I am applying for grad school and during my undergraduate studies I have some projects and papers. How detailed should I talk about these projects in my personal statement? Should it be like an abstract or is that even too detailed? Or should I provide only the motivation and results of the project?
Related:   I know I must describe my past and current research in my personal/research statement or statement of purpose. But do I use technical terms?  I was given the advice that since the people reading my statement are mathematicians (I am applying to US for applied mathematics), they should know what I am talking about.  Although I am applying to applied mathematics, it would also be nice to hear from other fields (biology, computer science, engineering etc) about this.
How to compare two columns and find differences in Excel? I have two columns in Excel that I want to compare and find the differences between them.  Suppose:   Col A has 50 numbers, i.e. 0511234567 Col B has 100 numbers in the same format Let $R$ be a commutative ring.  The nilradical $\text{nil}(R)$ is the set of all nilpotent elements, and it is the intersection of all the prime ideals of $R$.  Is the following true in the polynomial ring? $$\text{nil}(R[X])=(\text{nil}(R))[X]$$  Any polynomial in the right hand side has all its coefficients nilpotent in $R$, hence also in $R[X]$, and therefore it is nilpotent in $R[X]$ as the sum of nilpotent elements.  The other inclusion is not clear to me.  Is there a counterexample? Is there any reference where Captain America's shield is made from stolen Wakanda vibranium? Is there an optimal loss function for dealing with imbalanced classes? I'm aware that there are many ways of dealing with datasets where there is a strong class imbalance in the target variable: downsampling the more prevalent and less important class, over-weighting the valuable minority class, etc. Are there any loss functions that are ideally suited for these types of problems? I've heard of AUC, but AUC sounds like a means of evaluating a model once its training is complete (correct me if I'm wrong). Log loss and squared loss penalize a model's over confidence, but overconfidence and class imbalance seem unrelated. Is that true? In bash, read after a pipe is not setting values With ksh I'm using read as a convenient way to separate values: $ echo 1 2 3 4 5 | read a b dump $ echo $b $a  2 1 $  But it fails in Bash: $ echo 1 2 3 4 5 | read a b dump $ echo $b $a     $  I didn't find a reason in the man page why it fails, any idea? Is there a term for switching syllables of words? Can markdown mini replace an en dash with a normal hyphen in URLs? using trial and error in math problems Suppose one bacterium is in a jar at 12AM, and then suppose there are two bacteria at 12:30AM,  and then there are four bacteria at 1AM, etc.  (a)  How many bacteria will be in the jar at 12PM that day?  (b)  Use trial and error to estimate at what time there will be 1 billion (1,000,000,000) bacteria in the jar.  for a) is it going to be 44 bacterias ? or am i wrong? Please help with b), i have no idea how to figure it out in short term Thanks The recipe that I used did not call for cornstarch or corn syrup. The result is that they are slightly wet. Can I do anything to dry them up, such as dusting them with corn flour?  I did dredge them in a mixture of confectioners sugar and corn flour; it helped a little, but I think I will find a recipe that has corn starch in it for next time! Apple Magic Trackpad multitouch configuration Hello everyone interested. Here's a seemingly simple problem.  Suppose $G$ is a complete, simple graph with vertices $\{1,2,..,n\}$, $n\geq k\geq 3$.  How many cycles of length $k$ can we have on $G$?  The statement seems simple but I have trouble putting everything together.  So I say fix a vertex and start forming cycles with length k. But I get nowhere... What is the proper approach to this problem since counting is not easy? Is there a relevant theorem that I am unaware of?  Thanks for any help... When a permanent magnet attracts some object, lets say a steel ball, energy is converted into for instance kinetic energy and heat when attraction happens, and they eventually collide. Does this imply that energy is drawn from the magnetic field and the magnet is depleted, making it weaker and weaker for each magnetic attraction performed?  (if the answer requires Quantum Mechanical explanations, please elaborate :)) How would you prove that the generating function of $\binom{2n}{n}$ is $\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-4x}}$?  More precisely, prove that( for $|x|&lt;\frac{1}{4}$ ):  $$\sum^{\infty}_{n=0}x^n\binom{2n}{n}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-4x}}$$  Background: I was trying to solve $$S=\sum^{\infty}_{n=0}\frac{(2n+1)!}{8^n(n!)^2}=\sum^{\infty}_{n=0}\frac{(2n+1)}{8^n}\binom{2n}{n}$$ Which if we let $f(x)$ be the generating function in question, would be simply $$f(x)+2xf'(x)$$ With $x=\frac{1}{8}$. Is there a simple proof of the first identity?  states it without a proper reference ( states it without proof). Is there an easier way of calculating $S$? (which is $\sqrt{8}$, by the way) Prove that $n=\dfrac{5^{125}-1}{5^{25}-1}$ is a composite number   My attempt,  Let $x=5^{25}$, so that $5^{125}-1=x^5-1=(x-1)(x^4+x^3+x^2+x+1)$  $=(x^4+9x^2+1+6x^3+6x+2x^2-5x^3-10x^2-5x)(x-1)$  $=((x^2+3x+1)^2-5x(x+1)^2)(x-1)$  I'm stuck at this point and don't know how to continue anymore. Hope someone can provide a detailed solution. Thanks a lot. Are smaller p-values more convincing? Can I travel to Schengen countries that were not on my itinerary when I applied? In theory the encoder in VAE (assuming that variational family is Gaussian) generates the $\mu$ and $\sigma$ (or $\sigma^2$). But, in practice, I have seen people assuming the output is $\log\sigma^2$. Why this is necessary or useful? My  has failed me.  In Python, are the following two tests for equality equivalent?  n = 5 # Test one. if n == 5:     print 'Yay!'  # Test two. if n is 5:     print 'Yay!'   Does this hold true for objects where you would be comparing instances (a list say)?  Okay, so this kind of answers my question:  L = [] L.append(1) if L == [1]:     print 'Yay!' # Holds true, but...  if L is [1]:     print 'Yay!' # Doesn't.   So == tests value where is tests to see if they are the same object? Subgroups of $U(n)$ isomorphic to a direct sum of cyclic groups How do I find out what version of Linux I'm running? Is there a way to determine what version (distribution &amp; kernel version, I suppose) of Linux is running (from the command-line), that works on any Linux system?