Johan Henriksson, computers, math, physics, you-name-it

Johan "Stålis" Henriksson (Mahogny on IRC)

Loading some 80% enriched Uranium for the KURRI research reactor

Loading 80% enriched uranium (2006)

Organizing the Nov2k 2009 conference

[About/Contact] [Current] [My calendar] [Material, Research & Papers] [ChemGuevara] [The Johan User Manual] [Links] [Fun Stuff] [Master thesis proposals]

The Johan User's Manual

This is a small users guide in case you ever encounter me;

Written Language

If the written swedish seems funny, you have probably encountered "new-swedish". Since I rebel against about anything that I find too badly motivated to keep, the Swedish Academy has gotten a boot as well. There are several groups who are trying to get SA to modernize the spelling, mostly because

Swedish could be taught at higher pace than now
Foreigners would find it easier to adopt to swedish
Swedish would be more competitive to english
Dyslexia could more or less be removed as a problem
Illiteracy in schools would be reduced

New-swedish has hence different aims than New-norwegian (which is to have a writing closer to the pronounciation). The change is a simple mapping of spellings to a smaller domain. These are

C and Z becomes S
X becomes Ks
Sj, Stj, Ch, Ti(on), Si(on), G (pron. Sj) becomes Z
Tj, Sh, K (pron. Sh) becomes C
ng becomes X
G (pron. J) becomes J
Silent letters are dropped, for example ljus becomes jus and garage becomes garaz.
In theory, W should be mapped to V but it occurs too infrequently to be worth the effort
Experiment has been carried out to properly use double consonants but this is a crazy amount of effort, hence dumped.

Exceptions from the rules are names of things (mainly persons) which stay the same. Note that there is no concensus on how new-swedish should be written; originally the first two rules were addressed (mapped to Sj and Tj) but I have decided to go all-out if I am to change it at all. My version is probably the most extreme to date. Note that my goal is not to have a written language that is similar to spoken language; spoken language changes over the time. There are also dialects messing up for example the use of å/o. Hence I'm only interested in consistent spelling with written language separated from spoken language.

Mathematics

Consider the expression 3Sin(y). What stops this from being a complex number, such as inyS3? Actually, nothing, if you are reading the ISO specs like the Devil reads the bible. There are cases when it is less obvious if () refers to a function and when it is the priority operator (and it has happen that I've read wrong). For this reason, I use a different notation for functions.

F(x) is replaced by Fx and F(x,y) with Fx | y. This has the additional advantage of being faster to write. Things like Sin²(5) is written Sin5|². Sin5² puts the square on the 5. Sin²5 is now interpreted as Sin(Sin(5)) which is more logical and actually comes in useful, like for markov chains or fixed point theory.

I abuse λ-calculus in my mathematical notation; a complete definition cannot be given here. However, some examples can be given. if there is Fx | y then G=Fx implies Gy=Fx | y (the first argument to F is statically bound). Other features include inlined functions: (λx → 2x) 5 = 2*5. My abuse of this kind of notation is rather limited as very few outside theoretical computer science knows how to read it.

Units

I also have my own angle system, with basis 1 i.e. 1 degree=1 rotation. This replaces the 360-degree system but not radians. The advantages are obvious.

I stick to that 1 KB means 1000 byte, and 1KiB means 1024 byte. While I might be the only one in the world doing so, it's still ISO standard and a good one on top of it.

Specialization

I have no specialization except a strong background in mathematics/statistics and computers, the latter in particular. This is a deliberate choice as I expect to be working in groups with specialists in whatever field is needed for the task. I would probably be working mainly with data and numerical analysis. However, I have studied moderately in depth in various fields to be able to communicate and work with modeling. This is in no way a complete list of equivalents (equivalent only, I would have to write a master thesis for each of these to get them officially):

MSc level:

algorithms, programming languages, software engineering, signal analysis, fault tolerant computer systems, complex adaptive systems, mechatronics, nuclear reactors, engineering mathematics, statistics, applied mechanics, product engineering

Not completely at MSc level:

bioinformatics, analytical chemistry, biochemistry, vehicle engineering, advanced materials, turbulence/fluids, power engineering, fundamental physics, nanoscience, space engineering,

Bits and pieces:

naval engineering, acoustics, biology, medicine

Material on this page is copyrighted unless otherwise stated. Ask for permission before you copy.