| My Second
Greatest Ambition My second greatest ambition is to memorize all the grocery store produce labels. I won't say what my dearest ambition is--I'd get laughed at. All right! I've finished off all the apples at Ralph's. If you want to know what the label code of a Jonagold apple is, I'm your man. So now it's on to pears. Interestingly, there are a bunch of bananas that I didn't realize existed. I'll have to go back for those. Another second greatest ambition is to make enough money, so that I can donate it to Stanford Junior University (Leland Stanford Junior University is the official name, so some of us like to call it a junior university) and force them to build a revolving restaurant in the middle of the main quad. That might take a lot of money. Probably more than a trillion dollars. The restaurant would serve bad food at exorbitant prices. But the plus side: every guest gets to take a picture with a real Stanford student! All proceeds benefit Sloan Hall, which incidentally, also gets a new home in the "suburbs"--where all the science and engineering departments moved in a "white flight" sort of way. They've got all the cool new buildings in the Science and Engineering quad because they have money. From my facebook profile, another second greatest ambition - Refining my plans for a coup against the United States, leading to an eventual installation of Yen Quang Do as dictator for life of the Kingdom of Western America (against his will, of course), and Yen's ascension as supreme leader of the Greater America Co-Prosperity Sphere. |
Important Issues Facing the World
Today - Notation should be more standardized, particularly the Fourier transform. Someday a serious accident will happen because someone put a 2π in the wrong place. - Academia should change over to a system based on sports. Universities should be able to say, I want to trade graduate student X for graduate student Y. Or perhaps graduate student X for two undergrads a and b. This sets up the possibility of a blockbuster deal, such as Terence Tao for your whole math department + $10 million. It's probably still not worth it for UCLA. |
| Some stuff Here are two of my Harry Potter mathematical theories. I guess I'm making a series out of these now. Harry Potter and the Banach-Tarski paradox Harry Potter and Homotopy Invariance I guess I'm making a series out of these now. In my REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) of Summer 2004, a few of us invented a card game called Clubs. Here are the rules, not that I expect anyone to read them, although it is an entertaining game. Too bad we never got around to inventing Diamonds. That's pretty much the extent of our creativity during the summer. Although I did learn quite a few interesting things about the connection between apples and algebra, and the connection of various other foods to various branches of mathematics from my friend James. |
Some of my
stranger hobbies -Cleaning chalkboards. If you would like to schedule an appointment for a chalkboard cleaning in your office, you can make an appointment by contacting my secretary at achen81 at ucla dot edu. I have excellent references, see my classmates from my REU. Note: I use only 100% premium grade, 0% proof math department water. -Compulsively looking up references to any random event I hear something about. Something to work on: being a little more systematic in my acquisition of random knowledge. -Coming up with strange theories, especially on making money, and then not carrying them out. Some of my more normal hobbies -Reading all sorts of history, as long as it has as little connection to the modern world as possible. -Cello and classical music -Games-I used to play more chess, but was turned off a bit by the rampant corruption (yes, corruption!) in the chess world. |
| Some
of my
favorite websites Hilary Hahn - She's got tons of cool features on her website, including a journal in which she writes about her experiences. KUSC - a classical radio station I like. KMZT - a classical radio station I like. Mugglenet - people come up with some really strange stuff. My kind of people. The Leaky Cauldron - ditto. Wikipedia - really good for finding quick answers to math definitions or intuitive explanations of theorems) Mathworld - good for finding stuff that's not on wikipedia. ESPN - i used to like the anaheim angels quite a bit until they became the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim." i'll take a year off and like them again next year. 3kingdoms.net - my favorite time period in Chinese history to read about--that's when they say "i should die for you"--"no i should die for you"--"no i should die for you" and no one can decide, so everyone ends up dying Naxos - you can listen to all their mostly classical CDs on the UCLA campus Grammar - on a whim, I decided to learn grammar again properly. I was shocked by all the references to set theory and various other branches of mathematics. Okay, maybe it's a stretch, but if you're a mathematician, you might be amused by the reference to countability vs uncountability, into and onto maps, independent and dependent clauses (variables), and of course the mysterious double, triple and quadruple negatives that are taboo in English, but completely accepted and thought of as clever in mathematics. Best of all, I now know what a gerund is! Shakespeare's Sonnets - I was forced to memorize a bunch of Shakespeare in 7th and 8th grade...the love poetry was supposed to help us get the girls...well, at least i learned a bunch of iambic pentameter. Math Jokes - Some pretty good ones. When I get around to it, maybe I'll compose a few of my own. |
Teaching Here's where I can impose my will and terrorize my students. Previous classes: Fall05, Win06, Spr06, Spr07, Spr08 Friends This list is in no way a reflection on who I consider to be my best friends or my only true friends or anything like that. They just happen to be people who are on the list. You may qualify if you satisfy certain requirements. Details listed on the above link. |