I use Linux to make a phone call in the same sense as I use Quantum Mechanics to make a cup of tea. In other words, it's true but not a necessary part of the solution.
I'd love to see more diversity in this space but I think that Google is winning the battle. Chrome as a browser is pretty cool and Android as an OS is huge. I'd be surprised if Firefox can fight them off.
I certainly haven't had time to read the supporting papers carefully and consider them. I am not a professional linguist or cognitive scientist but it is a subject that has interested me for over 40 years, It's why I got into computers in the first place. Could you post some links to resources that could be informative to a keen amateur?
Sure, cool, not starting a flame war here, it could be a coincidence but of course they are similar in a whole bunch of languages. See the articles supporting info. These words get a high score.
Plus I wasn't asserting that they were similar because they came from some 'proto-language' I was just making an observation that very, very different languages had some words that sounded rather similar and I thought it interesting.
Colin Renfrew, the editor of the paper is a highly respected linguist so I wouldn't dismiss it lightly. The article however, is very, very short on detail. I was also rather disappointed.
I was very, very lucky. I got to learn Algol 60 when I was 14 in 1971. The school later organised for me to have a PL/I programming job between school and University.
Thanks Burnley Grammar School!
You are, of course, correct and clear in all your points but I would just like to add one theme. These carefully constructed arbitrage positions only work out if the counter party can meet their obligations. If they can only do so because of their arbitraged position against yet another party ad infinitum then you end up with a house built from a deck of cards just waiting for any major event to knock the whole thing down.
The problem is that the methodology was, and as far I can tell still, completely is completely assailable
Essentially this involves making a bet justified by a set of assumptions, in particular that market movements are distributed over a Gaussian curve. You then insure yourself in case your forecasts *and* assumptions are wrong. Arbitrage protects you if your forecasts are wrong.
However, you aren't covered if your insurer made the same assumptions as you about how markets move and can't now pay out your insurance.
The maths may be unassailable given it's assumptions but that doesn't make it correct in the real world
I assume you know all this stuff and we're just exchanging alternative explanations - if not then I do strongly recommend reading Taleb. He's not just an academic - be personally made millions out of the late 80's and the late 90's market crashes
The essential issue is that models, such as Black-Scholes, that are used to price options assume that the market's movements are distributed according to a Gaussian distribution.
They aren't - it's a power law
The difference is huge
50% of all gains in the stock market in the last 50 years happened on 10 individual days and Black-Scholes says that this can never happen even once in a life time
Language is much more strange than most people realise.
I speak some Thai and it is really difficult for English speakers to grasp
Imagine - no word for yes or no. Verbs don't change their form for person or tense.
In English we only really have 'it' as the third person singular. In French they have 'il' (masculine it) and 'elle' (Feminine it). In Thai they have literally different hundreds of pronouns for stuff like 'things with handles', 'long thin things', 'containers', 'things with limbs that are not people'
Language is so much more diverse than you would imagine if you don't study it.
Interestingly, this does not make the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) true.
The structure of the language has little, if any, relationship to the deeper mental understanding of the 'way things work'
I don't have the reference to hand but I recall there is a South American tribe which don't have words for left and right as most languages do. There words are equivalent to "Up Valley" and "Down Valley"
Similarly, if I recall correctly, there's a Native American language that uses before and behind as an analog for time but the other way around to most languages. Their analogy is that you know the past and you can see what it in front of you so forward = the past. You can't see behind you and you don't know the future so behind = the future
For a more general purpose online learning platform Moodle is certainly worth looking into. I haven't used it in anger for a few years now but it appears to be active.
Learning to programme should be completely trivial if you've got any talent.
Learning a whole eco-system of development tools which is what you'd need to do to hold down a serious job is a much bigger task of course.
A decent CS degree from a good school won't teach you how to code - they'll assume you know that pretty much as an entry requirement
Slashdot Mirror
I use Linux to make a phone call in the same sense as I use Quantum Mechanics to make a cup of tea. In other words, it's true but not a necessary part of the solution.
Don't most of them start with a discovery like this. Just saying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobsonian_telescope
Go outside and see the sun!? - you've obviously never lived in London
I'd love to see more diversity in this space but I think that Google is winning the battle. Chrome as a browser is pretty cool and Android as an OS is huge. I'd be surprised if Firefox can fight them off.
He has a course on them at coursera that is pretty good.
https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets
I've wondered about ay and shy, but figured it's just coincidence.
My Thai is not that good. Probably only 500 words or so and my accent is terrible. But I am unclear about ay and shy. Can you give me a clue?
I certainly haven't had time to read the supporting papers carefully and consider them. I am not a professional linguist or cognitive scientist but it is a subject that has interested me for over 40 years, It's why I got into computers in the first place. Could you post some links to resources that could be informative to a keen amateur?
Plus I wasn't asserting that they were similar because they came from some 'proto-language' I was just making an observation that very, very different languages had some words that sounded rather similar and I thought it interesting.
Colin Renfrew, the editor of the paper is a highly respected linguist so I wouldn't dismiss it lightly. The article however, is very, very short on detail. I was also rather disappointed.
Mare - Mother or often in English Ma
Pore - Father or again often Pa
Fi - fire
Those are the only non-loan words that overlap that I've come across
It is interesting that there are any words in common of course
need to be more precise, detailed and complete than those given to people. Who'd have thought it
Sure- but watch this though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1zuAQAhhMI
is a moon of the Earth if you believe Stephen Fry and QI
I was very, very lucky. I got to learn Algol 60 when I was 14 in 1971. The school later organised for me to have a PL/I programming job between school and University. Thanks Burnley Grammar School!
Read Kahneman's book - it is one of the most important books I have read in years.
The problem is that the methodology was, and as far I can tell still, completely is completely assailable
Essentially this involves making a bet justified by a set of assumptions, in particular that market movements are distributed over a Gaussian curve. You then insure yourself in case your forecasts *and* assumptions are wrong. Arbitrage protects you if your forecasts are wrong.
However, you aren't covered if your insurer made the same assumptions as you about how markets move and can't now pay out your insurance.
The maths may be unassailable given it's assumptions but that doesn't make it correct in the real world
I assume you know all this stuff and we're just exchanging alternative explanations - if not then I do strongly recommend reading Taleb. He's not just an academic - be personally made millions out of the late 80's and the late 90's market crashes
The essential issue is that models, such as Black-Scholes, that are used to price options assume that the market's movements are distributed according to a Gaussian distribution.
They aren't - it's a power law
The difference is huge
50% of all gains in the stock market in the last 50 years happened on 10 individual days and Black-Scholes says that this can never happen even once in a life time
I'd mod that up if I could JoshuaZ - thanks for the link
I speak some Thai and it is really difficult for English speakers to grasp
Imagine - no word for yes or no. Verbs don't change their form for person or tense.
In English we only really have 'it' as the third person singular. In French they have 'il' (masculine it) and 'elle' (Feminine it). In Thai they have literally different hundreds of pronouns for stuff like 'things with handles', 'long thin things', 'containers', 'things with limbs that are not people'
Language is so much more diverse than you would imagine if you don't study it.
Interestingly, this does not make the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) true.
The structure of the language has little, if any, relationship to the deeper mental understanding of the 'way things work'
I don't have the reference to hand but I recall there is a South American tribe which don't have words for left and right as most languages do. There words are equivalent to "Up Valley" and "Down Valley" Similarly, if I recall correctly, there's a Native American language that uses before and behind as an analog for time but the other way around to most languages. Their analogy is that you know the past and you can see what it in front of you so forward = the past. You can't see behind you and you don't know the future so behind = the future
There's great deal of evidence that our mind generates causal explanations for almost anything and that the slower rational mind is very bad at filtering these out. Read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow or watch his Google Tech Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0&context=C476fca8ADvjVQa1PpcFO5Md3nBcGBLbvoCdA7c_n4yXmeOadMOtw=
The headline for the BBC article "Woolly mammoth carcass may have been cut into by humans"
The headline of the linked story "YOUNG MAMMOTH LIKELY BUTCHERED BY HUMANS"
I especially like the excited all-caps style
For a more general purpose online learning platform Moodle is certainly worth looking into. I haven't used it in anger for a few years now but it appears to be active.
Learning to programme should be completely trivial if you've got any talent.
Learning a whole eco-system of development tools which is what you'd need to do to hold down a serious job is a much bigger task of course.
A decent CS degree from a good school won't teach you how to code - they'll assume you know that pretty much as an entry requirement