mc is certainly small for most F and t when you consider how large c is, so: for values of F that are small compared to c (and small t but not sure what that means physically), we get v(t) is approx. equal to c*Ft/mc = Ft/m (which = at for small v as this means we can ignore the Lorentz factor), which is the Newtonian one… which seems quite interesting. Tell me where I’ve messed up.

I almost did it with a non-zero initial speed but I saw a bunch of sqrt(1-(v₀/c)^2) blah (because of the trig addition formulae and Pythagorean identities) in there so I avoided that and then gave up entirely (good times).

Pax

Met Erroll on tube - he seemed cool and his interview went well. After the general talk (which I’ve now seen three times) there was one for just JMC people (about nine of us). Randomly, maths person pointed to Sierpinski triangle and asked if any of us knew what it was. I said “Sierpinski” in a mid-volume high-pitched whine. The speaker then said “BRILLIANT!”, looked at some admissions guy and shouted “TAKE THAT GUY!”. Wikipedia browsing has its benefits.

Random highlights included a candidate’s unassuming parent who had actually supplied the electromagnets for the LHC (!!), free food, the lulziest tour guide students in the history of lulz and some pretty good talks.

I applied for JMC 4-year but my interviewer didn’t know until I told him. He didn’t seem to have read my personal statement or know my A-levels either, so I spent about two minutes telling him a condensed version of my entire application.

He then gave me a wooden Towers of Hanoi thing, asked me if I knew what it was called (I did) and then told me to find out the number of moves to solve it. He gave me a piece of paper and a pen and for a second I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to just start writing. He didn’t do anything, so I solved it physically (it came out easily). He then asked about the number of moves. I said that since I had gone from a tower of 4 to a base and a sub-tower of 3 during the solution, it might be to do with recursion. He seemed surprised/happy for a moment - I scribbled a bit and got the recurrence relation and then pattern-spotted the closed form thing (it was some obvious thing of O(2ⁿ)). He asked me how I would prove it, to which I replied induction, which he then made me do. He seemed pretty happy after that and implied that that question was meant to take longer.

He then asked me to integrate 1/x² from -1 to 1. I became extremely suspicious because of how easy antidifferentiating it was which led me to realise that the point was that it was undefined at zero. I said this and he just didn’t respond, so I evaluated it (initially making a sign error, but then fixing it to get -2). He asked me what I’d said about undefinedness before and I restated it. He then asked me what the actual value of the integral was, and I non-comittally said it could be infinite but might converge. He didn’t do anything, so I sketched it and then re-said that it could be infinite but might converge. He agreed and then asked how I’d evaluate it, and I said by symmetry, integrating from 0 to 1 and then doubling by using a variable as the limit for the bit near the origin and making it tend to a value. He nodded “OK” and then said I’d be well-suited to the JMC course and shook my hand. The interview was about seven minutes of frantic scribbling and stammering, but I got the questions so I don’t care how crack-addicted I appeared.

They’re going to mail us offers/rejections within three weeks (probably within two).

The JMC course looks really good and it’ll be weird to choose between top universities if I have to. I was thinking that depending on how other people do, I may be able to ditch all of my friends in one fell swoop. Joy. As we (my mother insisted on accompanying me) trudged back down Birch Grove, she told me to “stop taking school and teachers so seriously” and “just coast”. It was strange to hear that type of psycho-social engineering.

It was almost as if she was reading my mind*.

Pax

* blog?

I can’t remember the stuff that’s happened, but I’ll quickly outline what’s happening with me: AAB offer from Warwick (computer science), awaiting response from Edinburgh (maths with computer science), interview at Southampton on 22nd (computer science), interview at Imperial on 5th (joint maths and computing [4 year]), awaiting response from Cambridge (computer science with first year 50% maths, Trinity - hopefully invitation to interview sometime in December).

Expecting rather technical interview from Imperial, not sure about Southampton but will try to have wits about me. Trinity will likely sit me in a room with an hour long test and then discuss it with me for the duration of the interview. Trying to ignore uncertainty. Went to a Bat Mitzvah today where the golden girl namechecked my mother (she’s golden girl’s science teacher) and launched into a fatalistic (wasn’t trying to be, just the way she put it was depressing - she acknowledged this and pointed out lulz of networking, but I couldn’t shake the feeling) talk about global warming. Jokes included drinking water of Athabasca Glacier to look ten years younger (have done that, incidentally) to which her mother responded with retorts about turning taps off after showers etc.. Strange experience overall - nice people, I couldn’t understand singing or prayers, all speeches were surprisingly insightful. Awkward shoe twisting ensued as enthusiastic family friends tracked down Cambridge graduates to “convince” me to go there (?) but overall everyone seemed to have good intentions.

When I got back, to compound global doom and gloom, saw this - maybe Gavin Starks touched a nerve.

Never looked at school references; don’t want to. Had enough of that. Oh, incidentally golden girl’s father is a Watchmen fan - asked him to convince parents to read. He agreed on the merit of my fabulous (not ashamed to say it) skinnier-than-you-thought-possible red tie.

Got some fun mini-reports as well: Mr Slay politely said my mechanics preps lack focus while in fact I am simply behind. Mr Rokison interestingly commented that I lack “intuitive grasp” of material that I had last year, by which he means I did badly on “can you remember what we’ve learned” paper whereas last year I generally did quite well (no intuition involved - learned facts, this year failed). I suppose the general point here is that my talent is always rather forced - important to remember, maybe.

Dr Bullett points out a change in attitude to prepared work required. Short comment is that he’s right - I give up too easily sometimes, and not easily enough at other times. However, I do know what to do.

I’m certain that everything will work out acceptably. Global problems will have to be addressed somehow, or they’ll change into different problems. Interesting. Remembering Metroid Fusion, which told me that experiences are limits of consciousness. Must find a way to experience war, death etc. more so can appreciate horrors of global catastrophes. Am still a child in that respect. No understanding of suffering. Tempting fate?

I’ll post anything useful I learn during interview process.

I just remembered that golden girl’s mother is the one who recommended my counsellor, who I need to get back in touch with to end phase. Good times, as they say*. Good times.

Pax

* Now, is that what they say?