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The Greek Alphabet

Forked from page(hmm I don’t know why they deny access from mainland China). I found that MIT don’t delete pages for PhD students even a student has graduated long ago. That is a culture Chinese universities really should learn. I open up the page everyday I start working, especially in cases where latex is not applicable. To reassure, I paste the whole page here in case of a server failure in MIT.

Α α alpha a father
Β β beta b
Γ γ gamma g
Δ δ delta d
Ε ε epsilon e end
Ζ ζ zêta z
Η η êta ê hey
Θ θ thêta th thick
Ι ι iota i it
Κ κ kappa k
Λ λ lambda l
Μ μ mu m
Ν ν nu n
Ξ ξ xi ks box
Ο ο omikron o off
Π π pi p
Ρ ρ rho r
Σ σ, ς sigma s say
Τ τ tau t
Υ υ upsilon u put
Φ φ phi f
Χ χ chi ch Bach
Ψ ψ psi ps
Ω ω omega ô grow

Sigma (σ, ς):There are two forms for the letter Sigma. When written at the end of a word, it is written like this: ς. If it occurs anywhere else, it is written like this: σ.

Upsilon (υ):In the above table, we suggest that you pronounce this letter like “u” in “put”. The preferred pronunciation is actually more like the German “ü” as in “Brücke”, or like the French “u” as in “tu”. If you do not speak German or French, don’t worry about it, just pronounce it the way the table suggests.

Xi (χ): This is the same sound as “ch” in “Bach”, which does not sound like “ch” in “chair”. The same sound occurs in the Scottish “Loch”, as in “Loch Lomond”, or the German “ach!”.

Footnote 1: Other pronunciation schemes
To be fair, we should mention that there are several different ways to pronounce Greek. We are teaching the Erasmian pronunciation for now. At some point in the future, we may add pages to teach some of the other pronunciations. Here are the main ways that Greek is pronounced:

Erasmian pronunciation. This is the pronunciation used here, and is probably based on the pronunciation used by a Renaissance scholar named Erasmus, who was the main force behind the first printed copies of the Greek New Testament. The Erasmian pronunciation is probably different from the way Greek was pronounced at the time of the New Testament, but it is widespread among scholars, and it has the advantage that every letter is pronounced, which makes it easy to grasp the spelling of words.
Modern Greek pronunciation. This is the way Greek is pronounced today in Greece. Some people prefer to teach this pronunciation for New Testament Greek as well. I initially learned the modern Greek pronunciation, but had difficulty learning to spell words, so I switched to the Erasmian. Modern Greek pronunciation is probably more similar to New Testament Greek pronunciation than Erasmian is, but not identical.
Reconstructed New Testament Greek pronunciation. There are some scholarly books which attempt to reconstruct the original pronunciation of New Testament Greek, and they have reached the point that there seems to be fairly widespread agreement on the original pronunciation. As far as I know, nobody ever teaches this pronunciation. Incidentally, since there was a large variety of Greek dialects, there was no single way to pronounce Greek even in the New Testament era.
Fraternity, Physics, and Calculus pronunciation. This is the way your physics teacher spoke Greek, and he learned this pronunciation in his fraternity. Next time you hear a physics teacher pronounce Greek, laugh and look superior.

Additional forms of variants from wikipedia:

epsilon \varepsilon \, Εϵε

Theta \theta \vartheta \, Θθϑ

Sigma \sigma \varsigma \, Σσς

Phi \phi \varphi \, Φϕφ

ϵ ϑ and ς appear quite often and are quite less explained by greek alphabet.

Magi system is materializing in real world

Magi system is materializing in real world. I tried the Open AI and found it fantastically useful.  Some Gword company may be falling, even though the apparent evidence may take years to appear.

Some Chinese enterprise owners are concerned about the turmoil that is happening in the process of transferring to younger generations. Yet Microsoft is illustrating a somewhat to the point answer, that is to invest and occupy a company that is promising. Old companies will eventually pass by, as old products will finally do. By giving a hand in the growth of new products, new things, and of course young people, old power remains without the fear to be judged and justified.

For those Chinese companies, one thing is certain, a company is structured to best facilitate the delivery of a product or service. Thus a company will of course fade with the comparative shrink of the product. New organizations will take place with new structure that best suits the new product that is newly occupied. The new comer will inherit the brand though it is not the old one any longer. A company’s fate can not disconnect with the destiny of a nation. Only when a nation is creative enough can a single company escape the fate of falling by having as many alternatives to pick to occupy.

Apple is losing a string of designers

Apple is losing a string of designers [1]. Rumors have come that the designer department is restructured under operations one and that leads to the consequences. To be honest, I am not interested in apple products any more. The new iPhone and new Macbook models do not look as attractive as they were. The app store is still the must-have, and yes if I am gonna replace my handset it would still be another iPhone, but their products don’t deliver the magic anymore. The full consequences would take years to disclose.

Avoid using apostrophe u2019 when in Chinese systems, use u0027 instead

There is a severe issue in font displaying when it comes to presenting text with the symbol ’ (u2019, Unicode 2019). The problem is that Chinese text system uses exactly the same ’ (u2019) Unicode  symbol as the right part of ‘(u2018) ’ (u2019) pair. And ’ (u2019) is also common alternative apostrophe of ‘(u0027).  The issue is, while you can’t input that ’ (u2019) with standard American keyboard layout, MS word will by default replace that for you. So when you paste a paragraph of English text from MS word, and the text box on the webpage displays in Chinese font(such as the Song font), you will get several full length ’ (u2019) as wide as an ordinary Chinese text within a English paragraph of half length English texts. And when you change the font to English, it recovers from full length to half length again. So the issue comes from that Chinese fonts assuming all the ’ (u2019) symbols as the right part of the quote pair ‘(u2018) ’ (u2019), regardless of many cases in English such as “He’s a good professor”. Finally, it looks the way as “He' s a good professor” in Chinese font.(Just for illustration. Since it is displayed in English font, this symbol' is actually  U+FF07[1]. My point is, in Chinese font, the normal U+2019 ’ looks exactly the same as ' thereby displaying “He’s a good professor” as “He' s a good professor”.)

That’s super annoying. Better the new Unicode standard for  the Chinese typeset use another Unicode position for the  ‘(u2018) ’ (u2019) pair, and leave that ’ (u2019) as the only symbol used in English.

Couldn’t imagine

Couldn’t imagine academics in mainland China has developed so rapidly. An impulse – the covid 19 – which drives many good researchers back to China, has generated consecutive good academic changes in China.

Apple should refine its business strategy to reveal new chips

Apple is not doing so well in market achievements. I think it should refine its business strategy to reveal new chips. Before apple made his own M-series chips, it is Intel’s responsibility to deal with that. Intel is notorious for its slow improvements in chips [1]. Yet it is commercially beneficial to do it in a crawling way. Consumers do not anticipate a big increase when they already bought an older model. Any potential regret will stop them from buying the products at any time in the interim. When it comes to apple, he has to prove to the public that apple silicon is remarkably better than previous structures of CPUs, to prove that moving to the brand-new M-series CPU is worth all the costs and troubles. So the first performance bump is crucial, yet leaving less space and surprise for the second gen chip product. And all the consumers are holding their pockets to wait for the next generation coming to life, which is a bad situation for apple. So we see the plummet in market performance for apple this year in 2022, especially for Mac products. There are rumors everywhere about the new 3 nanometer M3 chip coming along from TSMC and every intelligent potential customer is just waiting.

That is a dilemma. Apple has to win the performance battle with Intel to prove to the industry that apple silicon chips are worth transferring to, meanwhile he has to slow down the steps to minimize the regret for consumers, especially when apple’s plans are highly visible to the world despite a strict term of confidentiality. Another tough situation for apple, apart from all the twists and turns in developing the chip itself.

Life is an ever-printing inkjet printer

Life is an ever-printing inkjet printer. One is finished whenever he stops his foot steps, just as the printhead clogs after idling away for few weeks. Roll out non-stop, or the actual life that truly lives conclude long before it comes to its physical destination.

The Ritzberger(2008) ranking

The best ranking is Ritzberger(2008) [1]. I mostly agree with everything on it, especially the A+ and A tier. Also, the list does not include Journal of Economic Literature and Journal of Economic Perspectives,

because they solicit papers rather than taking submissions,

which is a good point and quite fair in academic evaluation.

The next ranking that is partially worth noticing is Ming-Jen Lin et al. (2019) [2]. The downside of this alternative is that it is too loosely distinguished in its A+ tier. 36 of them are in the same A+ tier. That does not exert the functionality of distinction. There are definitely good ones and not-so-good ones in anything within a basket of 36 items. This list should distinguish the A+ tier more delicately and divide some into the new A tier, and move the original A tier to a new B+ tier. Beside, this list ranks JELs which do not accept submissions from the general public as suggested by Ritzberger(2008), which is not considerate. Anyways, the list is good for a latest ranking list, whereas not as good as the Ritzberger(2008) list.

So, for now, the best ranking list in economics and finance is still the Ritzberger(2008) list. It is too sensible to necessitate a new one. One should fill new journals in the original Ritzberger(2008) list rather than proposing a new one. Here is what it is.

A+ : Top journals  Value KMS PV
Econometrica 100 96.78 100
Quarterly Journal of Economics 72.41 58.11 98.83
Review of Economic Studies 53.02 45.15 64.33
Journal of Political Economy 51.34 65.19 66.86
Journal of Finance 38.33 – –
Journal of Monetary Economics 37.91 36.41 46.10
American Economic Review 36.14 100 75.93
Journal of Economic Theory 34.58 58.76 34.41
Journal of Econometrics 25.99 54.91 21.15
Games and Economic Behavior 21.24 35.49 32.55
A: Excellent journals
International Economic Review 39.44 23.04 15.59
Journal of Financial Economics 30.97 9.89 15.01
Review of Financial Studies 30.39 – –
Journal of Economic Growth 29.45 – –
Journal of International Economics 22.87 7.84 11.40
Review of Economics and Statistics 20.11 28.02 16.28
Journal of Labor Economics 19.21 12.76 17.35
Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 17.66 38.41 14.81
Journal of Public Economics 17.10 19.77 16.28
Economic Journal 16.78 20.71 11.89
Economic Theory 15.30 22.43 18.23
RAND Journal of Economics 14.11 11.44 20.08
Econometric Theory 11.78 45.85 16.08
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 11.16 14.54 10.53
Journal of Mathematical Economics 10 7.64 10.04

 

Life is a process of accumulation, accumulating the trial and errors

Life is a process of accumulation, accumulating the trial and errors. Just as what Elon Musk did with the super heavy rocket. The trick for very good ones is, never look for a reason when doing all these kind of things. Look for a reason is nothing more than a sign that you are not patient enough. And accumulating takes time. The less you care about the whys, the more progress you will make in the period of unawareness.