For Yang Wenya - Wishing You Academic Success

Change Log

• 2024/3/10
  • Refined main text grammar
  • Optimized and backed up bilibili videos
  • Corrected QR code URL
  • Embedded resource files into Adobe Illustrator project
  • Optimized card layout

Card

Introduction

This page is a modern digital greeting card, which you will most likely access by scanning the QR code.

Unlike plain text, this is rich text, or as I personally prefer to jokingly call it, “fat text”.

Before the Story

I believe I’ve known you for a very long time, an unprecedentedly long time, so much so that I’ve forgotten when we first met. I can at least be certain it was before the fourth grade. I truly didn’t expect that in the blink of an eye, it would be time for you to head off to university. The high EQ way of putting it is “time flies”, while the low EQ version is “not knowing where the time has gone, waking up to find the world has changed”.

Unfortunately, my academic journey has been fragmented across two cities and numerous schools. It’s trendy these days for graduates to share the locations of the schools they attended from childhood to adulthood. A typical case might involve three or four locations, but I’m afraid I’d have to come up with seven. I remember a teacher once saying that she really admired those who transferred schools. At the time, I thought, “What’s the big deal? Just this?” Later, I understood what she meant - when you transfer and leave, it essentially means saying goodbye to your friends, and it takes courage to start new relationships from scratch, especially for someone like me who doesn’t live in the same city.

Every time I left, there was always a group of people expressing their reluctance to see me go, both teachers and students. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, and I wasn’t particularly satisfied with those schools anyway (otherwise, why would I leave?). Looking back now, there is indeed a tinge of sadness. However, to be fair, I am logically certain that I have no regrets, and that’s how it should be. As for why I became emotional, that’s just the nature of the human brain. When we reminisce about the past, we tend to selectively enhance the good parts and fade out the unhappy memories.

For instance, I later attended the graduation ceremony of my junior high school at that time. After all, we were once classmates, so it was appropriate for me to go back and show support after transferring. To be honest, I felt very happy and a bit excited before going. However, when I actually entered the classroom, it felt somewhat different from what I had imagined. That day, more than 50 people had left a mess all over the floor, with oil, Coke, water, and colored fragments of fireworks all mixed together and stuck on the ground. As a result, they all ran off, leaving me and a few unlucky souls to crawl on the floor and clean for over 3 hours until five o’clock in the afternoon. It was simply merciless.

Extended content: How high-speed rail destroys the “sense of formality” of going home [Know something].mp4

While writing this post, I got a bit emotional thinking about how few classmates I’ve kept in touch with for more than 3 years (I can count one for now), how happy I was playing with you, Miss Yang, before, and then not knowing when we’ll meet again or what we’ll do when we meet.

Embarking on Your Mathematical Journey

You’ve chosen mathematics as your major, so it won’t be long before you start exploring the underlying logic of contemporary life. The classic example is the QR code I mentioned at the beginning, based on a paper less than five pages long from sixty years ago that has become one of the countless cornerstones of modern life today.

If you’re interested, you can take a look. The paper is titled “POLYNOMIAL CODES OVER CERTAIN FINITE FIELDS”. The file is as follows:

The following is some extended content (main text). Have you ever pondered what mathematics truly is? I mean, what is the essence of mathematics?

According to the limited knowledge of Theory of Knowledge (ToK) that I’ve learned, mathematics is quite special. It differs from other disciplines, such as physics and chemistry, not in terms of content but in terms of epistemology (which can be considered from the aspects of completeness, self-consistency, and decidability). Mathematics is a precise language.

1. Completeness:

   • Mathematics is a complete system; any mathematical proposition can be proven or disproven within its axiomatic framework.
   • Physics, chemistry, and other disciplines rely on experiments and observations, and their theoretical systems may have unknown factors and limitations.

2. Self-consistency:

   • Mathematics is built upon axiomatic foundations, and the entire system is self-consistent, free from internal contradictions.
   • Theories in physics, chemistry, and other disciplines may be revised or overturned with new experimental results, indicating relatively weaker self-consistency.

3. Decidability:

   • In mathematics, a proposition is either true or false, with no ambiguity or uncertainty (excluding undecidable propositions).
   • Theories and conclusions in physics, chemistry, and other disciplines may have some degree of uncertainty and need to be described using probability and statistical methods.

I recommend a few thought-provoking videos that I’ve watched but don’t fully comprehend. Nevertheless, they all present intriguing content that challenges the common notions mentioned above. The first one is titled “Mathematics is not complete; mathematics has a fatal flaw.mp4”.

The second one is called “Mathematical duel, the origin of imaginary numbers.mp4”.

Sources

Lastly, considering that this is the nth website I’ve built (having created several), if you’re interested, it’s best to save this page offline. Otherwise, if it disappears one day, it’ll be quite a prank. Use Ctrl + P or Command + P to print the webpage as a PDF, or right-click the webpage and save it.

Here’s the Adobe Illustrator project source file: