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| bio | website | math.mit.edu/~shor |
|---|---|---|
| location | Cambridge, MA | |
| age | 53 | |
| visits | member for | 2 years, 2 months |
| seen | 5 hours ago | |
| stats | profile views | 2,030 |
I'm a professor in the Mathematics Dept. at M.I.T. I mostly work on quantum computation, quantum information, and quantum complexity, but I am also interested in other areas of theoretical computer science and mathematics.
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Apr 13 |
reviewed | Reject suggested edit on What is the difference between “metaphorical”, “allegorical”, and “figurative”? |
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Apr 13 |
answered | Does “salt mines” have any specific meaning? |
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Apr 12 |
comment |
What’s the word for the habit of writing “play’d” or “revolv’d”? I searched through Shakespeare, and it looks like he never used playèd or stayèd, although he used lots of other two-syllable past tenses like passèd, and used play'd and stay'd many times. But apparently other people did. |
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Apr 12 |
reviewed | Reject suggested edit on rule of thumb for 'however' in the middle of the sentence? |
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Apr 11 |
comment |
What’s the word for the habit of writing “play’d” or “revolv’d”? I think a two-syllable played is unlikely, since play ends with a vowel, but most verbs had their past tense pronounced either with one or two syllables at the time, so putting in the apostrophe for a one-syllable pronunciation was probably a common practice at the time. |
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Apr 10 |
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How to pronounce '-ing' followed by a vowel Some people from New York City and the surrounding areas insert a /g/ after /ŋ/ if a vowel follows—Google "Lawn Guyland" (= Long Island). The vast majority of English speakers don't do this. |
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Apr 10 |
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Why isn't “muscle” pronounced “muskle”? Unless you drop the middle vowel (which isn't common now, and I suspect was not common in the 17th century), "icicle" does not end with "scle". |
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Apr 9 |
reviewed | Approve suggested edit on American Pronunciation of words in England and vice versa |
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Apr 8 |
comment |
she had been working / she had worked This distinction ceases to be correct after the sentence "She joined our firm five years ago". |
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Apr 8 |
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"crash someone's couch” vs “crash on someone's couch” You crash parties, but you crash on couches. "My son's friends crashed our house last weekend" means they came uninvited. "My son's friends crashed in our house last weekend" means they slept there (possibly with invitations). |
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Apr 7 |
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Why is it “objections to moving”, not “objections to move”? @tchrist: Compare aspire to take and aspire to taking in Google Ngrams. You see that aspire to take is by far the preferred variant. |
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Apr 7 |
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Why is it “objections to moving”, not “objections to move”? @Edwin: That's true. What I'm trying to point out is that just because a verb takes "to + noun" doesn't mean that that it takes "to + gerund". |
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Apr 7 |
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Why is it “objections to moving”, not “objections to move”? I don't believe there is any magic formula here with nouns or verbs. You can say "I aspire to greatness", but you have to say "I aspire to paint nudes". Similarly, you can say "I object to greatness", but you have to say "I object to painting nudes". |
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Apr 7 |
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Why is it “objections to moving”, not “objections to move”? @Carlo: that link is actually wrong in at least one case. It's "I detest speaking in public", and not "I detest to speak in public". |
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Apr 7 |
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Why is it “objections to moving”, not “objections to move”? I don't understand this answer. "I have objections to painting nudes," but "I have aspirations to paint nudes." Similarly, "I object to painting nudes," but "I aspire to paint nudes." Basically, you just have to know which verb form goes with which noun/verb. As far as I can tell, there's no magic formula. |
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Apr 7 |
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“The doors is closing” — correct? Since rock bands can open concerts, at one time "The Doors is opening" was a grammatical and meaningful sentence (in AmE, at least). |
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Apr 7 |
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How to write in a scientific way? I think it would be better to rephrase them in a comprehensible way. You could do that by breaking this into two sentences, putting in the word "and" where needed, and using fewer parentheses. |
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Apr 6 |
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Future Subjunctive A much more idiomatic way of saying this is: "If I were you, I would win tomorrow's competition." |
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Apr 6 |
revised |
german tourist or German tourist? deleted 13 characters in body |
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Apr 6 |
answered | german tourist or German tourist? |
