Matt Mack
@matthras.bsky.social
930 followers 750 following 1.4K posts
Hard-of-hearing + mild AuDHD mathematician, cellist, anime+manga+VTuber fan with a giant backlog of games and books to get through. Chronically online: [email protected], [email protected], matthras.com
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matthras.bsky.social
Howdy! I'm currently a PhD student #mathbio but have an eclectic mix of interests/specialties including:

🧶knitting/crochet/cross-stitch
🦻accessibility esp. in maths
👨‍🏫maths education
🧮operations research
🎵classical music

And am always groaning about how little time there is to learn everything!
matthras.bsky.social
Minor Cooking Win: Sweet red bean paste recipe I was following recommended 1.5 cup sugar to 1 cup dried adzuki bean ratio. I thought the amount of sugar seemed a bit excessive, so I tried a 1:1 ratio instead and the sweetness came out the way I wanted it. Whew!
matthras.bsky.social
Made chicken masala for meal prep. Decided to try making tadka first: heat up ghee until smoking, then fry spices in ghee, then add the rest to prefs.

The resultant smell is VERY reminiscent of whenever I'd walk into a South Asian household 😅 "Ahh, that's IT!" /chefkiss
matthras.bsky.social
I learnt about a few more via this QI clip 😂 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICaP...

I suspect this would be easy to computationally check, though. Just need a reference dictionary.
matthras.bsky.social
Yep, the school is mentioned in the article so I'll probably do that. Leave my details, say I'm available for a chitchat when exams are over.
matthras.bsky.social
"Sequence of increasing numbers that spell out a word when flipped upside down on a calculator"? 🙃
matthras.bsky.social
I got news of a blind Year 12 student doing maths interstate and was thinking of reaching out. Apparently reaching out in that way isn't acceptable on some social norms/ethical level according to initial conversations 🤔

Just very worried about his eventual uni experience and wanting to offer advice
Reposted by Matt Mack
dginev.bsky.social
Our annual opportunity to request interoperability across web browsers is here. This time there is a fun new interface (made by the Firefox team):

interop-rank.jakearchibald.com

and you can also upvote 👍 the issue directly:

github.com/web-platform...
Interop Feature Ranking
Rank the web platform features you care most about
interop-rank.jakearchibald.com
matthras.bsky.social
I keep stumbling into and discovering things normal to me that is completely alien to the majority and some days it's like "Oh god please make it stop can I just have like one NORMAL thing in common with the majority?!"

🧠: No! You must be quirky in this congratulations card!
matthras.bsky.social
It's been interesting as a mathematician having conversations with my housemate doing a PhD in machine learning where he's talking about concepts at a higher level & combining algorithms and my brain's like "Grr I want to scrutinise each and every part of what you're doing 😅"
matthras.bsky.social
Definition of insanity etc. etc. etc.
matthras.bsky.social
I'm open to teaching approaches being adjusted but my main point is that we shouldn't eschew getting students to write and debug code by hand (and other traditional teaching means) because it's still a useful skill to have and develops their mental capacity.
matthras.bsky.social
One giant asterisk I need to point out is that you, with your years of experience, expertise and ability to describe and evaluate, are able to do all that.

The students that we teach have none of that, and they have grown up in a mobile/tablet dominated world.
matthras.bsky.social
Today:

👎A few too many small oops caused by my brain. Silly brain. /shakesfist

👍chkdsk on my PC has finally finished running after like 4-5 days of not being able to use my PC. I stupidly set it to run after boot instead of unmounting & scanning separately.
Reposted by Matt Mack
solidangles.bsky.social
I've been thinking a lot about means recently!

Probably some combination of (1) teaching our data analysis unit in our STEM 101 course at Oglethorpe and (2) all of @howiehua.bsky.social's great posts surrounding Mean Girls Day.

I'd like to show how some of these various means are related.

🧵 [0]
A four-panel graphic showing formulas for four types of means. Each panel includes the formula and the name of the mean in bold text below.

Top left (red background): Arithmetic Mean, labeled “AM = (x₁ + ⋯ + xₙ) / n.”

Top right (dark blue): Geometric Mean, labeled “GM = ⁿ√(x₁ ⋅ … ⋅ xₙ).”

Bottom left (purple): Harmonic Mean, labeled “HM = n / (1/x₁ + ⋯ + 1/xₙ).”

Bottom right (dark green): Quadratic Mean, labeled “QM = √((x₁² + ⋯ + xₙ²) / n).”
Reposted by Matt Mack
dginev.bsky.social
Excellent resource!

I am looking forward to <math> inclusion as well.
tetralogical.com
We've created a tool called the "Screen reader support look up tables" designed to help people quickly check how screen readers interpret HTML elements and attributes across multiple combinations of browser and screen reader.
HTML/SR Support lookup
tetralogical.github.io
matthras.bsky.social
No disagreement with your proposition but in terms of curriculum you're basically describing what happens in a typical applied discipline-specific statistics course. There are parallels you can also make with biostatistics as well and how they've evolved from a traditional statistics course.
matthras.bsky.social
Got a lovely response on Threads
A response from "linda.mciver" says "the only relevant question is: might it make your life better by signalling your disability? if the answer is yes (looks like it to me!) then get one."

I reply with "I love this perspective, thank you 🙏 

For the most part I get by fine (going by past experiences) but there are definitely many small moments where it's like "Okay I just need a little more consideration when you interact with me" and I definitely don't have an issue signalling that."

She responds: "yep, I get it! We CAN get by without, so we feel like we SHOULD. But it's also worth bearing in mind that it helps the people we're interacting with, too, because the interaction goes better if we understand each other better. It helps everyone and harms no one!"
matthras.bsky.social
Does the majority of people not really noticing/seeing my hearing aid means my hearing loss is an "invisible-enough" disability?

I want to get the sunflower stuff (for e.g. airports) but feel it's a bit disingenuous on my part, so I'm not sure how to think about it.
matthras.bsky.social
I, look, I appreciate cheesiness and references but it's gotta be much more subtle than that, come on 😂
matthras.bsky.social
Sounds like you're an awesome leader already 🙃
matthras.bsky.social
Bariance = biased variance? But it could be biased in other various ways, why this one in particular?!

I skimmed the article for an explicit explanation of the intended etymology but didn't see one.
matthras.bsky.social
Of all things I was slightly mad about today was some catering serving up "chicken karaage" that was tough chicken breast pieces (use THIGH, dammit!) in some definitely-not-typical-Japanese-karaage coating (no pepper nor spice).

Anyway, worse things had happened today.
matthras.bsky.social
...no wonder I didn't pick up any hints from casual chatter from my Melbourne friends lol 😑
matthras.bsky.social
Somehow I missed the memo (again!) that it's a public holiday today.

(For non-Aussies, it's Labour Day and I must admit I don't care enough to even look it up especially after I was mentally preparing myself this morning to blow through work)
Reposted by Matt Mack
monsoon0.bsky.social
The saltiness of analysis, the sweetness of algebra, the umami of algebraic geometry, the bitterness of contradictions, the sourness of dead ends …
roger-mansuy.bsky.social
I'd be curious to taste mathematics.