I am going to share a secret with you, I am not all that clever either. I just substitute it with stubborn doggedness to figure out a problem, a willingness to be wrong often and a slight dash of creativity. This has so far made me reasonably successful. If you can get past the necessary, but confusing symbolisms and formalisms, its pretty good.
I guess not employability as much as hoping someone will pay me to solve problems with mathematics with ideally some interesting problems thrown in. I majored in pure and applied mathematics and I am fully aware the no one is going to ask me to do functional analysis for cash, but it would still be nice to do some sort of applied mathematics for money.
amusingly functional analysis is really important to convex analysis and optimization so yes if you have a phd/masters (maybe) you can definitely get - probably a giant company - to pay you to do functional analysis.
I've seen at least one or two companies working on optimization at least here on HN. I'd take a guess that Gurobi is one option, and I saw SigOpt post a listing on the recent "Who's Hiring?" thread. Google seems to also do a lot of optimization related work as well. I'm in the same boat, though I was stronger in CS during my studies. The background is useful, but you will only ever use bits and pieces of it at opportune moments.
This was very informative, thanks. I am perusing postgraduate studies. I've been accepted into an Honours degree in Applied Mathematics so I am not hanging up my academic hat yet.
My reason for asking the question is two-fold: some badly needed reassurance that I have not rolled myself into a hole (I think it was a design flaw that we cannot re-roll characters in real life) and getting a broader perspective on potential places to keep in mind - in terms of extra-curricular skills that I need to gather along the way.
If it is reasonable for you to continue with postgraduate studies, I would recommend that you do that. The more math you can do or know the better. And it is going to be harder to gain those skills once you leave university.
You haven't mentioned any software skills. I would recommend develop whatever skills you have in that area. The ability to program is becoming as important as literacy and numeracy. Even more so for a mathematician.
My bias is that I have a PhD in math and have been a software engineer for the last 10+ years. I have worked in a lot of different areas and that has largely been because of the combination of math and software (and luck).
Oh. I can program. I've done two university courses using C++. I've taught myself haskell using Haskell Book and for my numerical analysis course I reimplemented all the matlab that we had to do in Julia and Python. A different poster mentioned C/C++ so I am currently considering going through the numerical analysis again and doing it in C++.
I didn't mention programming because I don't see myself being a developer, which I knew would get a lot of attention. I like solving problems with programming, but I don't see myself writing a webapp to collect information for someone to steal.
Computer Science is my secret lover. I initially studied that, but my university focused on producing java devs for industry and didn't do the "science" of computer science. I still work through books when I have time though. About half-way with TAOCP V1.
I could use some guidance, as I seem to have gotten lost.
The implementation of the counter is IO (the levers that Tim pulls), ADD, SUB (branch if 0), M1 (the counter).. and then M2.
M2 is the counter that holds the monsters as they are subtracted from M1. It is also used as IO for the branch part of SUB (if I understood the article correctly).
Therefore, if I call SUB with M2 = 0, then the counter will malfunction.
I think that the consequence of this is that the given function has a decided halting point.(Branching was taken out). I have no idea how to say this in a better way, sadly my computer science education is tragically lacking.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to (didn't find "m1" or "m2" anywhere in the paper), but ...
When a monstar leaves the counter (due to a SUB lever emitting a bunny), the monstar has to proceed to the area under the ladder, where Tim has to kill it in order to proceed.
If Tim pulls a SUB lever when the counter equals zero (no monstars), then the bunny will die on the ceiling spikes and be removed. Tim will not be able to reach the ladder and will have to exit the branch point and proceed to the next spot.
> To perform the “Branch if 0” part of the operation, we would like to guide this monstar into the appropriate Branch gadget.
To do this, build a room that catches all monstars leaving the counter. This room should consist of a flat floor for the monstar to walk back and forth across, along with many platforms forming trap doors in the floor.
Next, force Tim through a second Lever Pull Gadget, whose lever opens one of these trap doors. Build a path below this trap door, leading the monstar to the appropriate Branch gadget.
Alright, M1 the first memory "thing", the counter where the result of ADD is stored. M2 is the second memory "thing", the room mentioned in the part quoted. However, you have made me feel rather silly for not realising the very obvious solution to the problem.
