TotientQuotient

My offer letter with my personal information hidden, showing my successful admission with funding to the Combinatorics and Optimization MMath program at the University of Waterloo.

Now that I've finally sorted everything (visa, housing etc) it's time for the grand reveal.
I will be starting my Master of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo! Henceforth commences my long-awaited academic redemption...
#MathSky #AcademicSky

For those who don't know me and what I've been through, I cannot overstate my gratitude towards Waterloo. While other grad schools refused to look past my grades, Waterloo showed sympathy towards my struggles with the Cambridge Tripos and offered me a chance to prove my worth.

Thanks! And thank you once again for all your help back when I needed it most! I think you'd be delighted to hear that my master's advisor took the liberty to read my tree traversals paper and was impressed by it - wouldn't have been possible without your helpful comments and advice!

For those who don't know me and what I've been through, I cannot overstate my gratitude towards Waterloo. While other grad schools refused to look past my grades, Waterloo showed sympathy towards my struggles with the Cambridge Tripos and offered me a chance to prove my worth.

My offer letter with my personal information hidden, showing my successful admission with funding to the Combinatorics and Optimization MMath program at the University of Waterloo.

Now that I've finally sorted everything (visa, housing etc) it's time for the grand reveal.
I will be starting my Master of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo! Henceforth commences my long-awaited academic redemption...
#MathSky #AcademicSky

You're using Overleaf Premium You're on the Professional plan because of your affiliation with [redacted]

Institution email activated ✅
Now I can finally use overleaf premium and access paywalled journals again!

Should I pay for Claude? I found the free version quite decent at doing literature reviews. Now that I'll be doing a lot more research soon, $20/month doesn't seem that bad of an investment if it's going to help a lot.

Hey babe, are you the type of conjugate-partition symmetry exhibited by Macdonald polynomials? Cuz damn, you're a (q,t)!

#MathSky

CNY is such a fake and performative "festival", can't wait for it to be over. What's the point of giving out red packets if you don't even get to keep the cash lol

it would be pretty much pointless since it's not difficult for a reviewer to narrow down the possible authors to a very small set based on the writing style and works cited, unless they are new to the field. In fact, the paper I was asked to review 2 months ago had the authors' names shown to me.

Oh my apologies I didn't register the word "double" in your reply lol, I just assumed you were asking if I could know the reviewer's name but the answer to that seems to be "no" uniformly across academia.
But yeah I don't think double-blindness is a thing in maths, and even if it were,

My advisor told me not to worry for the time being because publications are not part of the graduation requirements for my master's programme but I worry that this is only something I can avoid for a short while - after all, dealing with these people again is inevitable should I stay in academia.

Yes, and that's what makes up a lot of my paranoia - I have no idea whether or not the anonymous reviewer already knew me from my cold emails, which I think is quite likely given how many of them serve as editors and referees for the journals I tried submitting to!

and the fact that I haven't had opportunities like REUs or their equivalents. I was essentially going in blind, which was unsurprisingly a recipe for disaster.

In my case, it eventually worked, but only after dozens of failed attempts. It is, unfortunately, both common and necessary for folks like myself who don't have the connections. For me, that's due to undergrad professors not sharing my research interests (and thus couldn't recommend suitable people)

and that their impression of me affected their decision.
Am I just going insane? How much animosity do academics typically have when they come across a name they recognize and associate badly with?
4/4

because academia is a small world. And case in point, the journal editor who emailed me the rejection of my 1st paper was precisely one of the professors I reached out to who wasn't impressed with my cold emails. I'm worried that this might also be the case with reviewer 1 of my 2nd paper,
3/4

What paranoia, you may ask? Some time ago I shared on Tw*tter about how my experience reaching out to potential grad school advisors through cold emails is not only a humiliation ritual, but also an endeavor that leaves bad impressions on so many people, a risk that might come back to bite me
2/4

#MathSky #AcademicSky
Oh well, bad news again. 2nd arXiv paper got a journal rejection too. This one hurts much more than my 1st rejection since it's a much better paper. Coauthor told me she's published worse papers in comparable journals. I'm worried that my paranoia is becoming justified.
1/4

"Handbook of the Tutte Polynomial and Related Topics" by Joanna Ellis-Monaghan and Iain Moffatt https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429161612

New banger I've been reading lately
#MathSky

"Handbook of the Tutte Polynomial and Related Topics" by Joanna Ellis-Monaghan and Iain Moffatt https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429161612

New banger I've been reading lately
#MathSky

my new ASUS Zenbook UX5406

Just got a new laptop after 6 years. Look at this bad boy :D

Here are some good people to follow:
bsky.app/starter-pack...
bsky.app/starter-pack...
Unfortunately, this is a much quieter place than Twitter. Tagging #MathSky in your posts would be helpful though.

New Year's Resolution:
- Finish reviewing the journal manuscript assigned back in November
- Read lots of papers in my proposed research area
- Prepare for my master's courses
- Begin my master's
- Publish a paper or two
- Finish 40% of my thesis
- Hopefully don't get burned out

The thing I'm looking forward to the most as an incoming grad student is having institution access to journals once again.

I used to think that reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy, but the current state of the world suggests the opposite for the latter. Lots of shameless people, institutions, brands etc that have clearly fallen off are somehow still milking its historical prestige.

You too!

Alright, formal offer letter received, visa application submitted, thesis topic decided. Looks like I'm in for a good time!

#MathSky #AlgComb
Many people ask me what I study as an algebraic combinatorialist. I don't usually share too much to avoid doxxing myself (it's a niche area after all), but here's an interesting example I feel compelled to share:
(continued in reply)

Usually, one learns that chromatic polynomials are polynomials because of the base cases of empty & complete graphs and an induction step using the deletion-contraction theorem. However, using algcomb tools (the theory of symmetric functions), we can prove this without induction!