Slashdot Mirror

This is math culture.

"We were all in advanced analysis or something. We'd been working on a proof in class for a week, and we'd reached an impasse, an impossible stage, and in the dream logic, the only way we were going to be able to progress was if (and only if) someone cut off their arm: the requirement was 'proof by mutilation.' And the scary thing was, we were going to do it, there was no question or discussion about that, the only thing we hadn't settled yet was whose arm we were going to use."

The bad thing is that while CSS has given us a good (and sometimes more powerful) set of tools, there really is something good about tables. They're easy to grasp, a grid is a natural fit for layout tasks, and that's why people keep using them.

Sure, there are table quirks across browsers, and CSS makes some things much, much cleaner. But sometimes, tables do to, and the only real sin involved in using them comes from the fact that it ruins the semanticity of tabular markup.

See this Metafilter thread or this one for more discussion.... or some of my comments.

I totally agree. I've been practicing producing recordings of myself for about three years now. I have mixed feelings about autotune. I'm a pretty good vocalist without it, but it's saved me some time before. Listen to a song with autotune and song without and a live recording.

While I don't think I totally suck in any of them, there's definitely observable tiers in vocal quality between each of them. And what's more important, for the non-live tracks, the time required to get the vocal perfect was shorter on the auto-tuned version. And there aren't a lot of places where the equation time == money is more strictly true then on the clock in a recording studio.

(Of course we then proceeded to waste the gained time trying to get a good guitar tone...)

A few years ago I wrote a fairly complex spreadsheet (a simulation of the Monty Hall problem) with some Excel Macro/VBA functionality. My memory on this is a bit fuzzy, so I could be wrong, but I believe I tested it under Star Office and possibly Gnumeric as well to see if it ran, and I seem to recall it did.

Interested parties could test:

http://weston.canncentral.org/misc/Monty/GameSho wF inal2.xls

Some background can be found here, if you're not familiar with the problem. The Workbook has one sheet for playing individual rounds of the game yourself, which you do by selecting an initial guess and then a second guess (one button for each option under each door). The next two sheets let the computer simulate playing 1, 10, or 100 rounds at a time, one uses the "switch" strategy and one uses the "stay" strategy. If it's confusing (probably is), email me. I'm curious.

This is so odd, I just finished writing about this today. Years, ago, a friend of mine had a dream that a bunch of us were in a grad math class... topology or analysis or something and we'd been working on a proof for days and gotten to a point where we couldn't get any farther without "proof by mutilation" -- somebody had to cut off an arm. And the scary/funny thing was, we had all decided to do it, the only remaining debate was about whose arm it was going to be.

Crazy mathematicians. But less soul-destroying than I/T, that's for sure.

Malcolm Gladwell's article about Stanley Kaplan and the SAT should be required reading on the subject. Cool biography, and interesting examination of the idea that there is such a thing as an "uncoachable test" -- one that measures "innate" intelligence, rather than learning. Now tests don't claim that, but they do try to predict success in college.

To some extent, I can see how the latter is possible (if not perfectly accurate). If you can take a subset of subject matter, study it and master it to the point where you can bang out answers in hour-length periods, then you can probably do standard courses in education. Create original research, new thought? Maybe not, but you don't have to do that for many undergrad programs, and proably a number of grad programs. Just master what exists.

I aced several standardized tests in High School. 99%ile scores in multiple categories and overall scores. The interesting thing was that my grades rose steadily as soon as that happened... B to A-, and then my freshman year A- to A. It's a heady thing, to walk to the table, get evaluated, and get given an awful lot of chips to play with. I wrote a personal narrative about it after I had a less spectacular experience with the GMAT and the GRE.

Curious to know if anyone else has had this kind of experience, or has figured out a good way to goose their scores....

Here's the problem with personal blogging. Most of the people keeping "journal" style sites (referred to as "notebooks" above in the review) don't understand the difference between a well-written personal narrative and letting the world know that you went to the bathroom, just talked to Suzie, or stepped in dog crap. I agree that reading those kind of blogs are about as interesting as listening to a standard cell phone conversation. You don't learn anything.

But some of the personal narrative sites can be amusing, moving, and occasionally wise. I've really enjoyed reading this one and this one over the last year or two. You're missing out on some great writing, story telling, and even an odd discussion about the semantic web if you don't read them.

(And don't forget my own merely semi-pitiful narratives. I promise there is only one mention of attending to bodily functions on the whole site, and that's only in the context of a "wackiness ensues" story. I'd say that was a shameless plug, but I'm now somewhat ashamed. Ah, well.)

As for "link style" blogging -- I haven't figured out what makes the difference between the good and the bad. It's not necessarily focus -- Metafilter and even Slashdot are both all over the map. It's not even necessarily commentary... weak commentary or no commentary and a collection of links can still be interesting. Near as I can tell, it's interesting if the person/people collecting them have interesting trains of thought. Whatever that means.

I first wrote a real resume (i.e., not just a high school assignment) about 10 years ago. I spent a lot of time worrying about the format and language. Up until recently, every time I updated it, I assiduously read tips given by job-hunting and other professionals. I spoke with friends who were technical writers and document design specialists. Earlier this year I read a few books on it and asked all my professional friends and a few unprofessional friends and finally, and after much ado the conclusion I came to....

The advice is often useless.

Well, not totally useless. But very, very subjective. Some people will tell you to put in an objective. Others will tell you it's irrelevant. Some people will tell you hobbies are irrelevant; others will tell you it shows a holistic person who'll have more to give to a job. Some people will tell you being holistic is important; others will tell you that focus on skills relevant to the job is all that matters. Some people will tell you to use action buzzwords; others will tell you those will get you dismissed as a charlatan. You get the idea.

My guess is they're all correct. Resume design is an art, not a science. Every person looking at your resume is looking for different things from a slightly different perspective. I've come to the conclusion that there's no set of tips you can follow to get you a resume that will get you in the door. You just have to design and refine as professionally as possible, think a little bit about your audience, and hope the message you intended to send gets across.

And sometimes I think that your own judgement may be as important as someone else's. If you walk into an interview with a resume you are confident in, that's a good precursor to success.

This is the result of my thinking. Feel free to send/post critiques of the thing. Or job offers, for that matter.

Paul Ford wrote a hilarious piece on what life might be like if google tried to index the world.

Me, I think that the reason that the Harry Potter film ended up looking uncannily like what was in everybody's head is because Google can index the brain.

Just a theory.

A friend of mine just put together this search form after reading this story.... you can search by name (no wildcarding yet, so it has to be exact). Or.... if you want to find the really substantive comments you can search by minimum number of pages! Try searching for pages > 30 ... it's interesting stuff.

A friend of mine just put together this search form after reading this story.... you can search by name (no wildcarding yet, so it has to be exact). Or.... if you want to find the really substantive comments you can search by minimum number of pages! Try searching for pages > 30 ... it's interesting stuff.

Perhaps. So now some perl-savvy Slashdotter should write a script to mirror the site into a database, and post the resulting URL. Shouldn't be more than an hour or two of work for someone who has the skills...

http://weston.canncentral.org/msdoj/lookup.php

This lets you look up any comment by name, or comment ID (if you know it).

I also threw in the ability to let you look up comments by minimum number of pages.... this lets you look at "substantive" comments quickly.

The code that I used to do all this is located in the directory. Feel free to take and mirror ... just credit me and link to my site, OK?

(Alas... I lost my mods for this thread when I decided to post this... my apologies to the parent poster and the sibling poster who made the comment about database programmers sleeping in -- at first you both amused me, and then you inspired me...)

What is a flower?
It is a kiss from the earth to the sky
a child of sugar and sunlight
low brown loam and God's bright and braided dye
love returned for love and light
long, warm, and high.

-- Weston Cann

(yeah, flowers usually work just fine)