psyche

Cambridge interview seemed to go well (…) - as my mum and then Dr Eves - and then even a hallucination of Dr Eves - said, fingers crossed. Discussed P =? NP and other such lulz, as well as some memorable maths questions (I have an infinite string of bits, initially all zeroed. I increment this binary number repeatedly for a long time. In the long run, if altering a bit is one operation, what is the mean number of operations per increment?)**.

Algorithmics from now on:

* that’s two grade 1s in STEP
** my guess is two, but… uh…

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?

Some people are so smart that whatever choices they make, they’ll be celebrated. Some people are smart enough to make good choices without being all-round successes. I think I’m going to choose the Internet, and lulz it up. I don’t have the luxury of… choicelessness. I have to be good by choosing things, not by indiscriminately lulzing - because I just don’t have the ability to.

Pax

I got my results - if you really want to see them, they’re here.

I didn’t realise I’d messed up Core 3 or Chains and Rings, but oh well. Didn’t mess up on large scale.

Getting nice people at OpSci to write me references.

Pax

Forcing cousins to read Watchmen. Used Matlab at OpSci. Trying to remember everything I have to do before school.

Looking forward to grid computing and interplanetary internet. Also, waiting for BBS: The Documentary to get here. Still.

I LOVE IPv6.

Pax

Finished work experience at Fabric; was good overall, despite some exposure to terrible retardation of some bits of IT. Fabric’s Raymond Serville [sic] was shockingly intelligent and knowledgeable (a good combination) and has set me up to rip apart some computers and then eventually build my own.

Packing for Arizona tomorrow. Taking books to blitz (Dewdney and Körner for the nine-hour flight) and computer for lulz.

Pax

It looks like graphics is well and truly useless now. I’ve been reading through the Mozilla Developer Center’s Canvas Tutorial and it’s clear that it’s quite powerful (e.g. automatic bezier and quadratic curves and all that). It’s quite a cool new element and I’ll have to check it out at some point.

Unrelatedly, Vivan suggested that I make a last minute application for the Imperial College IC125 Future Computing Taster Course, which I did and - surprisingly - got a place at. So we’ll be there, wrecking Art and Evolution, Enigma - the cryptographer’s battle, Lunch will be provided*, Gestures and artificial intelligence and Image manipulation in Java. Sounds good. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing, ha ha! Ha ha ha! And I actually know where the Huxley Building is now. We’ll have some stuff to talk about at university interviews. Lulz.

Also, I’m going to take back Ealing Broadway. I’m going to make it more fun! Preparing for Arizona by buying lots of reflective clothing (yes). Trying to make main site more coherent. Failing.

Trying to get Wikipedia SEL people to accept that the Knights guy was running HotSauce, and that lambda calculus is quite important.

Trying to think of massive hack for Lain’s tenth anniversary. Have a few ideas.

*may not be a lecture, not sure

Pax

This blog post will grow as I remember more details.

Imperial College (or Imperial Lollege, as it was when my dad was there, reading Mechanical Engineering and putting the lulz in Lulz…ondon) was pretty awesome. Four year course with industry placement looked awesome.

They coincidentally brought up Richard Hayden, whose CV I had read online previously. I lulzed up the talk with some banter about stochastic fluid flow. Hot female Japanese CS applicants were in awe of me, or at least noticed me in order to be contemptuous. Halls of residence full of lulz: Southside and Eastside. Talked to Dr Jeremy Bradley (DoC admissions tutor) about quantum computing and mathematical preparation; he suggested that if I have “any maths ability whatsoever” I should do JMC (Joint maths and computing) - he essentially said “don’t believe the prospectus; it’s actually the entire maths and computing undergrad in one”.

Met guy applying for physics. He plays Command & Conquer. Was from Wales; friendly. Also met Yen-Ming and his father. His father was doing his PhD - all research, no teaching - at Imperial while my dad was undergrad. How interconnected of him.

Saw some projects. Fantastic. Eye tracking, torso modelling, game playing lulz ensued. Dad saw that one of his professors from 198x was still a member of the mech eng faculty (lulz).

Ray Hammond and James Bellini were shockingly down-to-earth and non-speculative. Predictable themes included delocalisation of working environment, epic lulz, “conscious internet”, ubiquitous computing etc.. Hammond talked about what was essentially The Wired. Reminded me of Masami Eiri when he said, and I quote, “The next step in human evolution is merging with our creations”.

Audience was mostly pretentious pseudo-intellectuals like me. No-one else under 18 had entered (or made an entry decent enough to get an invitation). I guess young people don’t care about future. Short-sighted info addiction stuff. Lulz. Highlights included tipsy Tesla fanboy rambling about something no-one cares about, man whose life goal is to make jokes about Microsoft and Drunk Freelance Philosopher (one of the runners-up, in fact). I thought the winning entries were okay - not as great as Hammond and Bellini, though.

May remember other stuff. Cambridge had better be good, after that.

I like quantum computing. I like internet. I like artificial intelligence. I plan to lulz stuff up. Throw off crushing weight of friends with superior mathematical ability with attitudes ranging from condescending to hostile. Now irrelevant. Before I cried! NOW I LAUGH IN THE FACE OF ANTI-LULZ!

Ha ha; lulz!

Pax

P.S. News from Cambridge:

Dear Farhan,

Thanks for your query. Although it will depend on the College to which
you’re applying, the Faculty expects that you will be interviewed as a
computer scientist and will have one extra interview by the
mathematicians to check your mathematical ability. The Faculty also
expects that, should you be made an offer and then fail just the STEP
requirement, you would still be able to come to read Computer Science
with one of the other six options.

I hope this helps,
Fiona Billingsley

======================================
Mrs Fiona Billingsley
Student Administrator
University of Cambridge
Computer Laboratory
William Gates Building
JJ Thomson Ave
Cambridge CB3 0FD, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1223 763505
Fax: +44 (0)1223 334678
Email: fmb37@cl.cam.ac.uk
======================================

—–Original Message—–
From: Farhan Mannan [mailto:farhanmannan@mac.com]
Sent: 25 June 2008 21:48
To: undergraduate.admissions@cl.cam.ac.uk
Subject: Computer science with mathematics

I was planning to apply for computer science in 2009 but recently
decided that I may apply for the 50% maths option in the first year.
Does this mean my interview will essentially be a maths interview and
devalue the books I’ve read, or will it still be a computer science
interview with the proviso that I do well in STEP?

Thanks,

Farhan Mannan

Now:

• Made it to final of Aerospace Challenge - team meant to be called “The Pauli Effect”, listed as “Pauli”
• Doing terrible, terrible physics competition
• Used distribution of points in a square and circle to approximate pi
• Watched 2001: A Space Odyssey - totally awesome. Combination of pacing and philosophy reminded me of SEL - wonder whether Rokison liked 2001?
• Had fencing epiphany (remembered how to fence)
• Working on iSAMS MySQL JavaScript plugin thing

Over the summer:

• Fabric stuff
• University of Arizona stuff
• Science essay (applied computer science)
• Philosophy essay (Baudrillard)
• Revision for TSA and (horror!) STEP…
• Become a good fencer

Pax