Day: February 13, 2002

I put about as much faith in horoscopes as I do in online personality tests (see below), but I kind of like this one for Aries, which is what they tell me I am:

Happy Valentine’s Day, Aries! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how skilled you are at wriggling free of unproductive jams. I admire the way you change yourself into a fresh creation when you’ve gone as far as you can with the old model. I am delighted by how robustly you rebel against your past and fling yourself open to the unpredictable sweep of the future. There are so many other ways I adore you, my dear, but there’s only room to mention one more: I am enchanted by how you always seem ready to build a castle in the wilderness if this world ever fails you.

Found through pool, Karawynn Long’s message board.

These “What Kind of — Are You?” personality tests have run their course. Case in point:

If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be William Fulton and Joe Harris’s Representation Theory: A First Course.

My primary goal is to introduce the beginner to the finite-dimensional representations of Lie groups and Lie algebras. Intended to serve non-specialists, my concentration is on examples. The general theory is developed sparingly, and then mainly as a useful and unifying language to describe phenomena already encountered in concrete cases. I begin with a brief tour through representation theory of finite groups, with emphasis determined by what is useful for Lie groups; in particular, the symmetric groups are treated in some detail. My focus then turns to Lie groups and Lie algebras and finally to my heart: working out the finite dimensional representations of the classical groups and exploring the related geometry. The goal of my last portion is to make a bridge between the example-oriented approach of the earlier parts and the general theory.

Which Springer GTM would you be?

The Springer GTM Test

Now, I find this mildly amusing, since I used to work in a bookstore and was, more than once, responsible for receiving boxes and boxes of Springer-Verlag books (it was a University, we had quote-unquote “yellow sales,” it wasn’t fun), but what’s the point? Really, what’s the point? Found at Tuppence.