I wish for a hamburger to appear in front of me ON the table ON a napkin, and that it is a real hamburger, bought from Costco, that will not injure, poison, disease, or kill me in any way, nor will it upset the balance of anything, be it the universe, the space-time continuum, the US economy, etc., and that there is nothing preventing me from picking it up and eating it.

Granted, but while eating the hamburger a PETA member is walking by your house and sees you eating it through the window. The PETA member then throws a ninja star through your right eye. However, the hamburger was delicious.

I wish pickles tasted like sugar wrapped in bacon.

Granted, but you mistakenly eat the side of french fries which was not covered under the specifications for your hamburger. Those fries are, of course, made from a rare poisonous potato farmed in darkest Peru and upon sharing some of the best tasting fries you've ever had with your family, everyone drops dead. For fear of further contamination, the authorities decide not remove your corpses and your body decays alone, leaving a really nasty stain on your kitchen floor.

I wish for the ability to take a mulligan in life at will without upsetting the balance of anything.

Ah nuts... sorry Panthers. Your wish is granted, but you ruin the taste of hamburgers for the masses, who riot and kill you and your family in a fit of mob violence.

I (still) wish for the ability to take a mulligan in life at will without upsetting the balance of anything.

Granted, but the ability also extends to the mobster who has been trying to kill you for years but keeps messing up somehow.

I wish to be able to stop and start time at will, while still being able to function when time is stopped.

Granted, but only you function, so anything you try to interact with is completely unmovable and non-interactive.

Some one else wish.

@ Ava:

Into what is your research?

I'm corrupting joda's, because Draugnar cheated.

Granted. You are now capable of stopping and starting time as will, ie. you live in the fifth dimension and have limited control over the fourth. Unfortunately, everyone else lives in the sixth dimension, and has unlimited control over your fifth dimension.

I wish you had said whilst in that sentence, because while sounds awkward.

@rlumley - this summer it's on applications of Fourier Transforms in option pricing (since I'm an economics major).

You should appreciate this:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1077

@ava

that's pretty interesting. Do you have a link or something that gives an overview of that?

Haha. phdcomics ftw. But hey, I guess my research is contributing to an imprecise body of science and will set me up well for a job. How's that. Also, why the hell are we having a civil conversation, rlumley? *goes off to start a new thread for some live game* Ok and you still owe me a challenge match.

I gave up on that a long time ago ava. Everyone will realize I'm right when the forum collapses into anarchy...

@abgemacht: for dummies:

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/portal/pls/portallive/docs/1/40346.PDF

Thanks, I'll take a look at it later. I know almost nothing about finance, but a lot about FFT, so this should be interesting.

Are you an engineer, abgemacht?

Yeah, I just graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering.

Why the hell are you working with MATLAB? That's got to be the worst coding environment known to man.

And I'm tempted to be arrogant and condesending about the fact that I'm working in a real science, but instead, I'll just quote the description of XKCD:

"Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."

But if you're working with Fourier transforms, I suppose that's advanced enough mathematics. You're probably remotely intelligent. So why the hell are you wasting your time in economics? :-)

@rlumley

For a lot of things (including signal processing) MATLAB is pretty OK. I wouldn't want to distribute the code to anyone, but for doing calculations and making figures (especially if coding isn't your strong suite) I think it's fine.

I wish someone had a wish for me to corrupt.

@rlumley

1. I'm, ironically, at a liberal arts school studying math and econ.
2. It happens to have produced 9 Nobel Prize Winners in Economics.
3. Actual economics has nothing to do with graphs, money and colorful pictures of economics. In fact, it has everything to do with social welfare. Modern mathematics (post 1950s) is just an elegant product of human imagination for overgrown children who still like puzzles.

"Actual economics has nothing to do with graphs, money and colorful pictures of economics. In fact, it has everything to do with social welfare. Modern mathematics (post 1950s) is just an elegant product of human imagination for overgrown children who still like puzzles."

This certainly isn't true...

Oh, copied too much. Not sure about the first sentence, but the second certainly isn't true.

I wish someone would answer my question...

Granted, but you asked after it was answered so you look like a tool.

@abgemacht: It's my personal opinion. Introductory economics courses at most schools are about pretty graphs (the Demand/Supply cross graph, etc)...there's a whole body of knowledge that underlies it with extremely important social implications.

Furthermore, if you've taken a class in Topology or non-linear algebra, you will see the utter impracticability of half the abstract concepts that modern mathematicians have conjured simply to achieve theoretical completeness. In the last 5 decades, math has undergone a shift from being a discipline that developed theoretical machinery to solve real problems, to being one that developed theoretical machinery just because it was possible to, irrespective if said machinery described anything that was physically observable by man.

Mandelbrot, father of fractals, says it perfectly in this short video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/benoit_mandelbrot_fractals_the_art_of_roughness.html

@jodabomb24 - Granted... only not granted because I don't see your question.

@ava2790 - totally not the place for a discussion on economics but for the record "In fact, it has everything to do with social welfare" is not something I've ever heard from any other econ student I know.

I wish ava2790 would read some Hayek, Friedman, Menger or even Keynes for God's sake.

for the record I'm not an ardent Austrian Economics fan though I am partial to it, but seriously aca2790...

@ava

Here are some examples of fields in mathematics that have had recent developments and produce tangible results in the modern world:

Number Theory (used for security engineering/cryptography)
Group Theory (used for security engineering/cryptography
Numerical Analysis (used for computer modeling/simulation)
Information Theory (used for everything from telecommunication to nanoelectroncis)
Probability (used for almost everything)