Seconded. This looks like a fun toy, but it solves a problem that I don't have (and I believe I am the target audience). Modern typesetters are very good (e.g., TexMacs). There is also a limited set of characters by design, and I would have to remove my hand from my keyboard only for those.
I throw these quotes by Y. Oono into the mix because they provide viewpoints which are in some tension with those who take -\sum_x p(x) log p(x) definition of entropy as fundamental.
> Boltzmann’s argument summarized in Exercise of 2.4.11 just derives Shannon’s formula and uses it. A major lesson is that before we use the Shannon formula important physics is over.
> There are folklores in statistical mechanics. For example, in many textbooks ergodic theory and the mechanical foundation of statistical mechanics are discussed even though detailed mathematical explanations may be missing. We must clearly recognize such topics are almost irrelevant to statistical mechanics. We are also brainwashed that statistical mechanics furnishes the foundation of thermodynamics, but we must clearly recognize that without thermodynamics statistical mechanics cannot be formulated. It is a naive idea that microscopic theories are always more fundamental than macroscopic phenomenology.
I am a Canadian currently on an H1B visa, valid until November 2026. I can probably recapture time until early 2027. I just got an EB2-NIW approved, but my priority date is in August 2024, and currently we are serving people in Apr. 2023. It will take at least until next year until I can file my I-485 and get my GC.
I am wondering what my options are in case I need to find a new job. My understanding is that the EB2 doesn't help me much unless I can truly demonstrate that the new job continues to advance the national interest in the same way, and that any deviation from what I wrote in my application is grounds to deny the I-485.
In case I can't find a new job that fits the exact description I have on my EB2-NIW, and I have to move out of the US, can I still file my I-485 once my priority date becomes current (and therefore get a GC)?
Your understanding about the exact fit between your NIW job and a new job isn't correct. NIWs are not subject to the same portability requirements as PERM-based green card applications. That being said, when you are able to file your I-485 application, you might be asked to demonstrate how your work is serving a national interest, even if this interest is different from the one in the NIW.
I use Jupyter Lab every day on OSX in scientific/academic work, so I feel I am your target audience. In case it helps you gauge my impression, I spent about two minutes reading the post and scrolling through the website.
I feel I did not understand the main advantages of this notebook aside from the AI integration. I don't understand how "start-up" time is a cost; I have a Jupyter server running at all times and use it as a scratch-pad throughout the day, so it is always available.
I don't understand the "modern command palette". As far as I can tell all the commands are available to regular Jupyter Labs, and either way I always use hotkeys for them.
The code formatting using black isn't bad, but notebooks are for scratchy ideas, not real code. If I'm at the point of formatting code, it's going in an actual IDE. I'd even argue providing formatting inside of a notebook encourages bad habits for scientists, who prefer to stay entirely within a notebook, but are then sometimes unable to reproduce their results.
I don't see the advantage of the copy-paste; I can copy paste directly from Labs to Slack/online editing pages, and certain Latex typesetters.
Pros: it looks pretty, the site has nice demo videos (in terms of quality; I didn't understand the content).
I want to like this but I don't see any benefits for a power user except for the AI integration; if AI is the only selling point then I prefer to get it differently.
I also use notebooks and qtconsole daily so I'd like to chime in.
- I don't have a continuously running notebook server. I start it when I need to and shut it down if I won't be working with it for a while. I do like the idea of clicking an icon and starting an app.
- Modern command palette, I believe, is similar to what you would see in apps like VS code. It doesn't offer more commands but instead make it easier to find and execute commands. I don't use Jupyter Lab so I don't know if it has a command palette but Jupyter Notebook doesn't so that seems like an advantage to me.
- I disagree on the formatting point, too. Even if I am just doing something very quick I cannot stand seeing lines extending some length, no space after a colon, single vs double quote inconsistency etc. So I do spend time formatting them even if I am on IDLE and know for sure I am not going to save it. Thankfully, IPython added support for Black so it is less of an issue for me.
Apps in this area generally focused on extending Jupyter to maybe combine SQL/JS with Python, making data exploration easier but I do appreciate a light app that just gives me a notebook experience with some small advantages, especially considering Classic Notebook is going to go away soon. I'll definitely give it a try.
- Re: continuously running a notebook server, how about an alias in your ~/.*rc file that just launches a new JLab? Personally I don't find the startup time so high, so it doesn't seem to me 'startup time' is the strongest lead to sell the product. (Of course, if most people find that the startup of a notebook is indeed a large cost then it's a fine point to make. )
- Re: command palette, gotcha. As you say, classic notebooks are going away (and I haven't touched one in a while).
- Re: formatting, I take it back. You're right, there's been plenty of times I've wanted to have nicer formatting in a notebook/lab, that's nice.
I switched to Windows/WSL2 a few years back so don't have a fight in this game (though if it's Electron, why only macOS?) - but having to switch between IDE and Jupyter for code formatting seems like unnecessary overhead.
But TBH Quarto is much better in this regard; you can use a VScode together with another IDE if you wish to format/edit/run chunks of code in the same file.
> but having to switch between IDE and Jupyter for code formatting seems like unnecessary overhead.
You're right about this. I don't love my setup (and have not put enough effort into optimizing it -- hence my reticence at learning Yet Another Tool), but the main reason I use notebooks is for objects that persist in memory. I can load up some huge dataset, keep it open, and jump back to it whenever I want over the next day/week/month without having to "reload" it (fetch data from some server and do processing).
I'd love a robust Jupyter-in-Sublime experience, where I have all the editing/hotkeys of Sublime along with this persistence of objects.
Quarto looks cool, might check that out. If there's any specific part of it you think is awesome, please do point it out. Thanks.
If you'd be happy to share: I'm curious to know what scientific field you work in? Do you do 100% computational work, or is it a mixture of experimental and computational?
Sure. I do algorithm development at a biotech company, it is 100% computational work. I am not a software developer by training, my background is in mathematics.
I like your formulation of this as a "distributed measurement problem", but I'm not sure I follow. Could you elaborate? Specifically, I'm not sure if you agree or disagree with the post you are replying to. Thanks in advance.
Could you demonstrate with an example how Ascii math is easier to read and takes less time and effort to type? The example on the main page,
sum_(i=1)^n i^3=((n(n+1))/2)^2
looks to me no less complicated than
\sum_{i=1}^n i^3=((n(n+1))/2)^2
so if the goal is it quickly communicate mathematics in plain text (without rendering), I see no difference. If the advantage is that the outer parentheses are automatically resized, why not write a renderer that uses Latex and puts \left, \right everywhere? Better yet, why not go straight to TeXmacs?
I'd love to see an example of a mathematical expression where Ascii math is visibly simpler than Latex and is not just about parenthesis resizing.
I think the statement that "You'll enjoy the music a lot more by adding the physical movement to it" is unlikely to apply to everyone, and may not even apply to a majority of people. Not because humans don't have a natural inclination to "move to the beat" (they might), but because a dance club may be much more intimidating for many people than, say, a music circle.
I have both legs, I love music (our home has several musical instruments), and I'd never join a dance club. Glad it works for you but I just wanted to offer another perspective.
Also, nitpicking, but you can dance even with just one leg, as the first (or one of the very first) verses in "Moving to Florida" by the Butthole Surfers shows ;)
Depends on which ones you go to. If you go to one where the crowd are people who have taken lessons, yes, you do see the stuff in the picture. If you take lessons, yes you can dance like that. There's always a shortage of men at these functions, so if you make the effort to learn it, you can dance with excellent partners, and your rear will never touch a chair.
The costumes in the pictures you'll only see at a competition event, but people still dress up for the club dances.
The community of these people is not large, and they know each other, and will network to find a venue to meet up at.
It's really too bad more people don't do it. The barrier of learning it is rather high, as there's a long awkward stage, and few are willing to put in the effort. But the payoff is lifelong, and as I wrote, it really dials up the pleasure from music.
I think I am one of these mathematicians that doesn't understand the logic. How can I write μ(x)dx instead of μ(dx) without risking the confusion that dx is Lebesgue measure? You may have explained this in your other reply, but I don't quite follow.
I'm suggesting maybe writing the Lebesgue measure as
1
so the Lebesgue integral of a function f becomes
⌠
| f(x)⋅1 dx
⌡
The logic is that the Lebesgue measure is a density which is everywhere equal to 1. Given a measurable space over \mathbb R^n, I think there is only one such measure.
Another example is that δ(x) in
⌠
| f(x)⋅δ(x) dx
⌡
represents the Dirac measure.
For producing this ASCII art, I use Sympy. I write for instance
So what does dx mean in this setting then? If the answer is nothing, then let me suggest simplifying your expression to the following:
⌠
| f(x)⋅μ(x)
⌡
Now it occurs to me that the only problem with this new notation is that you risk confusing which term is the density (especially if there are multiple greek letters floating around). To clarify this potential confusion I have a solution! Add some notation to indicate which is the density:
So here is the issue. "A small change in x" is a concept that is relevant and meaningful for Riemann integration: it represents that the integral is defined as a limit of Riemann sums as the change in x becomes infinitely small.
But this is not relevant for Lebesgue integration! We are not taking a limit of Riemann sums and there is not a limit of change in x getting arbitrarily small. What matters is the measure (and the definition of the integral in terms of simple functions is something entirely different).
So you see using dx this way in the context of Lebesgue integration seems like a potential source of confusion, not simplification.
This is why i ask what dx means. Either it represents the standard Lebesgue measure on R (this is valid and a special case of the notation d\mu(x) since \mu is the identity function), or it is nonsense that potentially confuses concepts from other integration theories.
This is why mathematicians don't like your idea. They encounter many students who are confused about this distinction and don't find that it's a useful simplification.
I think you're the rude person. GP wasn't being sarcastic, they were showing you why they think that taking your notational convention to its logical conclusion, you end up with the notation we have today.
I don't think the comment was sarcastic or rude. They are pointing out the following inconsistency: you've basically attached "dx" to every integration sign, making the "dx" essentially irrelevant.
Moreover, "dx" does not mean "a small change in x". "dx" is a differential form; it is in particular the "d" operator applied to the function f : x --> x.
As I revisit your comment, I think the point Rota is making about physics notation -- which I _do_ agree with -- is that one should use density functions instead of measures, in general. So, for instance, using the Dirac "density"
\int f(x) \delta(x) dx
instead of
\int f(x) \mu(dx)
where \mu is a point mass at 0. This happens again in the context of stochastic differential equations, where mathematicians shirk away from writing dB_t = xi(t) dt, where xi(t) is "white noise". One can make sense of this in the sense of distributions, and then everything happens in a nice inner product space. Indeed, the physicists are much more competent at actual calculations, and the density representation of things (e.g., in terms of "xi") is very useful for those.
Please excuse my imposition, as I am a humble programmer who spends his days adding and subtracting 1, and not a mathematician.
Yet, this discussion of the confusion and potential confusion of misinterpreting notation strikes me as something that has long (well, in the sense of programming) been solved in my area with type systems and syntax highlighting.
There is no syntax highlighting on the blackboard.
Math notation is not designed. It has haphazardly evolved over centuries. It is not rigorous even though math itself is (attempts to be) rigorous, it is a language as imperfect as its users. But it does its job well enough.
They do! It’s called abstract algebra and it’s very similar to type theory in a lot of ways.
But to get to the rigorous mathematician definition of manipulating dx and dy, it requires a large amount of the machinery from abstract algebra that’s hard to quickly absorb or explain.
Did you mean to write dμ(x) instead of μ(dx)? As a non-measure-literate person, I can understand dμ(x) as the d of density μ(x) evaluated at x. But μ(dx) has μ evaluated at the infinitesimal dx which is very different. Is μ(dx) the correct notation?
