I am back in Atlanta after a relaxing week back in my home state of North Carolina. I did the four questions thing, but that doesn’t feel right. It feels better to just summarize the week I’ve had.

So upon arriving back in Atlanta, I had the house to myself and began thinking of everything I wanted to do this summer, which slightly drove me crazy. But I figured it out eventually. It took me a while. But this past week I’ve had a lot of traveling time.

  • Monday: I completed a drug test, got information about glasses, and played Dance Dance Revolution at the mall.
  • Tuesday: I met my friends in Atlanta, attended a bunch of meetings, and made carbonara. I also realized I’m burnt out from cooking.
  • Wednesday: Attended more readings, read some papers, gave a preliminary presentation, and watched a comedy set and the Celtics win.
  • Thursday: Spent the day reading a textbook, attended a brunch provided by C-PIES. Relax at home (and get bored). Drink some tea.
  • Friday: Read a bunch of background papers, go home, attend game night with my friends.
  • Saturday: Went to Duluth to get groceries. Attend a party at night.
  • Sunday: Go to church, ride some eBikes, clean my room.
  • Monday: Go back to Cumberland Mall to order glasses. Go to Northside Tavern.
  • Tuesday (today): Get distracted by news articles before doing textbook readings.

Yesterday, ChatGPT outsmarted four math PhD students in coming up with the determinant of the matrix with all ones on the diagonal and all negative ones elsewhere. Turns out this can be written as \(2I_{n} - J\) where \(J\) is the matrix of all 1s. Since the eigenvalues of \(J\) are \(0\) with multiplicity \(n-1\) and \(n\) with multiplicity \(1\), we get the eigenvalues of \(2I_{n} - J\) are \(2\) with multiplicity \(n-1\) and \(2 - n\) with multiplicity \(1\), thus the determinant is \((2-n)2^{n-1}\). It scared me how well ChatGPT did.

Here’s my carbonara.

As for what I hope to do this week: continue research, perform comedy, and attend MomoCon.