The course feedback can be seen on the course webpage. There were eight respondents, and the average overall grade was 3,75 / 5, which is good. The topics and the projects were considered interesting and beneficial, and people were pleased with the teaching. The course was considered too easy for five credits, and the general sloppiness was critizised. No surprises! I was especially pleased with the last comment to question 6. The answers to questions 7 and 8 were constructive and will certainly help in improving the course next year.
Once again a big thanks to everyone! The credits for the course should have appeared, or will appear today.
Aalto MS-E1998 Mathematics of Juggling, Spring 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
Friday, May 22, 2015
The credits have been sent forward. They should appear in the register during next week.
At some point I said that answering the questionnaire is required for passing. That's not true, but if you are among the passers and don't answer the questionnaire (it closes next Thursday), I will impose bad karma on you.
The normalizing constant has been corrected in the week 4 lectures.
A minor loose end: I never actually showed the conjecture that I mentioned during the last lecture. It is found in http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.3752.pdf on page 17, Remark 3.8.
A big thanks to everyone that attended, and also to the people at the department! This course was my dream come true. I will probably post some comments on the feedback when I see it a week from now. Have a good summer!
At some point I said that answering the questionnaire is required for passing. That's not true, but if you are among the passers and don't answer the questionnaire (it closes next Thursday), I will impose bad karma on you.
The normalizing constant has been corrected in the week 4 lectures.
A minor loose end: I never actually showed the conjecture that I mentioned during the last lecture. It is found in http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.3752.pdf on page 17, Remark 3.8.
A big thanks to everyone that attended, and also to the people at the department! This course was my dream come true. I will probably post some comments on the feedback when I see it a week from now. Have a good summer!
Sunday, May 3, 2015
This time no video, only serious business. We have two more weeks of lectures / exercises before the projects. Here's what I try to accomplish during the lectures:
- Tue: Complete the uniform case
- Wed & Tue: Countably infinite juggling Markov chains (remove the throw height bound)
- Wed: Scale the process from discrete to continuous (whatever that means, we'll see).
- Clear notes (about 4-5 pages depending on text size)
- Practice your presentation!
Friday, April 17, 2015
I should now have contacted everybody about their projects. Updated a tentative presentation schedule to the webpage, it can be modified whenever needed. The exercises for next week will have to wait until Monday, sorry about that. Next week's lectures will contain:
- Tue: Prime juggling patterns. Virtual juggling patterns. Affine permutations.
- Wed: Juggling Markov chains.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Okay. Today's lectures are on the website, and the answers to the opening questionnaire look very nice indeed. More about that tomorrow.
This thread will start a series of juggling videos that I consider classical. Here is the first one about dropping the requirement that particles travel forward in time. Made by Phil Edwards, a juggling mathematician. Enjoy!
P.S. The two most relevant juggling math papers NOT available on the arXiv are available here and here.
This thread will start a series of juggling videos that I consider classical. Here is the first one about dropping the requirement that particles travel forward in time. Made by Phil Edwards, a juggling mathematician. Enjoy!
P.S. The two most relevant juggling math papers NOT available on the arXiv are available here and here.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Updated some simulator code to the webpage. The first exercises are also there. A short curriculum for the first week:
- Tue: Opening. Introduction to periodic siteswaps.
- Wed: More on periodic siteswaps. Siteswap state graphs. Introduction to random siteswaps.
- Thu: Exercises and project planning.
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