Ask the Box

13 jul 06

"Fill in the blanks...(if you can with out using a search engine)

The _______ - _________ law (which is a law in the sense of empirical observation instead of through mathematical proof) states that the distribution of the spacing between successive nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function (suitably normalized) is statistically identical with the distribution of eigenvalue spacings in a Gaussian unitary ensemble."

your mom is a gaussian unitary ensemble.

i don't know. wiener-barfson? did you really think i might know this, or are you f-ing with me? i've taken a limited number of math classes (two), and i don't remember the last names of people to whom these mathitudinal concepts and theorems are attributed (except euler and his Method).

i have no chance at all here -- eigenvalues and gaussian unitary ensembles are higher-level (graduate level, i think) stuff, and there's no chance whatseover that i'd have studied the _______ - _________ law. even if i had, i wouldn't remember it.

normally, on questions i can't answer, i just go on and on about something arguably related, until your eyes glaze over so much that you forget your original question. but in this case, i'm troubled, because, in another question, i already went on forever about my school experience in math, and there's nothing more i can say, except that math is more fun once you stop trying to sniff out something philosophically significant in it. after you take this leap, it becomes just like a soduko puzzle.

i'm sort of curious, and i think i'll google the question, just so i can find out the answer myself (why?), but i won't be so gauche as to reprint the answer here, because it would be against the law of the question. it's an unanswerable question for me. i know! maybe i can make you some more art or something -- that'll take your mind off of my stupidity. oh, remember the chicken in the backseat of my car, that's been fermenting for about a week in the summer heat, that i was going to show you? i checked it today, and it looks exactly the way it did when it was made. disturbing. i bet it's rife with salmonella, though.

i looked it (the math law) up, and its name is so bizarre that i think i might have to throw out my scruples and give it to you, even though i didn't fill in the blanks myself (sob). the page on which i found it was the very source of the asker's question -- he copied it from there, verbatim. what a poser.

The Montgomery-Odlyzko Law

i'd like to hear that second name pronounced. "owe-dill-ease-ko"? owe-dill-is-ko? or maybe it's "owe-d'lease-ko", or "owe-d'liz-ko". or, maybe "uh-d'liz-ko". some combination of these variations. probably croatian or something like that -- some variety of slavic savage (just kidding).

weird that someone would ask a question he knows (or is 99.9% sure) i don't know the answer to. maybe he just wanted to see what i'd write. for as long as i can (ie, for as long as the volume of questions is sufficiently low), i'm going to spit out some text based on every question. but, if some time in a possible future this question were to arrive as one of 30 in the past hour, i'd of course ignore it without a second thought.

i must remember to take my camera when i go back to work today, so i can start on that food delivery article i wanted to write. i'm working a split shift, which is sort of nice: 11-2, and then 6-12. 9 hours in total (yikes). i'm currently sitting around during my four hour break. i was going to take a nap, seeing as a neurological glitch snapped my brain awake at 7am this morning after going to bed at 3am the night before, but i'd rather write. the nice thing about getting only a few hours of sleep is that i sleep really well the next night. so, i have something to look forward to.

i guess i'll go take a nap, rather than try and wring more text out of my brain for the sake of this poor little html doc. i wish i knew what was going through the asker's head on this one; what a weirdo.

here's some more art for you:

if you stare at this for a few seconds, you'll never have to watch another minute of "friends", "will and grace", "sex and the city", "three's company", etc. i'm saving you a lot of time here. i'm going to go take that nap now.

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