So I was teaching and came up with a sentence like this. I'm British and it seems like something I could imagine saying but the grammar seems weird and the students didn't like.   I'm NOT TALKING ABOUT POSSESSIVES BEFORE A GERUND which has been answered here.  Are sentences like this possible? If so what is going here?   1.. Him saying that annoyed me.    You doing that caused so many problems.
I assume that the following sentences are grammatically correct:   He resents your being more popular than he is. Most of the members paid their dues without my asking them. They objected to the youngest girl's being given the command position. What do you think about his buying such an expensive car? We were all sorry about Jane's losing her parents like that.   I'm still getting used to this possessive gerund structure. It sounded so weird to me at first. Is the structure used in both formal and informal contexts? Are there any alternative structures that result in the same meaning and are more frequently used? (Examples taken from )
Find the sum of the series $\sum \frac{1}{n(n+1)(n+2)}$ Is "data" treated as singular or plural in formal contexts? My non-native English speaking friend just asked me: "Data is..." or "Data are..."?  I said both but that's because I've been desensitized from reading/writing both (especially from writing code and adding quick comments).  My question: Is it acceptable to utilize either for a university paper? Or is one safer than the other (when confronted with stickler professors)?    Related questions: What are the options for player characters to create traps? Can you dispel a magic effect you can't perceive? Discussions about Dispel Magic seem to imply that as long as you can perceive a magic effect in range of the spell, you can try and dispel it.   See  and  from @Miniman:      knowing where it is means that you know where it is. This allows you to use spells like Dispel Magic to remove its invisibility.   But what if you can't perceive it?  Two scenarios come in mind:   In combat, an evil wizard casts Invisibility on himself, walks away from the fray and uses the hide action on his next turn. Since PCs know/assume/deduce he's invisible and certainly in range of the spell, can one use Dispel Magic to end the spell? PCs enter a 80'&times;80' room. Can one declare: "I dispel any Invisibility spell in range", thus revealing one (the closest?) invisible enemy in the room?   What's enough to enable a caster to cast Dispel Magic on a magic effect:    perceiving (seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.) it? knowing/assuming/deducing it's there? or merely suspect/predict it? If an effect would prevent a spell from doing damage, does it continue to prevent that damage after the spell changes zones? Anthony casts , targeting Nathan's .  Nathan casts and resolves , choosing to 1) prevent all damage that would be dealt by Searing Blood this turn and 2) put a +1/+1 counter on Elvish Mystic.  Searing Blood resolves, deals no damage, and goes to the graveyard.  Anthony casts and resolves  to kill Elvish Mystic.  Searing Blood triggers from the graveyard, because Elvish Mystic died. Does the prevention effect created by Dromoka's command still apply to it after it changes zones? In other words, will Searing Blood deal 3 damage to Nathan? A beginner's guide to SQL database design Do you know a good source to learn how to design SQL solutions?  Beyond the basic language syntax, I'm looking for something to help me understand:   What tables to build and how to link them How to design for different scales (small client APP to a huge distributed website) How to write effective / efficient  / elegant SQL queries Learn QM algebraic formulations and interpretations I have a good undergrad knowledge of quantum mechanics, and I'm interesting in reading up more about interpretation and in particular things related to how QM emerges algebraically from some reasonable real world assumptions. However I want to avoid the meticulous maths style and rather read something more meant for physicists (where rigorous proofs aren't needed and things are well-behaved ;) ) I.e. I'd prefer more intuitive resources as opposed to the rigorous texts.       Can you recommend some reading to get started? Create line graph with ggplot2, using time periods as x-variable Uninstall apps locked by phone vendor Motivation behind standard deviation? Cross-platform space remaining on volume using python I need a way to determine the space remaining on a disk volume using python on linux, Windows and OS X. I'm currently parsing the output of the various system calls (df, dir) to accomplish this - is there a better way? How to proof that $\forall n \ge 1: \sum_{i=1}^n (i(i+1))^{-1} = n(n+1)^{-1}$ using mathematical induction So for a better presentation:   I need to prove this using mathematical induction, so i started with a base of $n=1$  Since $i$ starts at $i = 1$ I got this:  $$\frac{1}{i(i+1)} = \frac{n}{n+1}$$ $$\frac{1}{2} = \frac{1}{2}$$  So since this was true I went to the induction part: I chose $n = k$ and assumed this was true:  $$\frac{1}{i(i+1)} = \frac{n}{n+1}$$ $$\frac{1}{i(i+1)} = \frac{k}{k+1}$$  but I got stuck here since I didn't know if I needed to increment $i$ or not and because I didn't know if I needed to add the summation symbol or not and needed to do a few things with it. Strategy for "Which is better" questions In questions that are asking:    "Which is better option A or option B?"  It seems that several close reasons immediately come to mind:   Primarily Opinion Based.  In many cases the choice between A and B is simply a personal preference, a "6 vs. half dozen", either approach will work just as well and answers to this type of question will be almost entirely opinion based. Too Broad.  In some cases A is better and in others B is better, to go through every possible use case would lead to too many possible answers or one answer that reads like a short text book. Off-topic, Minimal Understanding, include attempted solutions.  This is perhaps the the most important one. If the OP needs to know "Which is better", they should probably have tried both and decided which is better, based on a practical trial.   Yet another option would be to downvote and/or comment with a "Try it and find out".  So...  Are there cases when these questions are permissible?   Could we add some more specific guidance in the help center?  Or should we continue to handle these case by case and just downvote/close appropriately when they pop up?  Strongly related, but hopefully not a duplicate of:   "Which is faster" isn't the only case where these pop up. Why do the measurements of this object seem erroneous? I just found out about the Mesh Display : Length feature in the "N" panel (thanks to ) that allows one to measure the length of a face or vertice.  But my first encounter with this tool gives me complex feelings of love and hate, see how, as I was trying to measure the aspect ratio of this TV screen, I am getting WIDTH = 20.33 and HEIGHT = 37.57.  These values seem awfully wrong, since my betrusted eyes tell me the height should be shorter than the width.    I have tried measuring the single vertices as well, to identical results. How to read an already existing NgSpice raw file This has taken me a couple of days to solve. I have a set of NgSpice raw files that I would like to exploit so as to visualize the voltage distributions in different circuits. What is the python command to use or python package to import in order for me to achieve this. Note: I am a bit familiar with the PySpice python package, but from what I have read and understood it works when you use it to create your netlist and run it, by using the already stored variables in its memory. In my case however, raw files are already generated... Hope I was clear enough. How unique is the php session id? I got the impression from various things that I've read that I should not rely on two users never getting the same sessionid. Isn't it a GUID? On the computer upstairs we have an option to make the computer make a sound when we press Caps Lock, Number Lock and Scroll Lock. Is there a way to do this on Ubuntu 12.04? Will  be supported on the Android App in the future? I visit A51 rather frequently and I would like to see it in the App. Why there is a $\frac{1}{2}$ in the distance formula $d=\frac{1}{2}at^2$? I'm preparing for my exam, but I have difficulties in perceiving why there is a $\frac{1}{2}$ in the distance formula $d=\frac{1}{2}at^2$? What does 'close invalidated' mean Recently I flagged  as a duplicate. A few days later, when I checked it again to see if it was closed, I realized it wasn't.    Searching in Meta brought me to , where a comment suggested checking the timeline. So I checked the  and saw that the close flag was set as invalidated.  Does this mean that it was disputed? When I click on it I see only "This item is no longer reviewable." Do I need more reputation (3000+ ?) to view more detailed information?