Impenetrable mathematics and terminology
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I always find it interesting that some really simple concepts that could probably be understood by a child become completely unfathomable when presented in mathematical form. I've read papers that are describing techniques that I myself have implemented and yet still not recognised what was being described. This is a nice idea but what I would really like to see is plain english explanations of a concept alongside the maths, which I accept is necessary because English is after all ambiguous and inefficient at describing mathematical formulea or concepts. But that doesn't mean it can't be used to paint the big picture before filling in the detail.
I suppose part of the problem is the terminology used in research papers. You get groups of researchers in specialisations that use terminology that only they know, because they have developed it in their own little corner of the research world. You can end up with a newcomer to a field writing a perfectly good paper, but because s/he didn't use the now accepted proper terminology the paper is not understood by the people it is actually targeting.
Also sometimes I get the feeling that people are writing papers with impenetrable terminology to make themselves feel clever. The more big words the better. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
I think we're pretty much in agreement then. Like I say, it's the coders that blindly follow rules without thinking about why that really gets me. Or even worse, the ones that think they're obviously better than you because they've spotted this glaring 'error' in your code:)
werl the thing is when they are handling the photos they look like flat 2D images. But yeh perhaps they are supposed to be holograms. I'll tell myself that when I next watch the film to get me past that scene without rolling my eyes:)
you can deduce what was *actually* in the missing part of the image - rather than guessing it - by tracing back photons from teh camera lense back to their source. I seem to recall *that* technique being used in an episode of ST:TNG, probably dreamt up by Wesly Crusher - I nearly fell of my chair laughing.
There's also that questionable bit of image analysis in Blade Runner where Deckard zooms in and shifts left/right on an image of a mirror and the image responds like it is an actual real mirror. oh dear.
They/can/ be a signal for bad code, but they/can/ make certain types of code much clearer, e.g. iy you have a long list of test cases that you wish to test in turn - exiting any one if it fails. I guess my point is that some coders just apply these hard rules they learned without really thinking about why the rules exists and therefore where it may not apply.
Ahh what the heck - A terminator walks into a bar...
barman: Why the mimetic polyalloy face?
terminator: I'm a T-1000 terminator from the future sent to kill Sarah Conner.
It drives me crazy the number of coders who still, in 2007, have a bee in their bonnet about goto statements (they're just evil apparently) or return statments in the middle of a function body - often prefering the alternative of umpteen nested if statements indented right off the the screen. I remember rolling my eyes when being taught these sorts of rules at university, the thought that some people actually took them seriously and are still using them years later just shows how willing some people are to blindly follow rules without question. I guess that's what distinguishes a code monkey from a coder?
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Zen wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs either, although it/he did have a striking resemblance to the playing screen on Blockbusters
Am I missing something here? The Sisoft Sandra MFLOPS measurement for a top end Intel Core 2 is 47 GFlops http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/overclocking-intel,r eview-2395-28.html/. OK admitedly this is a sythetic measurement, but it's a ballpark figure right?
I always find it interesting that some really simple concepts that could probably be understood by a child become completely unfathomable when presented in mathematical form. I've read papers that are describing techniques that I myself have implemented and yet still not recognised what was being described. This is a nice idea but what I would really like to see is plain english explanations of a concept alongside the maths, which I accept is necessary because English is after all ambiguous and inefficient at describing mathematical formulea or concepts. But that doesn't mean it can't be used to paint the big picture before filling in the detail.
I suppose part of the problem is the terminology used in research papers. You get groups of researchers in specialisations that use terminology that only they know, because they have developed it in their own little corner of the research world. You can end up with a newcomer to a field writing a perfectly good paper, but because s/he didn't use the now accepted proper terminology the paper is not understood by the people it is actually targeting.
Also sometimes I get the feeling that people are writing papers with impenetrable terminology to make themselves feel clever. The more big words the better. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
I think we're pretty much in agreement then. Like I say, it's the coders that blindly follow rules without thinking about why that really gets me. Or even worse, the ones that think they're obviously better than you because they've spotted this glaring 'error' in your code :)
It's classic Dunning-Kruger effect
werl the thing is when they are handling the photos they look like flat 2D images. But yeh perhaps they are supposed to be holograms. I'll tell myself that when I next watch the film to get me past that scene without rolling my eyes :)
you can deduce what was *actually* in the missing part of the image - rather than guessing it - by tracing back photons from teh camera lense back to their source. I seem to recall *that* technique being used in an episode of ST:TNG, probably dreamt up by Wesly Crusher - I nearly fell of my chair laughing.
There's also that questionable bit of image analysis in Blade Runner where Deckard zooms in and shifts left/right on an image of a mirror and the image responds like it is an actual real mirror. oh dear.
They /can/ be a signal for bad code, but they /can/ make certain types of code much clearer, e.g. iy you have a long list of test cases that you wish to test in turn - exiting any one if it fails. I guess my point is that some coders just apply these hard rules they learned without really thinking about why the rules exists and therefore where it may not apply.
Ahh what the heck - A terminator walks into a bar... barman: Why the mimetic polyalloy face? terminator: I'm a T-1000 terminator from the future sent to kill Sarah Conner.
It drives me crazy the number of coders who still, in 2007, have a bee in their bonnet about goto statements (they're just evil apparently) or return statments in the middle of a function body - often prefering the alternative of umpteen nested if statements indented right off the the screen. I remember rolling my eyes when being taught these sorts of rules at university, the thought that some people actually took them seriously and are still using them years later just shows how willing some people are to blindly follow rules without question. I guess that's what distinguishes a code monkey from a coder?
no no no, petascale just means computers that are typically about 10^15 mm across. I was going to get one but I just don't have the space.