Patrick Stevens

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I completed Myst III: Exile.

Once upon a time, before this bountiful age of Matter and Light, there was only the Fell.

I am shortly to receive a new Nexus 5.

Earlier today, I had a rather depressing conversation with several people, in which it was revealed to me that many people will attempt to argue against the dictates of mathematical and empirical fact in the instance of the Monty Hall Problem.

The book Don’t Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor, contains a simple exercise in demonstrating clicker training.

Many thanks to the Guru Bursill-Hall for bringing this tract to my attention through his weekly History of Maths bulletins.

In my latest lecture on Markov Chains in Part IB of the Mathematical Tripos, our lecturer showed us a very nice little application of the theorem that “if a discrete-time chain is aperiodic, irreducible and positive-recurrent, then there is an invariant d…

This post is unfinished, and may never be finished - I have decided that the Nexus 5 is sufficiently cheap, nice-looking and future-proof to outweigh the boredom of continuing the research here, especially given that such research by necessity has a very…

This post is for posterity, made shortly after Dr Paul Russell lectured Analysis II in Part IB of the Maths Tripos at Cambridge.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, I required a snack to feed me.

In which I recount an experiment I have been performing.

In conversation with (say, for the purposes of propagating a sterotype) humanities students, I am often struck by how imprecisely language is used, and how much confusion arises therefrom.

Wherein I dabble in parodic fiction.

I came across an interesting question while reading the blog of Scott Aaronson today.

On the merits of silence (I wholeheartedly agree): http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/im-thinking-please-be-quiet.html Given the previous results on humans’ sense of physical location, I’m not particularly surprised that you can make yourself

This is a collection of poems which together prove the Sylow theorems.

I’ve been learning some basic topology over the last couple of months, and it strikes me that there are some very confusing names for things.

The much-vaunted Hyperloop looks really cool, if it could ever be built: https://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/hyperloop-a-theoretical-760-mph-transit-system-made-of-sun-air-and-magnets/ But it may be a bit too half-baked: https://pedestrianobservation…

When in Cambridge… The river is always full of beginners and professional puntists.

I’m in the middle of reading Flow, by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, and so far, I love it.

All the way back into primary school (ages 4 to 11 years old, in case a non-Brit is reading this), we have been told repeatedly that “people learn things in different ways”.

A thousand times this (EDIT 2022: the link is dead and I have no idea what I was referring to).

An ad developer has misgivings: http://seriouspony.com/blog/2013/7/24/your-app-makes-me-fat Hint for dealing with some automated phone helplines - swear at them and they’ll put you through to a human: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z444dx/if-you-swear-at…

Editor’s note: this is a snapshot of life in 2013-08-04.

Getting Things Done has gathered something of a cult following [archived due to link rot] since its inception.

Hehe: http://www.pixartheory.com/ Wow - light trapped for a full minute: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23925-light-completely-stopped-for-a-recordbreaking-minute.html The importance of a consistent utility function: http://lesswrong.com/lw/my/the_…

I have recently discovered the game of Agricola, a board game involving using resources (family members, stone, etc) to build a thriving farm.

This is something I will try at some point, probably when I get back to uni: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/how-to-make-your-coffee-bulletproof-and-your-morning-too/ This was fun: http://www.sporcle.com/games/Government_Agent/true-or-false-logic-quiz Hah -

The Orbit/Stabiliser Theorem is a simple theorem in group theory.

I’ve now seen two Shakespeare plays at the Globe - once in person, to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and once with a one-year-and-eighty-mile gap between viewing and performance (through the Globe On Screen project), to see Twelfth Night.

A large chunk of the reason why changing someone’s mind is so difficult is the fact that our deeply-held beliefs seem so obviously true to us, and we find it hard to understand why those beliefs aren’t obvious to others.

I’ve been reading one of Daniel Dennett’s books, Consciousness Explained.

Usually when I discover (or, more rarely, think up) a thought experiment about a moral point, and discuss it with an arbitrary person whom I will (for convenience) call Kim, the conversation usually goes like this: Me: {Interesting scenario} - what do you…

This is really quite heartwarming: http://www.reddit.com/r/Random_Acts_Of_Pizza/ Interesting article on current trends in fiction: http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2013/01/david-brin-our-favorite-cliche-a-world-filled-with-idiots-orwhy-films-and-novel…

Sometimes some people argue that certain things are “priceless” - that is, worth an infinite amount of money to them.

There was once a small website devoted to noting the more interesting quotes from our more idiosyncratic lecturers.

Being bored over the summer holiday, I decided that I would document the cool things I ran across on the Internet.

So yesterday the Wimbledon tennis tournament was decided.

I have stumbled across a LessWrong post on the importance of seeing what is real for just how cool it is.

There is an awfully large collection of confusing words you will encounter on first coming to study at Cambridge.

I wrote this when I was excessively bored during exam term of my first year.

A few dubiously-real words which I think should be more widely used.

A fairly long and winding way through a proof of the three Sylow theorems.

Hello all!

At the end of last (that is, Lent 2012-2013) term at Cambridge, I took part in the Cambridge University Computing and Technology Society Puzzlehunt (for some reason, as of this writing, they haven’t yet updated that page for this year’s Puzzlehunt, but la…