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Party Ideas For Math Nerds?
rbf writes "A girl I like at my university, a graduate student in mathematics, will be having a birthday next month. She had thought of throwing a nerd-themed party — show up with tape on your glasses, pants hiked up, etc. However, she decided against it because most of her friends are math nerds and wouldn't even have to dress up! So my question for the community is: What fun party ideas would appeal to a group of mostly math-major nerds?"
Alcohol. Barry White. Intercourse.
Trust me, its great for the rest of us.
While you're at it, watch Barton Fink.
Ice Cream has no bones.
It'll be the first time for a lot of things for you math nerds! :)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Most of them are probably virgins.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Play pin the tail on the integer?
Dress up as your favorite nonlinear equation.
Start a drinking game where everyone increases their drinks parabolically. (or alternatively: everyone drinks when someone says "Archimedes.")
TP the English department utilizing the golden spiral....
Careful What You Wish For....
Get them to name their favorite 10 digit prime number! That ALWAYS gets results.
Come on, its' a given Drinking games. Let's see how well you integrate after a couple !
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
they could sit around at home and read through all of Kdawson's posts
Hire strippers to recite Pi to the 10000th decimal place
Pin the tail on the Gaussian Curve?
Bobbing for Protractors?
Spin the Klein Bottle?
In fact, screw the Blackjack!!!
How about not having one?
Set up a mini-casino and have some games running. Be creative with the prizes, and hand everybody their chips at the door.
Blogging because I can...
Imaginary party, you don't even have to show up!
Everyone comes to the party with the ugliest sweater that they own. At the end of the night, everyone votes for the person with the ugliest sweater at the party.
xkcd has some forums. Given the quality of the replies that I've read so far, you should better ask there.
So my question for the community is: What fun party ideas would appeal to a group of mostly math-major nerds?
Just a guess: Ridiculously hot zombies who only want a few hours of grinding disease-free love without exchanging phone numbers.
(Spoiler: This is not the party you want to throw for your girlfriend.)
One of the funnier party themes I heard of (not one that I attended unfortually) was one where they had a futuristic theme. They dressed up in black and silver and stuff like that, call it "50 years from now" or something. A costume party with a theme! :-)
And with all you nerds, I think it'll be very creative too with smashed motherboards and diods
Bring fractal cookies.
;)
Also, try asking on the XKCD forums. They're slightly higher-brow than here, judging by the comments I see for now
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Just putting myself, a computer nerd/software engineer, in the place of the math nerds, I don't think I would want to go to a party that's math themed. Parties are like miniature breaks from what we do normally. I enjoy dinner parties with people from different backgrounds because the conversations are interesting and new. Better yet, parties where we don't mention work but things we did outside of work are great because we get to see a different side of each other. Plus, parties are meant for socialization, not sure if math is the optimal thing for that. I suggest stepping back and asking yourself what you really want out of the party. If fun is what you're looking for, then cast a wider net because there's a ton of ways to have fun.
All else fails, just have an orgy. That has to be new and interesting to nerds. j/k
EvilCON - Made Famous by
As a self-admitted nerd, most of the fun parties I've been to were centered around games: Smash Bros, Halo, Guitar Hero, Chez Geek, Murder Mystery, Pictionary, Settlers, etc. Most of the mediocre parties I've been to involved becoming inebriated and listening to bad music. Good parties should foster social experiences that are fun. For me, games have filled that role more adequately than other things because they give me a common topic with which to start conversations and drift off into random socio-political-theoretical-conversations. Games also tend to be effective, over say an outing like hiking, because they have no physical requirements and appeal to a more general audience. But, then again, this all depends on what appeals to your friends. I've had friends, for whom playing games was childish and annoying (because they thought they sucked at it). Just try to find the appropriate something that gets people to open up to strangers.
Just have a usual party with beer and music; see what happens... you don't need anything special.
Quite a few probably game. Throw a LAN.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...because all the math nerds I know lurk here daily. You should've asked around where the cool kids hang out online. I, of course, have no idea where that is.
Serve Pi instead of cake?
Dressing up in different shapes? Best dressed goes to that who can design and wear a dodecahedron.
Here's one we used to do all the time at Harvey Mudd -
Have an equivalence relation party.
Throughout the party, triplets of folks get together, preferably randomly and without regard to gender or orientation.
First, all three members of the triplet masturbate.
Then, each pair in the triplet masturbates and/or orally copulates with each other simultaneously. If done right there should be three unique couplings in this stage.
Finally, the train a.k.a. the finger trap or elephant walk.
If, during the final stage, three-way simultaneous orgasm is achieved, the triplet shouts in unison, "Equivalence Relation!" The first triplet to do so gets a free drink.
There's going to be a GIRL there. And she's not deflatable. It's going to be the best math nerd party EVER!
paintball
You start at 1 and continue listing off numbers, however when you reach a number with a 7 in it (7, 17, etc..), a multiple of 7 (49, 24, etc..), or a double (11, 22, 33, etc..) then you must say "Buzz", and the direction you were going in reverses. If you screw up then you must drink, and once someone screws up you restart at 1. You can go in either direction from the start, however if both people on either side say 2, both drink.
If you get into the higher numbers and reach a number that qualifies for more than one of the above rules (70: multiple of 7 and has a 7 in it), you must say "Bizz Buzz". If you reach 77 then since it qualifies for all 3 rules, you must say "Bizz Buzz Bazz".
Protip: If you make it above a number that meets all 3 rules, start over because you have missed the point of a drinking game.
You're problem is that they are already nerds. People that are not nerds like to dress up like them to have a party. This is a no-brainer (for those that obviously have lots of brains).
Make a NORMAL PERSON party. You know, dress in nice clothes. Wear contact lenses. Get a nice haircut. Then the hardest part, have normal conversations. No theory discussions. No challenges that involve numbers whatsoever. Don't discuss math or computers. If this doesn't completely kill all conversations and make people sit around with nothing to do or say, it could be really cool, if for no other reason than feling normal for night.
When I was back at Utah State for a short time one of the engineering clubs had a competition to see who could be the biggest nerd. I was out of state and missed the competition, but had planned to show up with a ukulele and sing "It's a Long Way from Amphioxus" (ahhh... the first worm like creatures to have a notochord, one of our most distant relatives, and it really is "... a long way from from amphioxus to the meanest human cuss...")
... you get the picture. This one helps to have lots of beer on hand.
Slide shows of our most geeky moments (extra points for grade school science fairs, calculators and volcanoes).
I always liked the stories of friends from Cal. Tech. of setting up a scavenger hunt where to find the next clue you have to solve some geo/spatial problem -- I remember something about the last question involved solving an elliptical integral to find the prize hidden in a closet in the library stacks.
Hmmm... other ideas... get a list of the open/millennial problems and have a SWAG (read: scientific wild ass guess) party to see who can come up with the 1) the most plausible, 2) the most implausible, and 3) the most creative approach to the problem.
How about a costume party where you show up dressed as your favorite mathematician, irrational number, equation,
Hmmm... it really depends on what kind of math she is into.
Hope that helps.
I heard of this great game called "Find the sausage" If it can work with a guys wife why not with this girl? Could be lots of fun.
Oh wait, that's physics nerds. MATH nerds, eh? I don't think they DO fun. Perhaps they could derive an approximation of it, though...just don't let them drink and derive.
(sorry, someone had to do it...)
I was at a pretty good nerd party last weekend. It had three rooms and a porch. First room had a keg and a bar (pretty much a given). Second room had a Wii with rockband and a bunch of couches for overservers. Third room had a DJ playing loud rap music for some drunkin bump and grind. The porch was for the philosophy majors to smoke cigarettes and bitch about how boring the math majors were. YMMV. I had fun though
Just when I thought I should be offended by the stereotypical nature of shows like "Big Bang Theory" on the idea that nerds are not hip... this question shows up here...
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Can't beat a pi cake!
A game I played in an archery class with a fellow computer science geek might be adapted to suit...
First player launches a projectile toward a bulls-eye target. Be it a dart, arrow, bean bag, whatever. The second player does the same, and has to closely justify the result. Things like symmetry over a vertical line, rotation, translation, etc. are valid options for justification. Be creative!
The first player goes again, and the second player follows, this time using the same operation. It's followed by a third round, again using the same round.
After retrieving the darts/arrows/beanbags/whatever, the players switch places, and play again. See who's the best at justifying their shots.
A CS variation: Shoot all three projectiles BEFORE declaring an operation. Then figure out the operation that gets the targets valid using the fewest machine instructions.
That probably doesn't make much sense, but whaddya expect for 3 AM?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Pirates are cool!
Just get drunk... Its the best thing you can do. and almost everyone can participate.
Have some games
Bring a lot of female friends / acquaintances
Burn British Doctor Who television broadcasts etc. off bittorrent and play on TV.
Don't use PCs so much, you want to provide stress free but communicative environments including the math geeks and members of opposite sex.
Could also be stimulating if you invite people (guys/gals either is okay) who are not math geeks but do something else that's interesting. Not jocks, I mean artists, musicians, geologists, linguists, basically any field reall in science or fine arts would be fine the point is to have fun together. I don't think math-related things are needed or wanted actually.
A positive number of girls and drinks will make it a lot more fun too.
Also how about a barbecue and some reason to make it last long into twilight?
Beam me up Scotty!
I know this isn't an answer to your question -- but you say that this is a girl you "like," and you seem to really want to impress her by throwing her the greatest math birthday party ever. Have you told her that you like her, or asked her out yet? If you haven't, and you're hoping that planning this party will help her suddenly realize what a great friend you are, and how well you know her, and that you're the one for her -- well, it just doesn't work that way (except in the movies). Many a shy guy (myself included) has fallen into that trap way too many times, because friendly gestures are far easier than being direct and facing the possibility of rejection. So if I'm wrong, never mind ... but if I'm right, maybe you could redirect some of the party planning effort into gathering the courage to tell her how you feel?
:)
If that's way off base, at least here's a party idea: have everyone come dressed up as a liberal arts student.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Challenge your friends to build this self supporting structure. Hofstadter would call it a strange loop. Think of how this loop in concept is similar to other concepts involving loops, such as logic or consciousness.
Work out the Birthday problem for your group. Calculate the probability that some pair of the guests will have the same birthday, then determine if it's true.
"Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.
Slashdot has become a dating service.
take a math text you all like and appreciate, then have a game where you take turns flipping to a page with a theorem and proof, and if you fail to prove the theorem (or do so incorrectly) before half of the other participants do, you have to drink.
if you have the right mix, it works, elsewise folks just wind up doodling and drinking
i am a graduate student in an applied math program. we typically get enough math during the day (and night before deadlines). when we party, it's usually just a regular party with food, alcohol, and music - like "everyone else". often the conversation turns to work, because that's common ground. however, i did through a party on my 10,000th day of life, because anniversaries of birth get boring. (for those of you who don't want to count, that's about twenty-seven and a half years.)
Request every one bring a Maths game (playable by a large group) to be party as present (if you don't want non-math games). Hope someone will come up something interesting.
I had good luck with a very geeky crowd by hosting an -ism party. everyone had to figure out a costume idea and/or attitude to represent an -ism. some costumes that came were plagiarism, modernism, dudeism, chauvinism, feminism, egoism, sadism, and cartesianism.
"Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.
repeat:
drink a shot of whisky
try to solve an algebra problem in your head
if you get it wrong, remove an item of clothing
until everyone is naked
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
There's a math nerd party in the movie (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000569/) where a rock band performs a song named i (the imaginary number).
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
1. Shut up and sit in the corner alone with your drink.
2. YOU LOSE.
Nerds attend parties???
and define yourself to be outside!
I've spent the last 11 years at various math institutions and conferences all over the world. I think I qualify as a "math nerd", and I have a PhD to prove it. I find the question dumb, and somewhat insulting.
Firstly the whole idea that their is a single "math nerd" type is ridiculous. Very few mathematicians I know fit into the high pants and thick glasses type. A lot of people at my institution are musicians, several play in rock bands at night, some dance, some are training buffs, one guy I know is combining his PhD with playing professional sports and is on his way to Olympics. While most are still guys, a growing portion are girls: some are straight, some are gay, some are single, quite many are married. In fact the variety is probably the only defining feature I can find.
And when it comes to partying, the only special way I can think of that mathematicians like to party is hard. I can remember from many times the surprise of "numerotypicals" after having partyed till dawn with a bunch of mathematicians. While there are certainly the "study and never leave the lab" types - most math nerds know are more like the opposite. The reason for this is probably that math is high stress occupation (try having as your job to push your mind to the very limit of its ability every day) which tends to lead to hard partying behavior. The stress is also the reason why many mathematicians are creatively worn out by 35-40.
So, seriously, stop the silly patronizing and just organize a good party. With lots of booze.
You are in college, drink booze and play drinking games. Me and my engineering buddies always preferred Asshole but my brother and his medical school buddies all prefer Beer pong.
You could say something else then buzz, like "what?" or just another number as well (like 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 8 9 10 11 12 13 what? 15 ) to make it extra difficult. Or add 5 tot the non-speakable numbers. Also, you can add a virtual player, a glass or something which does anything right.
...with Schrödinger's cat.
Oh damn, that's another physics one.
Plus it takes too long to play, and you never can tell if who's won.
This is my maths party from last night. As you can see, it got pretty rowdy.
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.
Tie-Dying classic nerd shirts, for example, would be good. And they could use their old shirts that have had ink leaks on them.
Making your own slide rules could be fun, with a box of wood slats, a few clips, and some permanent markers.
The biggest draw would probably be a bunch of bouncy friendly men and women from a beautician's college, doing scalp massages and stylish hair cuts, would be a big draw.
In high school we played a similar game, only we called it "shoulders". Someone would start, and say a number, and at the same time tap their shoulder (use your right arm to hit your left shoulder, and vice versa). Whichever shoulder you hit would determine the direction. You could reverse it at any time, and if someone wasn't quick enough, or went out of order, they drank.
A more complete description can be found at: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/401358/drinking_games_how_to_play_shoulders.html
I don't know how much fun this game would be now, but I think that link described it perfectly as "which may simultaneously be the dumbest and most brilliant drinking game ever invented."
News for nerds? WTF? Why is this shit being posted on this site?
I dunno about math nerds, but what my CS prof likes to throw is a party with chinese food and obscure (often German) board games (Lifeboats, No thanks, Starmada, Ricochet Robots, etc...), and that is usually VERY popular with students and other professors here alike.
Make sure you have plenty of drinks, and a LOOOONG table. Of course, if you don't have the board games, then you're screwed. Starmada is produced by Majestic 12, and they have a demo of the rules on their website... It needs miniatures and a hexagonal map, but the miniatures you can buy anywhere, or printout on paper, and you can find a sample hexagonal map you can just duplicate and print a whole bunch...
Just make sure people know it'll be a LONG night.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
First: Pirates and ninjas, the bitterest rivals on the internet. Have everyone come as either a pirate or a ninja, but don't bother evening the sides or anything, just let them choose. Second: Red Dwarf. Drink every time you hear the words "smeg", "git", or "gimboid". Plus any others you can think of. Third: Although it's not math-related, Take turns reading paragraphs of The Eye of Argon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon. The one reading must not laugh.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
A talent show.
As nerds, we like our skills even if we see they don't have pop appeal. To boot we can take organized fun seriously.
Some Atlanta hackers I knew threw the best open mic nights.
Play 24. But it's almost always a matter of working it to either 6*4 or 8*3.
Fetch Text URL - Firefox Extension
That's only part of a party game called "kings". You take a deck of cards, go around in a circle drawing the cards.
A: Allocate one shot to somebody.
2: Allocate two shots to one or two people.
3: Allocate three shots to one, two or three people.
4: Bathroom card (return it to the bottom of the pile if you want to take a break - the game continues without you).
5: Guys take a shot.
6: Girls take a shot.
7: Everyone takes a shot.
8: "Buzz".
9: "Fountain" - you can't stop drinking until the person to your left stops. The first person who can stop is the person who pulled the card, the last is the one to their right.
10:"Pick-A-Topic" - pick a topic (States, prime numbers, etc), go around the circle giving examples - whoever can't think of one takes a shot.
J: "Nose Game" - without revealing your card, subtly put your finger on your nose. Last person in the group to put their fingers on their nose takes a shot.
Q: Queen's English - shot for each swear word for the next 3 turns (if your group don't normally swear, make this "no saying people's names").
K: Put a shot in the middle of the pile. Whoever puts the final king in has to take all 4 shots, and this ends the game.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
LOL JuST bRING booBS!!!1! slashdot FTW
Calculate pi
Try a Rubic's Cube party. Everyone dresses in six articles of clothing that each correspond to a different color of the cube. By the end of the night everyone needs to be wearing only a single color.
Fantastic. Next week, I expect to see "Ask Slashdot: It still counts if she's drunk when she says yes, right?", followed by "Science: How to make rohypnol".
You don't need to have a math-themed party just because she is a math major. It's like when people who don't know me well, who know that I work with computers, but who know nothing about computers, try to strike up a conversation with me, but they have no idea what to talk to me about, so they try to talk computers, like, "Duh, I just bought a Dell. Is that good?" I'm like, "Uh, does it work for you?" They're all, "Duh, no, I don't know how to use it and it crashes all the time." I'm like, "Uh, yeah, you should have gotten a Mac dude." End of conversation. No good! If you're doing math all day long and then you want to go to a party and have some fun, who the heck is gonna want math at that party? How about just throwing a "normal" party? Booze, chips and salsa, a cake, some random movie playing in the background that nobody is paying any attention to, and just tell all your friends to come.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Fibonacci is a better game; you start drinking at one and have one shot for each number in the sequence. First one to die or pass out losses!
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
For the love of God this chick is hot and I want to nail her. Will all of
Sure. Beer. It is one of the greatest agents in the world for reducing people's good judgment and eradicating their inhibition. Go for it! I for one will be rooting for you.
Monopoly. It's all about the numbers. ;) And you can find out if you really do like her or not if she does or doesn't shank Park Place away from ya.
;)
Well, I really have no idea how well you two know each other, but it's a sure good way to find out. You could always try to sell her a "Get Out of Jail Free" card on the street.
A friend of mine averaged two Halloween parties a year. The date of the first one in any given year was usually about half way to Halloween, usually at the end of April. The invitations always called it "Halfway to the Haunt". The idea is that finding a decent costume for a Halloween party in October is easy. Doing so in April is, in fact, quite difficult. It's unexpected, it gets people interested, and it gives nerds an uncommon challenge. The conversation describing what you're doing that particular day is always a little interesting as well: "Sorry, I'm busy on Saturday. Going to a Halloween party." "Oh ok... wait, what?" Seems to fit the bill nicely.
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
Each person picks their favorite mathematician and has to get people to figure out who they are without being obvious... Discuss period issues, personal life, major theorums..... but mostly just get high and have a good time. Put on some tunes and groove.
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 4181 6765
once attended a fancy dress party dressed only in a diaper. Of course, this was almost immediately preceding a long term case of mental illness. Still, math nerds might appreciate a diaper party.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
I'm not convinced of the benefit of this book.
2*0 is still 0, so why bother?
A popular one at Physics parties was making ice cream from liquid nitrogen.
When a math student I knew threw parties, there always were a lot of different sorts of beer. He pinned some sheets to the wall so that everyone could vote for their favorite kind.
If the party is not going so well, voting mechanisms are an interesting enough topic. If the party is going well, everybody is just happy that there's plenty of beer.
Dress all as The Flash and line up so it appears like you're 1 man indeed, but moving very very fast.. Should be pretty original and cool
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
no, not single player games, but party games. A couple of Microphones, a ps2, and Karaoke Revolution will go a long ways to getting shy people to let loose.
... n will see whats the meanin of the word party!! :)
This is my first post on Slashdot. Normally I don't have anything useful to say (smarter faster posters seem abundant), but I think here I can step up.
Comatose51 (687974) got very close.
Aside from having thrown a lot of very successful parties in my life (even making the news papers), I formed www.HIKEtheGEEK.com a few years ago. Most of the hikers are indeed mathematicians, physicists, and other technically minded people...we also have an amazing geek-girl to geek-guy ratio, which is very cool.
Let's ignore that they are mathematicians, and just recognize they are smart. Smart people are not impressed by shinny objects and noise makers.
Here are some ideas:
- Play music that people will get a kick out of, like the movie soundtrack to a well known or fun movie. Forrest Gump has a very cool sound track for example. It often surprised people when they realize how much music was in that movie. But camp movies can work also.
- Fondue - It involves very hot liquids, and experimentation. The more pots the better. Some can be wine based, others chocolate, etc. It ain't just for the 70s any more.
- Speaking of wine, don't bring beer. Beer is boring...ask people to bring something small, tasty, and interesting. Most geeks don't drink, but if the do, they tend to want to experience something original.
- Invite non-geeks, and invite as many women as you can... Women are naturally social, it is simply wonderful how a well balanced party will just flow.
- Ask everyone to dress nicely. This is rarely done now-a-days. But it is really cool to see your friends at their best, or at the very least, a great chance for black-mail material for later.
- Ask everyone to bring a fav game. Cheap Ass Games is a good example. But don't start games until later. Apples to Apples is another great party game for smart people.
- Show a movie later in the evening, something fun most people would not have seen. Either really old, or really new. (I'm planning on Surfwise next for example).
- Get the invites out early, invite all people in person (on the phone is fine). Do not invite people just by email.
- Hire someone, or get some friends to agree before hand to help clean up.
- Lastly, host the party. This is worth a thousand words on its own, but to be brief, a host is an active job, make sure people meet each other. Introduce people by name, and by someone that others might think is interesting. Even if you don't know someone, you can still make a statement, for example "Terry, meet Pat, Pat meet Terry. Terry wears white vans to parties, while Pat knows how to make the colour red *work*"
A themed party, I'm an ex popular kid, ex jock, exbadass that didn't graduate college in 13 years (I wish I was lying) Now I'm 29, date a nerd chick and she throws these themed parties. They're cool plus, it's great for the ugly people b/c they can be real good at the ugly characters...(one chick was Mad-eyed moody a the 'Harry Potter' themed party and seriously it was a spitting image! :-/
oh, and of course drinking games, you have to drink... it you don't drink then take pills...do SOMETHING to lighten up the party... 2 percs and 2 shots are just the right ticket to an nerdorgy
l8r
Go dressed as the Doppler effect.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
http://www.cafepress.com/triplenine.2445706 It's by the Triple Nine Society hence the clock theme. For party idea, look up abstract strategy games on boardgamegeek.com and try those.
Reclaim ancient Greece from the beerpigs (i.e. some frat and sorority members) and do a Party On Croton night, the setting: Pythagoras' secret mathematical commune's island lair (more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras). Have your ladyfriend go as Theano (of Golden Mean fame):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theano_(mathematician)
Make it all a bit cheeky, a la Austin Powers, borrow some weird props, have plenty of jug wine for the drinkers.
preselected math problems that required some ingenuity to solve ~ break out into teams and the group with the correct solution first wins a prize. be sure to include slide rules as party favors and use them for solving at least one of the problems! the drinking game when i was hanging around MIT was Bizz Buzz. its based around prime numbers. sit in a circle (with a beer of course, i dont suggest wine or booze unless you are REALLY good). you go around the circle taking turns. when a prime number is counted the first is bizz, then the following prime number is buzz... eg. bizz, buzz, bizz, 4, buzz, 6, bizz, 8,9,10, buzz, 12, bizz, 14,15,16, bizz, 18... got it? see how high (numerically!) you can get. you can also put math symbols or equations on a twister mat (yeah that old school game) and play jepoardy style twister. you can put a conch shell and a rose on the circles and ask fibonacci questions. i dont know how intense the crowd is but you can include more interesting and well known (in some circles)equations like the rienannian manifold. you can get a lil crazy on this one but its fun. anyhow... i hope you take the time to tell us how the party went. what you played, what went well. and happy birthday to your friend!
I thought this was Slashdot, not Angstybastard. Either she's your "friend" or she's just the party organizer. We don't need details about your hormonal feelings towards her.
...there is pie ;-)
toga
There's a really fun game called Bartok described /see below/ by a GIRL who is a mathematician.
;)
"It's a lot like crazy eights."
The game's apparently really popular at her math department at Waterloo. (To make the school even more awesome, they apparently have a "Comfy Lounge," so get your postdoc applications ready
http://www.xi.nu/~lisa/warthog.html
Hope this helps make your party rock hyper hard.
Anonymous never forgets^^!
Birthday Paradox: The home game!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Like any discipline you have to put the theory into practice. Since we like car analogies here on /. you would n't expect to read a manual on driving and then jump into a car and ride off into the sunset.
Guys who are awkward around women summon up the courage to make an approach, get shot down and then beat them selves up and dwell on the bad experience. If you read the material available you'ill realise why you got shot down and what makes a woman tick.
You should read all the material you can get your hands on and improve yourself and start to feel good about yourself as women can spot low self esteem a mile off. Read DeAngelo, Mystery, etc, put the effort in, find out what works for you formulate your own style and get rid of your bad habits.
It's not difficult but it DOES require effort, people who are lazy and then feel sorry for themselves should not expect any sympathy.
Play music along the lines of these guys: http://www.science-groove.org/Now/
One of my favorite xkcd cartoons would make a great game at a math nerd party. Get a clock with digital display. Set it to 24 hour format. (Better still, one with seconds display!) See who can find the prime factorization of the time display quickest.
Could always count taxi cabs. 1729.
Submitting an 'ask Slashdot' and the first words are 'a girl'. This has to be a hoax; no one in right mind would expect a straight answer.
Over doing nice things for someone you want to get romantically envolved with is a sure fire way to get stuck in the "Friend Zone". She will be like, "OMG You're just the best friend ever!" and with that sentance it will be game over.
I'm not saying be an asshole, but women expect different things from a lover and a friend.
If you want something that maths nerds would find novel and require a bit of an effort, how about a black-tie formal dinner? Firstly, they would all need to smarten up and, perhaps, hire a suit or dress and secondly, it is the sort of thing that these days might be wacky and outlandish enough for nerds to find cool. I know I do. :-)
I was going to suggest a "normal person" themed party, but I suppose people have already been mentioned a hundred times already.
She wanted to trow such a party and decided against it, because it wouldn't work. To have a party, you need party-people, not just people. Ask people who like to party what they like. They will anser with the words of the famout Frank Zappa: 'Titties and beer'.
...' to a nice thought of 5 minutes during that socializing, because if you realy think about it, it is nice to see in a movie, but crap in reality, just as your friend already figured out.
Perhaps what you want is not so much a party but a gathering (perhaps with alcohol). Not entirely the same thing.
I know I would not be interested in any themed party. Even the toga parties I went to in my time I only went because of the girls and the alcohol, not because of the theme. Take away the theme and you still have a party. Take away the party and you have a bunch of idiots.
So drop the theme, have a party, socialize and keep the 'wouldn't it be great if we would have a party where everybody dresses like
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
oh wow! And this one time at math camp, we all made these fizzy drinks and then we told jokes and we were laughing so hard we squirted it out our noses and they started burning!
And then this other time at math camp, we tried to do reverse regression analysis while playing strip poker. Boy, did we ever beat those girls at that game! We got all our clothes off first!
And then another time at math camp.....
I'm good with numbers -
Somehow, the first image that came to mind after reading that involved physically throwing a comms rack. I suspect this may not be what you meant :P.
:P.
I guess our definitions of "a LAN" vary
Just to see how many come dressed as the Doppler Effect.
Mmmmeeeoooowwwwwww...
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Put that list somewhere where people can anonymously select an area. This is important. It has to be anonymous. That person must then produce something themed on that area. It can be a costume, a game, food, doesn't matter. But it must be categorically about that area, it can't be something generic and it can't be something too ordinary. However, not everything brought needs to be themed. In fact, some things must not, though there must be some sort of clue as to which is which.
The party would then be on multiple levels. You have the top level of the party itself, you have the next level of a massive detective game, hunting for clues to find out what is red herring and what is theme, then further detection to determine what the theme is. Finally, you've the showdown between the master detectives (those who guessed the most themes correctly) and the master mathematicians (those who represented their theme the best in the eyes of those at the party). Those nominally on both teams have to pick. I don't know what the final shootout game would be, but pick something suitable.
How would that sound?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Bring lots of alcohol. And pot. Heck, LSD even. Depends on the crowd though. Either way, bring stuff to loosen people up.
:D) aspect...
;-)
Bring party games. These should include:
* Fluxx (card game where the rules continuously change)
* XBOX 360 or similar; preferably party games such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, SceneIt, etc.
* Wii if someone's got it (great for parties)
As for the whole mingling (getting commutative?
Consider games like truth or dare. Drinking games. Etc.
Consider making it a rule that every 30 minutes, someone has to go around and introduce themselves to everyone at the party.
Get everyone to bring something random to the party, that has a story behind it. Then get everyone to tell the story.
And here's a good other rule:
Keep the party smallish. Stops cliques from forming, keeps the group dynamic manageable for people who might have issues with it otherwise.
Eh... it's just like any other party. But bring Fluxx. It's great
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Here's an idea I posted to halfbakery.com a while back that I think will fit in nicely with your plans:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Binary_20birthday_20candles#1031936400
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Here's one: if you really want to have a party like normal, socially adapted people do from time to time, why not try to go all the way and actually HAVE a normal party: drinks, music, and SOCIALIZING. (Don't get me wrong, I've earned my PhD in Computer Science, so I know where you're coming from, but from my experience, it's better to learn how socially adapted people do these things than to remain stuck in your awkward ways when trying to organize a party.)
Booze and people make everything. :) Of course, game ideas, place, music and food are recommended.
Tell people you're having a party, serve lots of booze ...
And the rest follows by induction!
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
Geek party
You like a girl, you want her to like you, and you've come to the conclusion that Slashdot can help you.
You have no chance. Really.
Show up wearing all the colors of the cube (one color per article)... go home 'solved'....
Make a Golden Rectangle shaped cake and use the icing to inscribe the Fibonacci sequence in smaller GR's. Cut party-hats into wearable conic-sections.
"And, one time... at Band Camp"
Invite Don Knuth?
To keep the math majors occupied, you could give them a pie (round of course), and ask them to square it. Roberto
Hmmm... Wouldn't you just count to 7, say "Bizz Buzz", count back to 1, and then repeat ad infinitum?
And since when is 24 a multiple of 7?
..different vectors and have a contest to see who can make the best orthogonal space.
..different geometrical figures and see which combination makes the most stable structure.
..with different symbols and the goal is to make best use of your digits.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Hole a "Bottomless" party and see the poles and zeros in the lower half plane.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Wii would like to partE!"
-prxp
> Beer. It is one of the greatest agents in the world for reducing people's good judgment
Here's the other one: www.fastseduction.com
I see a lot of posts here that amount to "get everybody drunk," which makes for a lame party, because everybody can get drunk on their own if they really feel like it. Nobody is going to remember a party like that.
- Speaking of wine, don't bring beer. Beer is boring...ask people to bring something small, tasty, and interesting. Most geeks don't drink, but if the do, they tend to want to experience something original.
As a geek who doesn't drink, I wouldn't say that most geeks don't drink, but there is a significant number who don't. I've been to a few parties where they were obviously just an excuse for everybody to get drunk, and I immediately left. That's no fun at all. So, make sure you get a good selection of non-alcoholic drinks, too.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Rock Band for the Wii isn't out yet; I guess you played Guitar Hero. I agree, this is great fun at parties.
Smarty Pants is a Wii game somewhat similar to the TV show "Who wants to be a millionaire." It has a ton of questions about technology and science, and it's always a success at parties with comp sci, biology or math students.
I'd arrive in regular clothing, with no props or anything.
If anybody asks, I'd reply, "We're just like anybody else, really. Only smarter."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If she's truly nerdy, she may already know. There's certainly enough info in the post to ID her (assuming you know her already), and given the /. readership it's quite likely that she and/or one or more of her friends have read this.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Yes, Gauss's Fundamental Theorem of Algebra does appear to be relevant, its just that the complex analysis required at the inflection points near the of roots positional integrands that define the bounded Reimannian surface produce a computationally expensive solution given the short duration of the party.
As there was a large number of math majors in our group of friends, we used to play Math Twister. A friend of mine came up with the idea for my birthday. What you do is, take a normal Twister mat, and number it from 1 to 24. Number it such that consecutive numbers have different colors.
Then instead of using a wheel to call the colors, someone makes the calls by making statements like: "Left hand on a number that is prime and greater than 15" or "Right foot on a blue circle that is odd" etc.
This game can be much harder than regular Twister, depending on how it is called.. but it gets "messy" quick.
Get an 8-ball and see what happens... (I'd pay to be a fly on the wall in that situation!)
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Pin the tail on 1/x.
Drink until you're all coplanar.
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, *Buzz!*, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...."
"Huh? I guess that's game over."
Doesn't the game just always get stuck between two numbers no matter where you start?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You may wish to give her this as a gift.
http://www.cafepress.com/triplenine.2445706
Any math major will appreciate it.
Best one I ever played was called "Criss-Cross" sit/stand/lounge in a circle, and a person takes 2 empty cups and hold them in any one of a number of configurations, and announces "Crossed" or "Uncrossed". Then those who know the rules determine if the person is correct or incorrect, and if they are incorrect, they drink. The object of the game is to determine the rules for whether one should announce "Crossed" or "Uncrossed".
Hints:
1) It's not obvious.
2) Those who know the criteria will try to mislead those who don't.
3) Some folks will never pick up on it.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Make sure you eat lots of Pi.
I think your letter is patronizing, and I have a PhD to prove something or other, and if you start fighting, I will confess of being female to confuse the matters further... how is it even relevant? Let's go down the road of righteous anger and claim that since some mathematicians don't drink, your advice excludes those and so does not apply. Or maybe we should consider the goal of having a MATH THEMED party as stated, without second-guessing the topic author too much, and help him in that endeavor.
Have some fractal cookies and bring some CONTENT.
Actually, speaking of content: if there is any fractal software, making fractals out of portraits of partygoers may be something. Also, check out some network and other math party games ("human knots" are fun) at http://mathforum.org/alejandre/cooperate.html - some of them are childish, but still fun.
Look for an ancient card game called "Krypto". It's fun, nerdy, and math oriented.
The girl is thinking: "What would be fun?"
You are thinking: "What would be clever?"
Try thinking like the girl... What would cause the math nerds to have fun and be fun at a party?
Anything related to math is out. That's a specific subset of the activity-space in which the math nerds are going to feel that the competition is personally relevant. In other words, they will take it personally and try to one-up each other. This will not be fun.
On the other hand, physical activity is a subset of activity-space wherein all the nerds are expected to fail, but it is funny to try and even funnier when one of them succeeds. For this reason, playing darts and billiards is recommended. The risk of injury is low, darts involves numbers and billards involves angles -- thus appealing lightly to the math mind, there is a pattern of four-person involvement in each game, and such games are typically found in bars.
To impress the girl, help her throw a party in a bar or club that has darts and billards. And by "help," I mean "pay for most of it," and also do help put up decorations with her before the guests arrive. Let the club clean up the mess, you have better things to do and it rhymes with what the club workers are getting: paid!
Hope that helps!
We like to start by rolling a number.
You can print up small slips of paper with complex calculations and have people bring their calculators (or slide rules) and race to find the solution. RPN rules.
All of the women could have a "best pi" contest. There would also be performances of Runge-Kutta on the winners.
LIQUID NITROGEN!
Graph a pair of 36C parabolas.
Everyone takes their turn pinning the tail on the donkey, then a distribution of how far from the donkey's butt is generated. Drink volumes are allocated according to the number of standard deviations.
-- QED
"Hey guys... WONDER JOINTS!"
Just have someone bring sq. root beer and some pi - the party will form itself.
Massive game of old school table top BattleTech.
Or a Networked game of BattleTech
Money is the root of all evil?
Pi in a coffee certain takes Kopi Luwak to another level. :)
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Parent is the best post in this thread.
Go to a hobby/game/smart store and get yourself the game Set. Very fun, drunk or sober.
Hey baby! :PP
Let me contour integrate your hot throbbing singularity
You definitely have to get her a pie and carve out the pi symbol in it :D
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Obviously, do the exact opposite. Jocks and Cheerleaders.
Second, "stop looking" only works when you have a whole "infrastructure" in place such that dates basically give themselves to you. You know what it would mean for me to "stop trying" and "be myself"? I'd stay home all the time playing video games. That's "myself". That's "natural". That's "not trying". Do you really think that's going to find me a babe?
The real key to your success is something you didn't reveal in your post. Things you didn't mention and didn't even find noteworthy because they came so naturally to you. And as long as you're not revealing those things, your advice is dangerous garbage.
Here, let me do an improvement on your "advice":
1) Be Brad Pitt.
2) {something completely non-sensical}
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Unless you want to serve a semicircular pi, make it round and call it what it is, a 2 pi.
I went to an engineering school - GMI. I can assure you that almost all geeks there drank. Then again, it was an engineering school, 90% greek, based in the armpit of a city Flint, and had a 20 to 1 male/female student body ratio. If those factors don't drive someone to drink, I don't know what would!
As for the parent, some very useful tips. Avoid the overly cliche party or geeky sort of things.
For example, just because you're surrounded by geeks, or perhaps automotive engineers, it is not a good party idea to dissassemble someone's car and reassemble it in the middle of the dining room.
... a few years ago, at the department's costume halloween party, folks dressed as their favorite mathematical objects. A group of graduate students with an above-average interest in algebra dressed as a ring theory/LoTR mash-up. Someone was the One Ring, dressed as Frodo and wearing a {1}, you had {Z_8} dressed as the Nazgul (the Nine), {Z_2} as the elves, and so on (it got worse).
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Things that have worked:
That's not an exhaustive list, and even the items are incomplete, but it's not a bad leaping off point to go in whatever direction you like.
I threw this party in a matter of 5 hours once. Invited a ton of people from facebook and said to come dressed in crazy costumes. It worked perfectly, because everyone can do whatever they want, and it's a great way to start conversations.
Many years ago, my wife decided to have a board games party for her birthday. Most of our friends are various kinds of techies, including the crypto geek crowd I was hanging out with, and that worked reasonably well. For the invitation, she got a bunch of blank jigsaw puzzles and some plastic silk-screening templates, and silk-screened the invitation onto the puzzles. So the invitations were physically encrypted (:-), and you had to assemble them to get details.
Another memorable techie party was one that my friend Eric threw at Doug's new apartment. Doug had just arrived in town, and most of his furniture hadn't yet. Eric put large rolls of paper on the walls, and started tossing magic markers around for people to write things with. Much entertaining presentation happened, but then there was a Japanese TV crew at the party pointing cameras at people. And the quiet old guy lighting a cigarette on the stove was Timothy Leary (Tim wasn't in great shape by then, but he was still getting around.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But have a pi-throwing contest.
After that, try to calculate the minimum volume of water required to make a woman's shirt see-through, and then test it empirically.
After that, try to calculate the coefficient of friction on a strippers pole, and see how much grease will lower that amount. Also test this empirically. Do not forget to increase the coefficient of money to make up for this. You do not want an angry stripper.
There are going to be ladies there too, so you have to do something for them. Have a "guess the schlong length" contest - down to the nearest millimeter. Let them measure. Be sure to provide them with a very attractive male. These are math geeks, you'll probably have to hire one.
Now an interesting problem would be to guess the average number of hairs on a woman that are not on the head, then have a contest to find out who is closest, but you're reaching the realm now of "I don't care about the results, but the experiment itself is the end", at which case you've exhausted all scientific possibility, and may as well just have an orgy.
Glad I can help.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
A game of "spin the Klein bottle"?
You've hit the nail on the head. Great fun for everyone else to watch!
Pick a function, you must drink integral from 0 to i shots of some drink in sequence until someone passes out where i is the round. (Do yourself a favor and make it a slowly growing function, 1/(x+1) or something).
Or, see if the ballmer peak applies to calculus!
http://xkcd.com/323/
Slashdot as a dating service? Well, if there are many female readers, they are certainly doing a good job of hiding themselves.
However, my speculation on the general topic is that most women are holding out for Mr Wonderful, whereas most men are only Mr Adequate. Many of the women hold out too long and wind up as old maids, even though they'd be happier married, even to Mr Adequate. Why do they make the mistake? Because the women are making false inferences about the availability of Mr Wonderful. Many women base their sampling on movies and television, where the large majority of 'featured' men are Mr Wonderful. How much camera time does Mr Adequate get?
Based on my real world sampling, I would say that there are very few men who actually qualify as Mr Wonderful, and they are all married at a young age. There is a much larger group of men who are skilled at pretending to be Mr Wonderful. Some of them are serial polygamists and the others are just pure cads.
If I'm so smart about these things, why didn't I ever get married? Simple. I'm just Mr Adequate and stupidly honest about it. Or as Popeye put it, "I yam what I yam, and that's all what I yam."
Oh yes, I should note that there's a statistical distortion working against me, too. The fake Mr Wonderfuls "use up" a lot of women. I don't blame them for being once bitten, twice shy--but it makes me think we'd have a very different and less frustrating world if the gender ratio was heavily in favor of the women...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You could just have a mini-math con or something. No offense but I'm not aware of the practical applications of being a math major short of understanding imaginary numbers (though some accounts like those at Enron are also adept at this.)
I'm an IT nerd and I know my friends and I have LAN "parties" that often including checking out new hardware, sharing solutions to problems, oooing and ahhhing of some awesome new bit of code or whatever.
Though unclear thus far, my advice is honestly worry less about the main stream concept of a party and perhaps more about something you and your group of friends enjoy doing - whatever it is. Basically if the group has a good time she's likely to have a good time. Although likely will not credit you with this but associate the good time with the group over all. If you're looking to get into her good graces I say screw the party and take her out for her birthday, perhaps to a local science center or museum? Take her somewhere she may not normally bother to go on her own.
Get an old junker about to go to the junkyard but with a running motor. Value is typically by the pound at that point anyhow.
Drink much beer (other festive activities optional).
At the appointed hour put the junker in Neutral, put a brick on the gas peddle.
Drink more beer...in my case have the time to be truly amazed by the durability of an old dodge 383. I'd guess it turned well over seven grand for at least ten minutes before seizing hard. I'm grinning again just thinking about it. There was an oil fire...then the radiator hose blew...put out the fire...in the end it wound down from seven grand or so to seized in short fraction of a second.
One bit of advice I'd give is to position a five gallon bucket full of water near the intake (remove air filter etc) and attach a string so you can dump the water down the intake and make the motor hydro-lock on queue.
Also make sure you've got plenty of clay kitty litter to clean up fluids.
Heck with a group of guys collecting junkers you could create a symphony of blowing motors and post it on youtube.
Even geek girls like an exploding motor. So long as they had plenty of notice and their car isn't parked next to the junker.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Three suggestions, although I doubt this post will ever see the light of day...
1) Costume Parties always go over well. With a group of above average intelligence, you can get some really wild and creative costumes.
2) A formal party. tuxedos, evening gowns and dancing (old school, none of this white guy two step shit that seems so popular these days) make for a damn good party, but you may have trouble finding people who know *how* to dance.
3) A shindig at a local amusement park can often be had for much less than you might expect if you can a large enough group together.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Any rule against making a rule saying all participants must remove items of clothing?
I once convinced a couple of very drunk freshgirls that strip quarters was just how we did things in college.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Please take your meaningless dribble back to crappy digg. Thanks.
This seems to work with both nerds and non-nerds and it's quite simple:
1. The game starts with a question.
2. The question must be replied with other question (not necessarily but preferably related to the former question); if you wait too long or answer with an affirmation, you have to drink a shot.
3. Go to 2.
It's funny to see how the reflex to answer a question is so hard-wired in our brains. Newbies fall drunk really quick.
Unfortunately, a lot of girlfriends seems to hate when their boyfriends act like idiots playing this and laughing too much.
Bourbaki ribs with aleph-1 sauce tastefully served in Klein's bottle.
Abelian-grape and Zorn-lemon pi.
... always just went to a Pub (note I did NOT say bar) played pool and chatted (basements work too). There was also Math drinking games.
2-Player "21":
Deal out 1/2 deck each
both players take 2 cards place face down on table
flip cards over at the same time
using basic arithmetic on the 4 number, first person to calculate 21 from them wins/gets the point/ the other person has to drink/whatever (we used slapping the table as a "buzz in")
repeat
The girls should dress up as football players and the guys should dress up as cheerleaders. So you think this is a gay idea? Well so is this news item. No there is nothing wrong with being homosexual. Get used to it.
Parties , fun, a nerd craves not these things!
or you could always lure a jock into the party with promises of beer bongs and buttsex and then trap him and beat him with foam bats?
You realize that the power of the contour integral lies in the fact that you inegrate along a curve which encloses an area containing a singularity, allowing one to completely avoid the otherwise difficult to deal with singularity? So what you just said, is "Hey baby! Can I get awkwardly close to, but not quite touch your dirty bits?"
Yeah. That'll win 'er over.
Party Liason... he came up with the whole Topless Tutors concept :D
This is not your diary, or blogger, this is a tech news site.
A Pimp's and Ho's party!
1. Campy action films
2. Risk
3. Do a barrel roll
probably better than getting it from dateless homosexuals such as yourself.
Debian FTW
Let's keep our eyes on the ball here, people. Can you patent something that you didn't invent?
... and you can prevent others from competing with you in the market.
If you can invent it, you can patent it.
If you can patent it, you can profit from it
www.setgame.com an awesome card game. play the game before the beer comes out though.
I'd suggest the most outrageous efforts to dress like your favorite jocks. Dumb looks, oversized muscles, barf down your front, etc.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Just make it simple will do.
1. Get some beers and mathematics quiz/contest, whoever lost the quiz have to punish with beer etc. Hv fun.
2. Play body contact game.
3. Casual party for relax. Intro each other so the boys and girls get to know each others. I know nerds are always shy.
"Married 7.5 years, 4 kids."
:"( /me hides in the corner (married long time too...) :P
dude, they need advice from people with experience in dating/flirting, you already got rusty
Hey at least the married person can claim to have been very successful at least once, whereas the single bloke hasn't gotten as far. Do YOU have a piece of paper signed by your partner that says they're willing to spend the rest of their life with you?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
are you sure you are qualified to provide advice for a 'math' party?
Laptop dances?
Wonder joints!
Ice cream.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Just invite the Omega Mus and get some "wonder joints" going.
Worked for Gilbert, Louis, Booger and the rest of the nerds.
Happy Birthday,....to your friend, I'd like to suggest for your Math Party, what else? Math! I suggest that you invent a cool ass game,
and all of you play it, If you can't come up with anything , then your not that smart, and probably shouldn't be refering to yourselves as nerds to begin with.
peace-out
The best parties are the irrational ones. They never end.
My sig is better than your sig.
way late into the idea brain storming, so I don't know if it's been mentioned - a rubik's cube party. Not so math themed but nerdy enough and simple enough to pull off. Everyone dresses up as a different rubik's cube color. Add alcohol to the mix and voila! a nerd themed party!
Back when I was an undergrad in the math department...we had great math parties that were a lot of fun. You don't have to do much to carry a math-ish theme, and math folks tend to carry conversations well-enough that you don't have to babysit them (unlike so many CS parties I've been to).
We used to have Math-querade parties, just to make use of a good pun. Costumes were optional, but plenty of us dressed up anyway.
Sometimes we'd mak math-shaped sugar-cookies -- just make a batch of sugar-cookie dough and cut it in the shape of various operators and greek letters (then have fun decorating with icing). It's a fair amount of work, but you could even turn it into a party-community activity (have the dough ready ahead of time, then get everyone to roll out a bit of dough and start cutting out math shapes).
It was always good to have games around. Encourage people to bring their own -- they're likely to have many. If you know any math profs well, see if they'll loan you their games, or suggest some (about 1/3 of math profs I know *loved* puzzle-games). Any game with deduction is usually a sure-fire hit, including various card games or round-the-table games like "Mafia", e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(game) [yes, those parens are part of the url, it seems).
Alcohol is fine, but recognize that not all geeks like drinking, and that is fine. I'd suggest accommodating moderate drinking, but skip the hard alcohol.
Unless the math students/geeks you know are assholes, any effort you make with the intention of having fun will be warmly-received.
It's just a question of limits, don't root around the issue. If (Woman) -> |Party| > 0.
As a math major myself, I'd make sure there's a Wii with plenty of games, plenty of alcohol, and loads of pizza. Also, wireless so everyone bringing their portables can hit the net and all.
Where's my sock? There it is...
I haven't been a graduate student in mathematics since the 1970s. That said:
For a costume party, I'd suggest "Come as your favorite abstraction". That would also be accessible to any non-mathematicians attending.
Kind of like med students' "Come as your favorite syndrome," but not as sick.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
An XKCD themed party :)
People can be more or less creative with their interpretation of the theme, and the least creative can just wear a black hat and be mean.
Give me liberty or give me kill -s 9
I hope no bad people show up.
-- Make America hate again!
We love to play Mafia. It's a great social game that for some reason appeals to nerdy/geeky types.
Wisdom, knowledge, and truth - found only in one Place.
For those who really want to learn the real-life skills in a relatively short space of time, download and work on the free Don Juan Boot Camp, which is a six-ish week programme. Download it from here: http://www.jbspencer.com/djb/
I hate to say this but being a math nerd myself, i would say most probably guitar hero, or some form of highly involved community game on the lan unreal tournament etc....that is what most geeks would rather do on their own, with their friends, going to a party to mingle with friends AND maybe those they don't like, you are back in high school...think along the lines of pictionnary etc...CSI board game is ok too, seeing as they use a bit of smarts, but not enough to think they are working.
Think of it... Literary nerds, Music nerds, etc... Just need a tweed coat and haughty, self-satisfied air of smugness for the former...
~ Normality is merely the achievement of the mediocre...
A Matrix trilogy marathon -- preceded, of course, by the cartoon "Donald Duck in Mathemagics Land" -- followed by a Pi fight?
Get them all to dress as if they are going to do a moebius strip. example at http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2007/06/19/mobius-dress-inside-outside-garment-by-my-studio/ Get the winner (or loser) to do one. Follow up with a game of spin the Klein bottle.
The guy who starts flinging puns around like this is probably the same guy who uses that horrible pick-up line: "Hey, lets add a bed, subtract our clothes, divide your legs and multiply."
This should be the guy you actually throw out of the party... like immediately after these words are uttered. It'll give everyone else a story to talk about later ("yeah, our party rocked. we even had to throw this one guy out!") plus it'll make the one female you have at the party feel less nervous.
Karma: NaN
He's probably just your typical, over-anxious, virgin, nerd just wanting to "screw" something cuz he heard it was cool... just hasn't figured out what "screwing" actually is yet. Don't worry. He'll get to college, be introduced to internet-pr0n and figure the rest out on his own.
You're quite right - I probably didn't word that in the best way possible. What I meant by saying 'be yourself' isn't to continue on in whatever patterns of behavior the person has without regard to anything else, but rather to not try and be something that they aren't. Nonchalant is definitely the right word.
If the person isn't a suave, 'hip' individual, they shouldn't try to act like one. While the effort isn't certain to be doomed to failure, it doesn't stand much chance of success and will probably lead to much awkwardness later on. It might work in the movies (as does the whole ugly duckling routine), but this is real life.
Yup. 10 years in July, thanks very much. 12, if you count living together without the paperwork. All I'm saying is that "dating" and "staying married" are VERRRRY different skillsets.
I wouldn't give dating advice to ANYBODY at this point. Basic game's the same, but rules have changed too much (AIDS becoming an afterthought is particularly weird and annoying to me).
Whatever. Just saying.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
It may sound overdone or cliche, but I have found over the years that everyone I know, and most of us are geeks and nerds of all sorts, enjoy a good murder mystery. They have kits so you can do it at home that are really inexpensive, or if you look online or in the yellow pages, there are places all over the country that do these professionally. There are different themes, and scenarios so even if they have been to one before chances are it is not remotely similar. This allows all of your guests to dress up as a fun character and act out a personality that they may not have. On this note I would suggest you try a suave and debonair ladies man, and use this as the base of your courage to ask this girl out.
A buddy of mine once went up to a girl in a bar who was wearing a button and said, "Nice button. Wanna fuck?" Her response: "Can we dance for a while first?" He had a great night that night.
The worst she could have said was, "No," which is every bit as successful an answer as the one he got. He would have wasted no further time on her.
Admittedly your odds are going to improve somewhat if you can be a little smoother than my friend, but the idea is still the same: How long does it take you to be pretty sure whether you have any interest whatsoever in a particular girl? 10 seconds? How long does it take to know for sure? 2 minutes? What makes you so sure she isn't sizing you up the exact same way?
In my experience, the best dating techniques tease out her 10 second or 2 minute assessment of you as quickly as possible. What good is it to you to talk to some chick for an evening, buying her drinks the whole time, only to realize that she had written you off after just 10 seconds and now just wants free alcohol from her new "friend"?
That seems to be the premise of all the "gurus" out there that everyone here is linking to. I've never actually listened to one, but listen to their names. "Cocky and Funny." Yeah, if she's into you, she'll think it's endearing, but if she's not, she'll tell you to "stick it in your ear." That's exactly what you want! You want a Yea or Nay, and you want it quickly so you can either keep workin' it or move on. Do not put serious effort into a chick before you have her 10 second or 2 minute assessment.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I used to go bowling with fellow geeks, and I always liked to score the game in different bases. Base 5 works out well, with scores over 1000 (125 base 10) indicating a decent geek's game. Similarly, base 11 (100 base 11 = 121 base 10) or 12 (100 base 12 = 144 base 10) work well, with base 11 not being quite as much fun as base 12 because the frequency of "unusual" digits is reduced. Hexadecimal was fun, too, because there were lots of "unusual" digits.
Of course, you can only do this with a paper scoresheet. Given the proliferation of automatic scoring machines, you'll probably have to bring your own.
Bah, the advice is everyone babbles about is "don't be nice!" This is crap advice.
Look, it is true that certain behaviors will absolutely score you more women faster. Yes, being a smug over confident ass hole will likely score you some ass faster than trying to be everyone's friend. There are two things that this strategy misses:
1) This confuses getting some with dating another human whose company you actually enjoy. These are entirely different things. You can get laid without having any interest in the person you are screwing. You can be interested in a person and not want to screw them. Finally, you can be interested in someone and enjoy bumping uglies. Most the fucked up dating advice goes along the lines of âoebe a dick and you will get some!â fails to realize that these three states are different things.
2) The dating advice that revolves around "be a dick" relies pretty much exclusively on finding women with low self esteem who are emotionally unstable. It is like advising a hunter to just walk behind a herd of antelope until you find one instead of wasting time setting up an ambush that might fail. Yeah, you will find one if you keep walking, but the one you find will always be half dead and diseased. All of the "be a dick" dating advice also revolves around getting rejected often. The reason for the often repeated rejection is because the women that reject you are the desirable functional females, while the ones who fail the test go home with you. Again, great for getting laid, but counter productive for finding something more exciting than a glorified sex toy.
My advice? If you just want to get laid, follow the âoehunt the too wounded and diseased to run strategyâ (i.e. use tactics that specifically target screwed up women). You will find the human herdâ(TM)s equivalent of diseased and half dead whom you can take at will (rank as they might be).
If you have screwed around enough to realize that the occasional lay isnâ(TM)t worth the misery of dealing with a screwed up woman with no self esteem, stop trying. Seriously, give it a rest. I am not saying donâ(TM)t date. Date often in fact. Some times you have to kiss a few frogs. Just give up on the lame tactics. In fact, I would say give up on all the lame tactics. Donâ(TM)t castrate yourself to impress or try and be a dick, just be casual, be yourself, donâ(TM)t get worked up, and eventually you will find a female that is interesting, vaguely sane, and doesnâ(TM)t mind jumping the sack with you.
You could all eat Pi
for both genders.
Also, 'Rub the nipples' is a good game. I have no idea what it would be, or how it would work, just that any game called 'Rub the nipples' has great potential.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Mmm... Pi day celebrations...
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
... in my pants!
My old neighbor had a picture of her one-time boyfriend at a (real) party playing games on his TI-85. Hard to top that.
Whale
Which isn't to say that you shouldn't try out the 'outlaw biker' role if you are single and carefree. Use protection, and don't take it too far- you will probably learn something about yourself and human nature, but it probably won't lead to meeting someone who you will marry. If you do this, you should look at it as a phase, something you will grow out of as you age, I think.
But really, being the 'nice guy' is far more likely to land you a stable, long-term relationship- you just have to remember that statistically speaking, there are fewer of those. You might spend less time single, but the contigious block of time you spend single will likely be longer.
Playing the asshole role is easy (and it works on most extroverts, male or female, in many different roles) It doesn't require any magic.
First, decide what you want. sex, the sale, the job, whatever.
Now, identify people who can give that to you. try to talk them into it. Leave the moment it becomes clear that you wont' get what you want from this person. repeat this until someone gives you what you want.
It is suggested that you pretend that you don't care what anyone else thinks, and more importantly, that you interperit any signal that may be a sign that they like you as a sign that they like you. The idea being that if you think someone makes a sign that they are receptive to you and you are wrong, oh well, move on. the whole idea is predicated on failure being cheap. But if you are right, you are in.
I find that the confidence act really only works on extroverts. Introverts mostly look at you like the clown you are.
'Well then how do you get her into the suitcase?'Use the inverse of the Banach-Tarski theorem (iterate as needed).
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