In Europe, most degrees are different from the US model in that they are less broad. So a math degree will be just math courses, no need to know who Shakespeare was. A literature grad won't need to know how to add two numbers together.
Interestingly, I had this discussion at work the other day. IMO, knowledge IS bullet points. Sounds weird, I know, but thinking back to every essay exam I've ever done, there always seemed to be certain things that had to be mentioned. How you mentioned them seemed to matter (subjective grading), but in the end, people who understand a subject are always gonna mention a certain set of ideas.
My colleague thought otherwise. Unfortunately, I don't have the bullet points of why.
I had to mark some student essays this year and, in common with the rest of the coursework, even though it wasn't anonymous, I had no idea who most of the students were. Most of them had been in my lectures, but even most of the ones who had asked questions or come and talked to me after the class never actually told my their names, so they were effectively anonymous. I had no idea who the guy who got 99% was until he asked in the lecture why he had a mark deducted.
As to whether a computer can be more fair, if it can then you shouldn't be setting an essay. A computer can tell if you've listed a set of bullet points correctly, but it can't judge your understanding of the subject. For example, one of the titles my students could pick was 'Give five design patterns for concurrent programming and suggest when each would be appropriate'. Students got a reasonable mark if they showed me that they understood the materials I'd covered in the lecture. They got a really good mark if they showed me something I hadn't covered in the lecture and demonstrated that they understood it. How would you program a computer to make that call?
I think subjectivity creeps in when it comes to the borderline cases. If a guy comes up with 5 patterns and manages to explain them like you would, you're inclined to think he gets it. But if a guy comes up with 5 sort-of-like-it explanations, containing some salient points, while omitting others, what do you give him? It can be hard to judge, especially as some facts are more important than others. Suppose there's one major fact and a couple of minor ones speaking in favor of a given DP, and the guy mentions the big one but not the small ones? There's no standard for that.
Heh, I have a story like this from high school. Basically, I'd been put in the "scientist/non humanities" bucket from the start. Every time I tried to write something, whether it was a short story, a poem, or a critique, it got a crap grade. Points for figuring out set pieces like use of metaphor and that stuff, but "something was missing" if you get me. Or don't get me, because it was all BS.
So one day, I wrote a story about a guy kicking a ball around with his grandkid. Only this time, I smothered it with all sorts of cliche baloney that usually makes me puke. Tears, emotions, shattered dreams, every shitty romantic comedy trope you could ever think of. A.
Glad I cracked that one. Almost thought there was something I wasn't getting.
How does the circular mower cut corners? Don't most people have a corner of smaller radius that their imaginary circular lawnmower?
Shouldn't the problem be how to sweep a straight line of some given width to cover an area? I'm guessing the circular mower is some sort of simplifying assumption. Never had a lawn before, so no idea.
Actually, the debt ceiling was not as important a problem as the future deficits. That has to be reduced, probably via a combination of tax rises and spending cuts. But even with a smooth debt ceiling decision (which we didn't get!) the budget problem would still exist. So as you say, when you decide to have a talk about whether to pay your debts in the first place, well, investors ought to worry.
Dude, this sounds like cowering. You reason for not doing all this stuff is that you're afraid someone will beat you up, essentially. It's not really a moral justification, just a practical "well, he's got a gun in my face" argument.
One thing to point out is that all those people who are on entitlements have the right to vote. Unlikely that they'll vote for this kind of thing.
I'm not sure it does depend on the school. You'd think a place like Oxford would have a top-of-the-line course. Also, it might be that I'm not including some of the more rigorous stuff like financial derivatives and that type of thing in my evaluation.
I think some schools got into the MBA game simply because they felt they had to since all their "peer" schools had one - and will trade on their name until (or if) they can bring it to the level of their other degrees.
If a school doesn't teach derivatives, economic theory - with real math, not the "for dummies" version, then they are doing their students a disservice.
The thing is, those things are not what I call "Business Administration", although they were actually taught. They're a math course designed for you to get a job at an investment bank, rather than a course teaching you how to run a business. Isn't "how to run a business" what it says on the tin?
I'm not sure it does depend on the school. You'd think a place like Oxford would have a top-of-the-line course. Also, it might be that I'm not including some of the more rigorous stuff like financial derivatives and that type of thing in my evaluation.
This is an interesting point, one I hadn't thought of up to now. In fact, it does seem that people without a degree are cut out from certain jobs where the core skill is essentially common sense and ordinary social skills.
I remember working with a trader who was pretty good at what he did (options), but he always felt inferior to guys like me who had a degree and knew the math behind it. He'd gotten in during a bygone era, where a guy could just walk on to the trading floor at 16 and not need a degree. Because actually, you don't even need high school math to trade options. As his world was slowly being taken over by people with credentials, it more or less arbitrarily locked out people without. And yes, he had a different kind of demeanour to your ordinary college educated guy.
Not to slag the concept of an MBA, but I am willing to bet more than a few of us have seen what happens when someone who is essentially a fresh college graduate thinks he knows how to run an engineering entity (and, in fact, doesn't know how to do anything).
NOT to slag MBAs?? They need to be slagged off! At my firm, MBAs are the butt of nearly every joke about incompetence. And that's from someone who's actually sat in a well known business school, "studying" management, leadership, etc. It's a complete and utter scam. What's amazing is even though I thought it was pretty intellectually light (compared to my Engineering degree) I thought I might have learned something useful. Nope. Today, 3 startup-firms on, I can honestly say it didn't help squat. Oh wait, maybe it did help get me in the door, and making people think I knew more than I really did. But that's about it.
Things I learned on the management course: history of various firms (case studies, interesting in the Discovery channel way), different ways to illustrate BGOs. (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious: SWOT analysis, brainstorming, drawing a friggin chart, etc.) How to make things look more complicated than they really are. Don't know why, but many people think you're smart if you confuse them. The smart ones can tell from you explaining things in 2 sentences.
Things I learned in the real world: how to hire people, how to fire them, how to talk to clients, how to talk to suppliers, how to find out what the next move is, how to filter out my industry news, how to rent an office, how to get someone to clean it, how to pay the bills, how to get offshore directors who are competent, how to identify a good lawyer, how to make the most of an accountant, how to get investors, etc. Of course, none of these things can realistically be taught without some business taking a chance on you.
Many of those people who "can't program" actually can program. They simply understand the program's requirements. Maintainable code is not always a requirement since a lot of software written in research labs is intended to be written once and run a handful of times.
It's also worth noting that properly structured code from a programmer's perspective is not always the same as properly structured code from a scientist's perspective. "Turn(ing) problems into object models," may be the last thing that scientific code needs because most problems are procedural in nature (particularly for data analysis, and even for modelling).
This is very true. If your code really doesn't need future modification, that's fine. Often though, you start off thinking "Hmm, this doesn't have to be perfect" and uhm, it's turns out that way when it comes time to extend the functionality.
You can often tell whether someone is "programming as a means to an end (of your own)" versus "programming to build a tool for someone else". For instance, I have experience in the financial industry. Quite a lot of traders see coding as a means to implement their cool new model. Looking at their code, you can often tell. It's as if everything was built to just exactly fulfil the requirement, with no thought to the fact that those requirements might change. But of course, they do change. So you get hacks and workarounds, and cut'n'paste cargo cult code. Kinda like what those Orks in Warhammer 40K might make. And of course the problem with spaghetti code is that if you write it, nobody can ever help you solve problems/improve it. It's the coding equivalent of painting yourself into a corner. There's loads of smart traders out there with an excel spreadsheet that actually is an extension of their personalities (In fact it's their Magnum Opus. Everywhere they go, they try to take this quirky little file with them). Every little hack is something only they can explain (comments, yeah right. Do your body parts have explanatory comments?) and only they can fix if wrong.
On the other hand, you sometimes hire a guy who is a programmer, but knows nothing about the domain. Very good with OO models and that kind, but you have to teach them everything about finance. What's a settlement date, what kinds of options exist, etc. You get what you ask for, because they know how to turn problems into object models, but you have to ask VERY carefully. And teach. Unfortunately, not everyone has time for that, and so you end up with something that still doesn't quite do what it's supposed to.
So you often end up gettings guys who understand the problems, but can't program, programming. And guys who can program, writing the wrong program.
This is so true. Look at older people. They can figure out the single interface telephone, but as soon as you get context menus (smartphones, websites, GPS car nav) they're in deep water. Mind you, not all of them.
I've had similar thoughts myself. Alot of these "combine a and b" patents seems so obvious, it feels like the motivation for bringing them to life isn't having the design, it's having an economic motive for making them. Eg everyone who'd ever played a video game before Wii must have thought "hey, it would be cool to have a stick whose motion can be detected". Nintendo finally decided to try and sell it a few years ago, and that's what they should be rewarded for.
You can talk to people as equals while poking fun at them. But also, it's a bit disingenuous to talk to them as equals when most atheists really cannot, for the life of them, fathom why someone has faith. It just comes out sounding false.
It wouldn't be such a strain if they didn't force him to do a psych test. In fact, if they just treated him like any other religious person, it wouldn't cost more than what the license costs to make for anyone.
That's because mockery is a friggin useful tool! It keeps the faithless entertained, moves the wall-sitters to faithlessness, but it obviously doesn't move the unmoveable.
Satire has always been the most pleasant and entertaining way to debate the issues. The wrong way to do it is violence and threats, which the religulous have been doing for eons. If they really wanted to win people over, they should get some comedians.
FYI there's a crazy number of front-office traders running their own "programs" if you call their VBA that. Whatever you think of it, Excel is an easy way to custom-build financial calculations, as well as a simple front-end for displaying information. Usually the guys are too busy to turn their sheet into something more rigorous.
It takes a special kind of pig-headedness to come up with a moral conclusion that doesn't allow for any doubt. The CDO guys could easily have concluded that what they were doing was useful to society. Or they could have decided that they weren't pious enough to come up with a completely solid moral case, just like we all do, all the time, with just about every decision we ever make, and said "well, I can't see any obvious harm" and gotten on with the work.
Re:They've got a point
on
Happy Tau Day
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· Score: 1
RTFA, tauday.com. Figure 1.
Looks a bit confusing to me though.
Re:For the moment, not persuaded.
on
Happy Tau Day
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· Score: 1
Luckily, you can easily write T=2Pi in your equations. No need to reprint thousands of T-Shirts.
I think the main point of the rant is that Tau somehow seems more fundamental. What defines a circle? A locus of points on a plane equidistant from a certain point. That distance is somehow more fundamental than 2r, even if the distinction is trivial.
Re:They've got a point
on
Happy Tau Day
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
In Europe, most degrees are different from the US model in that they are less broad. So a math degree will be just math courses, no need to know who Shakespeare was. A literature grad won't need to know how to add two numbers together.
Interestingly, I had this discussion at work the other day. IMO, knowledge IS bullet points. Sounds weird, I know, but thinking back to every essay exam I've ever done, there always seemed to be certain things that had to be mentioned. How you mentioned them seemed to matter (subjective grading), but in the end, people who understand a subject are always gonna mention a certain set of ideas.
My colleague thought otherwise. Unfortunately, I don't have the bullet points of why.
I had to mark some student essays this year and, in common with the rest of the coursework, even though it wasn't anonymous, I had no idea who most of the students were. Most of them had been in my lectures, but even most of the ones who had asked questions or come and talked to me after the class never actually told my their names, so they were effectively anonymous. I had no idea who the guy who got 99% was until he asked in the lecture why he had a mark deducted.
As to whether a computer can be more fair, if it can then you shouldn't be setting an essay. A computer can tell if you've listed a set of bullet points correctly, but it can't judge your understanding of the subject. For example, one of the titles my students could pick was 'Give five design patterns for concurrent programming and suggest when each would be appropriate'. Students got a reasonable mark if they showed me that they understood the materials I'd covered in the lecture. They got a really good mark if they showed me something I hadn't covered in the lecture and demonstrated that they understood it. How would you program a computer to make that call?
I think subjectivity creeps in when it comes to the borderline cases. If a guy comes up with 5 patterns and manages to explain them like you would, you're inclined to think he gets it. But if a guy comes up with 5 sort-of-like-it explanations, containing some salient points, while omitting others, what do you give him? It can be hard to judge, especially as some facts are more important than others. Suppose there's one major fact and a couple of minor ones speaking in favor of a given DP, and the guy mentions the big one but not the small ones? There's no standard for that.
Heh, I have a story like this from high school. Basically, I'd been put in the "scientist/non humanities" bucket from the start. Every time I tried to write something, whether it was a short story, a poem, or a critique, it got a crap grade. Points for figuring out set pieces like use of metaphor and that stuff, but "something was missing" if you get me. Or don't get me, because it was all BS.
So one day, I wrote a story about a guy kicking a ball around with his grandkid. Only this time, I smothered it with all sorts of cliche baloney that usually makes me puke. Tears, emotions, shattered dreams, every shitty romantic comedy trope you could ever think of. A.
Glad I cracked that one. Almost thought there was something I wasn't getting.
How does the circular mower cut corners? Don't most people have a corner of smaller radius that their imaginary circular lawnmower?
Shouldn't the problem be how to sweep a straight line of some given width to cover an area? I'm guessing the circular mower is some sort of simplifying assumption. Never had a lawn before, so no idea.
Actually, the debt ceiling was not as important a problem as the future deficits. That has to be reduced, probably via a combination of tax rises and spending cuts. But even with a smooth debt ceiling decision (which we didn't get!) the budget problem would still exist. So as you say, when you decide to have a talk about whether to pay your debts in the first place, well, investors ought to worry.
Dude, this sounds like cowering. You reason for not doing all this stuff is that you're afraid someone will beat you up, essentially. It's not really a moral justification, just a practical "well, he's got a gun in my face" argument.
One thing to point out is that all those people who are on entitlements have the right to vote. Unlikely that they'll vote for this kind of thing.
I'm not sure it does depend on the school. You'd think a place like Oxford would have a top-of-the-line course. Also, it might be that I'm not including some of the more rigorous stuff like financial derivatives and that type of thing in my evaluation.
I think some schools got into the MBA game simply because they felt they had to since all their "peer" schools had one - and will trade on their name until (or if) they can bring it to the level of their other degrees.
If a school doesn't teach derivatives, economic theory - with real math, not the "for dummies" version, then they are doing their students a disservice.
The thing is, those things are not what I call "Business Administration", although they were actually taught. They're a math course designed for you to get a job at an investment bank, rather than a course teaching you how to run a business. Isn't "how to run a business" what it says on the tin?
I'm not sure it does depend on the school. You'd think a place like Oxford would have a top-of-the-line course. Also, it might be that I'm not including some of the more rigorous stuff like financial derivatives and that type of thing in my evaluation.
This is an interesting point, one I hadn't thought of up to now. In fact, it does seem that people without a degree are cut out from certain jobs where the core skill is essentially common sense and ordinary social skills.
I remember working with a trader who was pretty good at what he did (options), but he always felt inferior to guys like me who had a degree and knew the math behind it. He'd gotten in during a bygone era, where a guy could just walk on to the trading floor at 16 and not need a degree. Because actually, you don't even need high school math to trade options. As his world was slowly being taken over by people with credentials, it more or less arbitrarily locked out people without. And yes, he had a different kind of demeanour to your ordinary college educated guy.
Not to slag the concept of an MBA, but I am willing to bet more than a few of us have seen what happens when someone who is essentially a fresh college graduate thinks he knows how to run an engineering entity (and, in fact, doesn't know how to do anything).
NOT to slag MBAs?? They need to be slagged off! At my firm, MBAs are the butt of nearly every joke about incompetence. And that's from someone who's actually sat in a well known business school, "studying" management, leadership, etc. It's a complete and utter scam. What's amazing is even though I thought it was pretty intellectually light (compared to my Engineering degree) I thought I might have learned something useful. Nope. Today, 3 startup-firms on, I can honestly say it didn't help squat. Oh wait, maybe it did help get me in the door, and making people think I knew more than I really did. But that's about it.
Things I learned on the management course: history of various firms (case studies, interesting in the Discovery channel way), different ways to illustrate BGOs. (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious: SWOT analysis, brainstorming, drawing a friggin chart, etc.) How to make things look more complicated than they really are. Don't know why, but many people think you're smart if you confuse them. The smart ones can tell from you explaining things in 2 sentences.
Things I learned in the real world: how to hire people, how to fire them, how to talk to clients, how to talk to suppliers, how to find out what the next move is, how to filter out my industry news, how to rent an office, how to get someone to clean it, how to pay the bills, how to get offshore directors who are competent, how to identify a good lawyer, how to make the most of an accountant, how to get investors, etc. Of course, none of these things can realistically be taught without some business taking a chance on you.
Many of those people who "can't program" actually can program. They simply understand the program's requirements. Maintainable code is not always a requirement since a lot of software written in research labs is intended to be written once and run a handful of times.
It's also worth noting that properly structured code from a programmer's perspective is not always the same as properly structured code from a scientist's perspective. "Turn(ing) problems into object models," may be the last thing that scientific code needs because most problems are procedural in nature (particularly for data analysis, and even for modelling).
This is very true. If your code really doesn't need future modification, that's fine. Often though, you start off thinking "Hmm, this doesn't have to be perfect" and uhm, it's turns out that way when it comes time to extend the functionality.
You can often tell whether someone is "programming as a means to an end (of your own)" versus "programming to build a tool for someone else". For instance, I have experience in the financial industry. Quite a lot of traders see coding as a means to implement their cool new model. Looking at their code, you can often tell. It's as if everything was built to just exactly fulfil the requirement, with no thought to the fact that those requirements might change. But of course, they do change. So you get hacks and workarounds, and cut'n'paste cargo cult code. Kinda like what those Orks in Warhammer 40K might make. And of course the problem with spaghetti code is that if you write it, nobody can ever help you solve problems/improve it. It's the coding equivalent of painting yourself into a corner. There's loads of smart traders out there with an excel spreadsheet that actually is an extension of their personalities (In fact it's their Magnum Opus. Everywhere they go, they try to take this quirky little file with them). Every little hack is something only they can explain (comments, yeah right. Do your body parts have explanatory comments?) and only they can fix if wrong.
On the other hand, you sometimes hire a guy who is a programmer, but knows nothing about the domain. Very good with OO models and that kind, but you have to teach them everything about finance. What's a settlement date, what kinds of options exist, etc. You get what you ask for, because they know how to turn problems into object models, but you have to ask VERY carefully. And teach. Unfortunately, not everyone has time for that, and so you end up with something that still doesn't quite do what it's supposed to.
So you often end up gettings guys who understand the problems, but can't program, programming. And guys who can program, writing the wrong program.
This is so true. Look at older people. They can figure out the single interface telephone, but as soon as you get context menus (smartphones, websites, GPS car nav) they're in deep water. Mind you, not all of them.
I've had similar thoughts myself. Alot of these "combine a and b" patents seems so obvious, it feels like the motivation for bringing them to life isn't having the design, it's having an economic motive for making them. Eg everyone who'd ever played a video game before Wii must have thought "hey, it would be cool to have a stick whose motion can be detected". Nintendo finally decided to try and sell it a few years ago, and that's what they should be rewarded for.
LOL, that's ingenious!
You can talk to people as equals while poking fun at them. But also, it's a bit disingenuous to talk to them as equals when most atheists really cannot, for the life of them, fathom why someone has faith. It just comes out sounding false.
It wouldn't be such a strain if they didn't force him to do a psych test. In fact, if they just treated him like any other religious person, it wouldn't cost more than what the license costs to make for anyone.
That's because mockery is a friggin useful tool! It keeps the faithless entertained, moves the wall-sitters to faithlessness, but it obviously doesn't move the unmoveable.
Satire has always been the most pleasant and entertaining way to debate the issues. The wrong way to do it is violence and threats, which the religulous have been doing for eons. If they really wanted to win people over, they should get some comedians.
He's saying that the test doesn't test what it's supposed to test. Pretty logical.
FYI there's a crazy number of front-office traders running their own "programs" if you call their VBA that. Whatever you think of it, Excel is an easy way to custom-build financial calculations, as well as a simple front-end for displaying information. Usually the guys are too busy to turn their sheet into something more rigorous.
It takes a special kind of pig-headedness to come up with a moral conclusion that doesn't allow for any doubt. The CDO guys could easily have concluded that what they were doing was useful to society. Or they could have decided that they weren't pious enough to come up with a completely solid moral case, just like we all do, all the time, with just about every decision we ever make, and said "well, I can't see any obvious harm" and gotten on with the work.
RTFA, tauday.com. Figure 1.
Looks a bit confusing to me though.
Luckily, you can easily write T=2Pi in your equations. No need to reprint thousands of T-Shirts.
I think the main point of the rant is that Tau somehow seems more fundamental. What defines a circle? A locus of points on a plane equidistant from a certain point. That distance is somehow more fundamental than 2r, even if the distinction is trivial.
e^(i*Tau)=1+0