Reporter: So, Mr. Einstein, what's in your gadget bag?
Einstein: Gad-get who?
Reporter: Gadget bag?
Einstein: Oh, a clickitty sack! No, I don't carry those. I used to have a compass, but I ruined that with the magnet.....I also used to have a motorcycle, but my licence got revoked for driving too fast. I explained to the officer that I was going under the speed limit, but he didn't understand....
Reporter: I see, how fast where you going?
Einstein: c
Reporter: see what?
Einstein: No, 299,792,458 m / s
Reporter: Could you convert that into miles per hour?
Einstein: No.
Reporter: Yeah, I was never good at math either. So, what gadgets... err I mean clickitty things do you carry around?
Einstein: Oh, just a pencil and paper.
Reporter: How about a watch?
Einstein: Ah, I find it irrelevent.
Reporter: I see. That's not too impressive. I hear even Von Neumann carries around a cell phone.
Einstein: Look, Johnny and I never got along... I don't mean to bad mouth the guy, but you think he'd invented a new fundamental law of physics or something. Oh and Godel tried to get me one of those pre-paid things... I never use it. I told him, I don't even wear socks, and when I do where socks they don't match. Oh, and I don't tie my shoe laces either. Mrs. Godel bought me some velcro shoes. They're nice.
Look, folks it's engineering. It takes time. Frankly, competition is good. You have to understand, most of these schools/people participating don't make multi-million dollar robots for a living. CMU is probably the best (where's MIT??). Maybe CalTech or Berkeley is a close second. We didn't win the space race overnight. Engineering takes time. Eventually, the competition will learn the best techniques and everybody profits. It's is an educational thing...
DARPA checklist: -sentient AI -robust hardware design -massively parallel neural net -robust error handling -programmed fundamental laws of robotics -able to withstand a tank blast -able to withstand a bomb shell -able to withstand a nuclear/biological/chemical attack -able to withstand a REALLY BIG MAGNET!
Seriously, I think even Sadam could beat our robots! Just buy the mother of all big magnets (or make one). Oh that's right, they need electricity! Sorry, carry on. Maybe they could get a donkey to run on treadmill and make a generator.... (Okay, not so seriously.)
So, how robust can any robot be? All I need is a really big magnet and it's screwed.
Yeah, how come the Terminator/Matrix/Inspector Gadget never had to worry about magnets?
You forgot the UN version, which complains about all of the DDOS attacks going on in the world but never manages to actually turn itself on.
Or you've got the Democratic version which complains about the Republican version and then finds another server and does the same thing (like Bosnia, Somalia, and Kerry's remarks on Haiti).
Pretend that I'm a hacker running a DDOS attack. One, if not a few of the machines I am using to run this DDOS attack on a server has this anti-DOS software. The server under attack would have this software as well.
I'll let you think about that scenario. It's probably unlikely, but it's still fun to think about. However, remember that if some guy has hijacked grandma's PC, the ISP she uses may have such software. I'm guessing the architect of this software didn't pay attention during his Operating Systems course.
Oh, and of course I have to include the obligatory: 1. Actually devise security software to bring down the ENTIRE internet. 2. ???* 3. Profit!
"Not many people understand how rare it is to really, really know something." -Richard Feynman
If I could ACCURATELY predict the stock market, weather patterns, or the lottery -- would you call that intelligence? If I could quickly tell you the final result of any given set of initial conditions -- would you call that intelligence?
Intelligence is predicatability. People may be impressed by philosophers and musicians, however when it comes to raw brainpower, never look past mathematics and the hard sciences. Predicitability is key. Anyone can collect stamps. Anyone can observe. Most people can describe. However ask for an uncanny and accurate prediction and the room becomes silent.
I've found that studying mathematics and science has improved my ability to understand history, the humanities, and art. You learn to quantify things in science. When you study physics you learn what really knowing something means. You learn about the limits of knowing what you can know. You can only quantify so much. The question is how much can we actually quantify?
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." -Albert Einstein
Reasoning is basic symbolic manipulation
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform. -Bertrand Russell
Reasoning is basic symbolic manipulation. Even Aristotle believed this. Look at the syllogistic form. A tautology is a valid line of reasoning. Admittedly, any attempt to formalize inductive reasoning is as weak as formalizing probability itself.
Intelligence is about encoding mechanisms. When you make a mapping from the real world to a rigourous set of rules or you merely compare sets of rules, you are finding a way to encode one system in terms of another. Thus the application of analytical geometry to our (observed) real space, is an encoding of real world geometry into algebraic equations. Any description in one has a signifigant result in the other.
Teach yourself
You've got to teach yourself. Frankly, even Havard won't make the dumb smart, it will only make them educated. Just having the ability to break down information and understand it on your own is a skill. You've get to be able to solve problems on you're own. Don't just stare at the problem. Play with it. Do something. Even if it's tedious. You'd be suprised at how just hacking away at a piece of it can help you solve a problem. Heck, I'm probably preaching to the choir here.
"Don't let school get in the way of your education." -Mark Twain (or Ben Franklin or somebody else...)
Give me a man who is mathematically mature and physcially intuitive and I will give you a genius. Genius is merely a social measurement of intelligence. Whose to say if Einstein was smarter than Hilbert. Was Godel smarter than Russell? Frankly, most of these parlor discussions are nothing more than pure bovine fecal matter. Don't obsess about how intelligent other people think you are. Frankly, if you're really smart, you will get two responses, comraderie or fear. Intelligent people will seek your company. Insecure people will tell you that you are foolish or ignorant only because they fear you actually know more. Intelligence is part performance and part stubborn confidence that you can figure something out by shear intellectual will. Of course, proving that you are a genius or even a genius in a world of geniuses is tough. However, I will leave that exercise to the reader.
Social skills go two ways. It's no shock that Jessica Simpson is an outgoing person. I'm sure she's been treated differently for a long time. Social skills are as much a feedback mechanism as they are a raw skill. Just like confidence. This is not to say there aren't smart people with social skills. I'm just saying he needs motivation to preen himself.
So, the key is that he** atleast socializes with someone. He needs to feel that the investment in his personal grooming is worth something. He probably feels that combing his hair and coordinating his clothes doesn't give him much ROI.
First, he needs to improve his self-image. I think weightlifting (or running, etc) is a great place to start. Martial arts is good too. Second, he needs to find a outlet for social activity. He needs to find a place where he will be both accepted and recieve some sort of positive feedback causing himself to feel the investment in appearance is worth something.
Perhaps the best thing you can do is provide oportunities for him to socialize. For instance, maybe you and a couple of the other college students could take the high school students out for the day. Get a group of them together. Your student probably never will hang out with jocks. That's fine, as long as he finds his own circle of friends.
(** I'm picking a sexist pronoun and sticking with it!)
I think the internet IS about distribution. Sure the grey or black markets always utilize new channels first. Porn drove VCR sales. Porn drives the internet. That's only because porn isn't run by wall street. Heck, there's probably more web based, technological innovation in pornography than most dot-coms. Of course the business has a higher ROI that most. That doesn't hurt.
Frankly, if big business didn't have a grapple hold on music, movies, and media we'd see quite the renaissance of art on the web. It's happening slowly. The tide is turning. Eventually some artist will get it. They will produce a piece of content so thought-provoking so as to avoid the mainstream media and go directly to the people. Heck, look at the "Drudge Report". Say what you will about his journalistic standards. Herst was a muck-racker too.
In some ways the internet was always about exchanging math texts. The early internet (newsgroups and email) was populated by mostly academics discussing research. Sure this is a much more formal and evolved extension of that. However, I think the spirit remains the same.
You said it yourself, these books use web technology in a special way. They use the web as a distribution channel. Using your reasoning, an mp3 doesn't use web technology. Yet, ask the MPAA or any teenager and the terms mp3 and the web are pratically synonymous. It's all about distribution.
However, I'd recommend you take a look at "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson
Yes, I'm redundant.
It seems both Freeman Dyson and Richard Feynman used this book in their youth. I've seen numerous people reference it. It's the best INTRODUCTORY calculus book there is. Frankly, non-standard analysis is really for logicians.
Actually, in the newer additions of "Calculus Made Easy", (a classic in "dummy" or rote calculus) Martin Gardner addresses why Calculus books are so thick (and cost so much). Frankly, companies are afraid to leave anything out. Quite often these books are used for 3 classes (up to multivariate calculus). When a professor and/or department are looking at a calculus book they are often factoring in many things. At the big engineering schools students from numerous departments will be taking this course. Thus the need to cover a little bit of everything. You've got to worry about the accreditation boards. You've also got to factor in the poor high school preperation of the average calculus student. Plus, you've got to add in the high failure rate (the books shouldn't make the class harder).
Frankly, I don't mind spending a bit of money on the books for any introductory course sequences. If the books are good, I'd use them for reference.
I'd love to see more open source math books. With that said, why not use a Dover book. Dover publications often reprints classics in the field. These books are dirt cheap. Some people love Dover books and some people loath them. Still, you can't beat the price.
Frankly, I like Micheal Spivak's Calculus books. If you want a quick refresher (i.e. if you're an engineer, etc) try "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson.
Re:What do...
on
Real's Reality
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I know you'd probably have to kill me first...
What kind of data could you possibly have on those disks. Wen Ho Lee (spy or not) managed to sneak out quite a bit of data between his ears. Heck, they practically leave the back door open at a DOE facility!
"Yeah, insurance companies take your money. They say they want to insure you, but when you get sick, they don't want to pay. What if cops did that? Oh, there is a crime being committed. Well, sorry, we don't do that."
just find a clever encoding scheme
on
The Memory Masters
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· Score: 3, Informative
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin." -John Von Neumann
Any decimal number has approximately 3/10 the number of characters of it's binary equivalent. There is no exponential change in the shear number of characters to process. [e.g. 2^10=1024, 2^20=1M etc]
Thus If I encode my data from binary to HEX, I get better "compression" of information.
Note: IIRC, according to Algorithmic Information Theory, if I were trying to encode "all the data of the universe", then the fact that my compression scheme only reduces the amount of information by a constant and the computation for conversion would probably be so incredibly expensive, there exists no computational gain from Mnemonics.
However, if I'm given a piece of paper and allowed to use a clever encoding scheme than might be able to "memorize" anything. I only need to memorize a smaller number and the program, which encodes it. Thus deriving my result. Remember, by the rules of this competition I have more time than memory here. Frankly, I think an encoding competition would be more interesting.
I'm curious as to how this philosophy relates to AIT, Wolfram's Principle of Computational Equivalence, and foundational mathematics.
"There are two kinds of science -- physics and stamp collecting" -Ernest Rutherford (Or has he quoted similarly, if I wanted to memorize science, I would have studied botany)
Is this really a "computer" or data storage?
on
The Disposable Computer
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· Score: 5, Interesting
...the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data, the company says.
What do they mean by process? It sounds more like data storage. This is quite different than a computer. What kind of calculations (or computations) can it do?
All of the examples could easily be implemented on this paper computer with nothing more than a clever encoding scheme and be decoded by a real electronic computer (PDA) with a scanner.
In short this sound like a new type of ticker tape. The PDA and scanner would be the "Turing machine" (or processor).
Frankly, syntax is the least of my worries. Languages can be learned. Coding conventions can be followed. Even Coco the monkey knows how to mash the keys!
How clean is his psuedocode? How well does the coder think? Can the programmer think in a step-by-step fashion? Do they know how to solve problems? I'd hire a logician or a physicist over a pure syntax monkey just because I have faith that they can solve problems.
Frankly, you can't win with interviewers. They want codeaholics who work 80 work weeks for fun. Companies want you to have social skills but no social life.
I'm guessing Persi Diaconis (a Havard educated statistician who has appearantly published a lot of work in statistics [I'm estimating from his site he's published 150 papers on the subject, and no I'm obviously not a statistician]), his wife Susan Holmes, and Richard Montgomery probably had a conversation over a couple of beers at a conference.
They probably didn't get any funding. They're statisticians and probably used to it.
I am a US citizen. However, I was born abroad in Canada. I have lived in the US most of my life. Only making the situation more murky, my father was a Canadian citizen at my birth (now a US citizen, and my mother was born in the US). I have considered obtaining a dual citizenship.
How do Canadian employers and schools view people with dual citizenship? All of my work experience is in the US. Are there any real benefits? (One person mentioned that showing a Canadian visa in foriegn airports is one such advantage.)
I've spent the last 5 years writing code. I've gone back to school to finish my degree. I hate writing code, but I enjoy mathematical logic. I like the rigour of foundational mathematics and theoretical CS.
Unfortunately, CS courses don't transfer well, and I don't feel like paying large ammounts to private school to finish non-major coursework (unfortunately I can't transfer non-major coursework in from another university at my old school).
I hate writing stupid code. I hate paying someone for the privilege of writing trivial classroom code. I'm working without the degree, so a math/physics double major with a minor in CS will work for me. Frankly, no one cares what your major was in IT. CS-based math courses (theory of computation|algorithms|discrete math) tend to lack rigour. My experience is that they often stop sort of proof. How can you study graph theory without proofs? Erdos and Dykstra are rolling over in their graves! CS is the one field you can teach yourself.
Do you want to be in IT or do you like applying computers to scientific problems? Frankly, physics, chemistry, and biology have computational subfields. There are even a few bioinfomatics programs for undergraduates. You might find cognitive science or statistics interesting. Heck, many good physics departments offer a computational physics/scientific computing course(s). It just depends.
The other option might be to suffer through a few CS courses, and get a degree in something else and study CS at the graduate level. Most CS departments take people from other disciplines. Math is the best in that regard. Some MIS programs (like CMUs) allow you to focus on non-programming areas and are pretty good. You might like a program like Boston University's "Cognitive and Neural Systems". CalTech has a similar program at the Koch Lab. I even saw a "computational mathematics" program at JHU that required little programming. In fact, some of the best computer scientists are secretly mathematicians. Knuth, (Martin) Davis, Minsky, Ritchie, and many others have PhDs in math.
The little joke among computer scientists is that the best don't often study it. Logicians and combinatorical mathematicians tend to be better with the theory. Engineers are better with hardware. EEs are usually the ones who write device drivers. Heck, who wouldn't want a Claude Shannon or Lofti Zadeh working on CS problems. Frankly, I don't understand the point of modern-day CS. It's not math and it's not quite engineering. I like CS, but I just hate the boring coursework.
If you're still not convinced take a look at "The Feynman Lectures on Computation" and "Feynman and Computation". One of his hobbies was algorithm analysis. The man wasn't just a brilliant physicist. He did ground-breaking work with computers. I was first introduced to analog computation and quantum computation by Richard Feynman's work. He also worked on some deeper computational problems during the Manhattan Project (see "Surely You're Joking" [his memoirs]).
I've spent the last 5 years writing code. I've gone back to school to finish my degree.I hate writing code. I enjoy mathematical logic. I like the rigour of foundational mathematics/theoretical CS.
Unfortunately, CS courses don't transfer well, and I don't feel like paying large ammounts to finish non-major coursework (unfortunately I can't transfer it in from another university) at my old school.
I hate writing stupid code. I hate paying someone for the privilege of writing trivial classroom code. I'm working without the degree, so a math/physics double major with a minor in CS will work for me. Frankly, no one cares what your major was in IT. CS-based math courses (theory of computation|algorithms|discrete math) tend to lack rigour. My experience is that they often stop sort of proof. How can you study graph theory without proofs? Erdos and Dykstra are rolling over in their graves! This may be differ by school. CS is the one field you can teach yourself.
Do you want to be in IT or do you like applying computers to scientific problems? Frankly, physics, chemistry, and biology have computational subfields. There are even a few bioinfomatics programs for undergraduates. You might find cognitive science or statistics interesting. Heck, many good physics departments offer a computational physics/scientific computing course(s). It just depends.
The other option might be to suffer through a few CS courses, and get a degree in something else and study CS at the graduate level. Most CS departments take people from other disciplines. Math is the best in that regard. Some MIS programs (like CMUs) allow you to focus on non-programming areas and are pretty good. You might like a program like Boston University's "Cognitive and Neural Systems". CalTech has a similar program at the Koch Lab. I even saw a "computational mathematics" program at JHU that required little programming. In fact, some of the best computer scientists are secretly mathematicians. Knuth, (Martin) Davis, Minsky, Ritchie, and many others have PhDs in math.
The little joke among computer scientists is that the best don't often study it. Logicians and combinatorical mathematicians tend to be better with the theory. Engineers are better with hardware. EEs are usually the ones who write device drivers. Heck, who wouldn't want a Claude Shannon or Lofti Zadeh working on CS problems. Frankly, I don't understand the point of modern-day CS. It's not math and it's not quite engineering. I like CS, but I just hate the boring coursework.
If you're still not convinced take a look at "The Feynman Lectures on Computation" and "Feynman and Computation". One of his hobbies was algorithm analysis. The man wasn't just a brilliant physicist. He did groundbreaking work with computers. I was first introduced to analog computation and quantum computation by Richard Feynman's work. He also worked on some deeper computational problems during the Manhattan Project (see "Surely You're Joking" [his memoirs]).
I'm taking a class on Shakespeare this semester. One of the things I've learned is that Shakespeare seems to have lifted all of his plots from other sources. He put out a great deal of effort adapting their work for the stage. Yet no one (other than students) would question the great bard's place in history.
Incidentally, I first heard Steve Jobs use the above quote. It was from a Bob Cringly PBS special. Steve Jobs had been accused of "stealing" the Mac's features from XEROX PARC.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I was being sarcastic!
I was looking for funny, not insightful!
Reporter: So, Mr. Einstein, what's in your gadget bag?
Einstein: Gad-get who?
Reporter: Gadget bag?
Einstein: Oh, a clickitty sack! No, I don't carry those. I used to have a compass, but I ruined that with the magnet.....I also used to have a motorcycle, but my licence got revoked for driving too fast. I explained to the officer that I was going under the speed limit, but he didn't understand....
Reporter: I see, how fast where you going?
Einstein: c
Reporter: see what?
Einstein: No, 299,792,458 m / s
Reporter: Could you convert that into miles per hour?
Einstein: No.
Reporter: Yeah, I was never good at math either. So, what gadgets... err I mean clickitty things do you carry around?
Einstein: Oh, just a pencil and paper.
Reporter: How about a watch?
Einstein: Ah, I find it irrelevent.
Reporter: I see. That's not too impressive. I hear even Von Neumann carries around a cell phone.
Einstein: Look, Johnny and I never got along... I don't mean to bad mouth the guy, but you think he'd invented a new fundamental law of physics or something. Oh and Godel tried to get me one of those pre-paid things... I never use it. I told him, I don't even wear socks, and when I do where socks they don't match. Oh, and I don't tie my shoe laces either. Mrs. Godel bought me some velcro shoes. They're nice.
What we haven't landed on Mars yet?
Look, folks it's engineering. It takes time. Frankly, competition is good. You have to understand, most of these schools/people participating don't make multi-million dollar robots for a living. CMU is probably the best (where's MIT??). Maybe CalTech or Berkeley is a close second. We didn't win the space race overnight. Engineering takes time. Eventually, the competition will learn the best techniques and everybody profits. It's is an educational thing...
DARPA checklist:
-sentient AI
-robust hardware design
-massively parallel neural net
-robust error handling
-programmed fundamental laws of robotics
-able to withstand a tank blast
-able to withstand a bomb shell
-able to withstand a nuclear/biological/chemical attack
-able to withstand a REALLY BIG MAGNET!
Seriously, I think even Sadam could beat our robots! Just buy the mother of all big magnets (or make one). Oh that's right, they need electricity! Sorry, carry on. Maybe they could get a donkey to run on treadmill and make a generator.... (Okay, not so seriously.)
So, how robust can any robot be? All I need is a really big magnet and it's screwed.
Yeah, how come the Terminator/Matrix/Inspector Gadget never had to worry about magnets?
Oddly, the graph for a Spaulding Gray movie looks an awful lot like a Steven Segal movie.
Perhaps "Under Siege" would appear as a spiral (like a black hole) with him at the center!
Actually, Spaulding Gray (I've only seen Gray's Anatomy) plays many parts in his plays/movies. So a good textual analysis would reveal that.
Have you seen Citizen Kane?
You forgot the UN version, which complains about all of the DDOS attacks going on in the world but never manages to actually turn itself on.
:)
Or you've got the Democratic version which complains about the Republican version and then finds another server and does the same thing (like Bosnia, Somalia, and Kerry's remarks on Haiti).
Ba-dum-ching
Pretend that I'm a hacker running a DDOS attack. One, if not a few of the machines I am using to run this DDOS attack on a server has this anti-DOS software. The server under attack would have this software as well.
I'll let you think about that scenario. It's probably unlikely, but it's still fun to think about. However, remember that if some guy has hijacked grandma's PC, the ISP she uses may have such software. I'm guessing the architect of this software didn't pay attention during his Operating Systems course.
Oh, and of course I have to include the obligatory:
1. Actually devise security software to bring down the ENTIRE internet.
2. ???*
3. Profit!
*Insert Trial Lawyer here...
My advice is to study math and the sciences.
Intelligence is predictability
"Not many people understand how rare it is to really, really know something."
-Richard Feynman
If I could ACCURATELY predict the stock market, weather patterns, or the lottery -- would you call that intelligence? If I could quickly tell you the final result of any given set of initial conditions -- would you call that intelligence?
Intelligence is predicatability. People may be impressed by philosophers and musicians, however when it comes to raw brainpower, never look past mathematics and the hard sciences. Predicitability is key. Anyone can collect stamps. Anyone can observe. Most people can describe. However ask for an uncanny and accurate prediction and the room becomes silent.
I've found that studying mathematics and science has improved my ability to understand history, the humanities, and art. You learn to quantify things in science. When you study physics you learn what really knowing something means. You learn about the limits of knowing what you can know. You can only quantify so much. The question is how much can we actually quantify?
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
-Albert Einstein
Reasoning is basic symbolic manipulation
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
-Bertrand Russell
Reasoning is basic symbolic manipulation. Even Aristotle believed this. Look at the syllogistic form. A tautology is a valid line of reasoning. Admittedly, any attempt to formalize inductive reasoning is as weak as formalizing probability itself.
Intelligence is about encoding mechanisms. When you make a mapping from the real world to a rigourous set of rules or you merely compare sets of rules, you are finding a way to encode one system in terms of another. Thus the application of analytical geometry to our (observed) real space, is an encoding of real world geometry into algebraic equations. Any description in one has a signifigant result in the other.
Teach yourself
You've got to teach yourself. Frankly, even Havard won't make the dumb smart, it will only make them educated. Just having the ability to break down information and understand it on your own is a skill. You've get to be able to solve problems on you're own. Don't just stare at the problem. Play with it. Do something. Even if it's tedious. You'd be suprised at how just hacking away at a piece of it can help you solve a problem. Heck, I'm probably preaching to the choir here.
"Don't let school get in the way of your education."
-Mark Twain (or Ben Franklin or somebody else...)
Give me a man who is mathematically mature and physcially intuitive and I will give you a genius. Genius is merely a social measurement of intelligence. Whose to say if Einstein was smarter than Hilbert. Was Godel smarter than Russell? Frankly, most of these parlor discussions are nothing more than pure bovine fecal matter. Don't obsess about how intelligent other people think you are. Frankly, if you're really smart, you will get two responses, comraderie or fear. Intelligent people will seek your company. Insecure people will tell you that you are foolish or ignorant only because they fear you actually know more. Intelligence is part performance and part stubborn confidence that you can figure something out by shear intellectual will. Of course, proving that you are a genius or even a genius in a world of geniuses is tough. However, I will leave that exercise to the reader.
Social skills go two ways. It's no shock that Jessica Simpson is an outgoing person. I'm sure she's been treated differently for a long time. Social skills are as much a feedback mechanism as they are a raw skill. Just like confidence. This is not to say there aren't smart people with social skills. I'm just saying he needs motivation to preen himself.
So, the key is that he** atleast socializes with someone. He needs to feel that the investment in his personal grooming is worth something. He probably feels that combing his hair and coordinating his clothes doesn't give him much ROI.
First, he needs to improve his self-image. I think weightlifting (or running, etc) is a great place to start. Martial arts is good too. Second, he needs to find a outlet for social activity. He needs to find a place where he will be both accepted and recieve some sort of positive feedback causing himself to feel the investment in appearance is worth something.
Perhaps the best thing you can do is provide oportunities for him to socialize. For instance, maybe you and a couple of the other college students could take the high school students out for the day. Get a group of them together. Your student probably never will hang out with jocks. That's fine, as long as he finds his own circle of friends.
(** I'm picking a sexist pronoun and sticking with it!)
I think the internet IS about distribution. Sure the grey or black markets always utilize new channels first. Porn drove VCR sales. Porn drives the internet. That's only because porn isn't run by wall street. Heck, there's probably more web based, technological innovation in pornography than most dot-coms. Of course the business has a higher ROI that most. That doesn't hurt.
Frankly, if big business didn't have a grapple hold on music, movies, and media we'd see quite the renaissance of art on the web. It's happening slowly. The tide is turning. Eventually some artist will get it. They will produce a piece of content so thought-provoking so as to avoid the mainstream media and go directly to the people. Heck, look at the "Drudge Report". Say what you will about his journalistic standards. Herst was a muck-racker too.
In some ways the internet was always about exchanging math texts. The early internet (newsgroups and email) was populated by mostly academics discussing research. Sure this is a much more formal and evolved extension of that. However, I think the spirit remains the same.
You said it yourself, these books use web technology in a special way. They use the web as a distribution channel. Using your reasoning, an mp3 doesn't use web technology. Yet, ask the MPAA or any teenager and the terms mp3 and the web are pratically synonymous. It's all about distribution.
Go ahead and try it...
However, I'd recommend you take a look at "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson
Yes, I'm redundant.
It seems both Freeman Dyson and Richard Feynman used this book in their youth. I've seen numerous people reference it. It's the best INTRODUCTORY calculus book there is. Frankly, non-standard analysis is really for logicians.
3) He had an ASS of a professor who wanted him to fail!
Actually, in the newer additions of "Calculus Made Easy", (a classic in "dummy" or rote calculus) Martin Gardner addresses why Calculus books are so thick (and cost so much). Frankly, companies are afraid to leave anything out. Quite often these books are used for 3 classes (up to multivariate calculus). When a professor and/or department are looking at a calculus book they are often factoring in many things. At the big engineering schools students from numerous departments will be taking this course. Thus the need to cover a little bit of everything. You've got to worry about the accreditation boards. You've also got to factor in the poor high school preperation of the average calculus student. Plus, you've got to add in the high failure rate (the books shouldn't make the class harder).
Frankly, I don't mind spending a bit of money on the books for any introductory course sequences. If the books are good, I'd use them for reference.
I'd love to see more open source math books. With that said, why not use a Dover book. Dover publications often reprints classics in the field. These books are dirt cheap. Some people love Dover books and some people loath them. Still, you can't beat the price.
Frankly, I like Micheal Spivak's Calculus books. If you want a quick refresher (i.e. if you're an engineer, etc) try "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson.
I know you'd probably have to kill me first...
What kind of data could you possibly have on those disks. Wen Ho Lee (spy or not) managed to sneak out quite a bit of data between his ears. Heck, they practically leave the back door open at a DOE facility!
I know this sounds stupid, but I'd try a magnet before I'd burn the hard drive. :)
This reminds me of the following comedy bit:
"Yeah, insurance companies take your money. They say they want to insure you, but when you get sick, they don't want to pay. What if cops did that? Oh, there is a crime being committed. Well, sorry, we don't do that."
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin."
-John Von Neumann
Any decimal number has approximately 3/10 the number of characters of it's binary equivalent. There is no exponential change in the shear number of characters to process.
[e.g. 2^10=1024, 2^20=1M etc]
Thus If I encode my data from binary to HEX, I get better "compression" of information.
Note: IIRC, according to Algorithmic Information Theory, if I were trying to encode "all the data of the universe", then the fact that my compression scheme only reduces the amount of information by a constant and the computation for conversion would probably be so incredibly expensive, there exists no computational gain from Mnemonics.
However, if I'm given a piece of paper and allowed to use a clever encoding scheme than might be able to "memorize" anything. I only need to memorize a smaller number and the program, which encodes it. Thus deriving my result. Remember, by the rules of this competition I have more time than memory here. Frankly, I think an encoding competition would be more interesting.
I'm curious as to how this philosophy relates to AIT, Wolfram's Principle of Computational Equivalence, and foundational mathematics.
"There are two kinds of science -- physics and stamp collecting"
-Ernest Rutherford
(Or has he quoted similarly, if I wanted to memorize science, I would have studied botany)
...the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data, the company says.
What do they mean by process? It sounds more like data storage. This is quite different than a computer. What kind of calculations (or computations) can it do?
All of the examples could easily be implemented on this paper computer with nothing more than a clever encoding scheme and be decoded by a real electronic computer (PDA) with a scanner.
In short this sound like a new type of ticker tape. The PDA and scanner would be the "Turing machine" (or processor).
Actually, that's an interesting point. I've occaisionally played devil's advocate myself. I don't think people would pick up on that.
Oh, and you can keep your weekly garbage!
How about the ability to solve problems?
Frankly, syntax is the least of my worries. Languages can be learned. Coding conventions can be followed. Even Coco the monkey knows how to mash the keys!
How clean is his psuedocode? How well does the coder think? Can the programmer think in a step-by-step fashion? Do they know how to solve problems? I'd hire a logician or a physicist over a pure syntax monkey just because I have faith that they can solve problems.
Frankly, you can't win with interviewers. They want codeaholics who work 80 work weeks for fun. Companies want you to have social skills but no social life.
Dykstra is rolling in his grave.
I'm guessing Persi Diaconis (a Havard educated statistician who has appearantly published a lot of work in statistics [I'm estimating from his site he's published 150 papers on the subject, and no I'm obviously not a statistician]), his wife Susan Holmes, and Richard Montgomery probably had a conversation over a couple of beers at a conference.
They probably didn't get any funding. They're statisticians and probably used to it.
My question is somewhat of an inverse.
I am a US citizen. However, I was born abroad in Canada. I have lived in the US most of my life. Only making the situation more murky, my father was a Canadian citizen at my birth (now a US citizen, and my mother was born in the US). I have considered obtaining a dual citizenship.
How do Canadian employers and schools view people with dual citizenship? All of my work experience is in the US. Are there any real benefits? (One person mentioned that showing a Canadian visa in foriegn airports is one such advantage.)
I've spent the last 5 years writing code. I've gone back to school to finish my degree. I hate writing code, but I enjoy mathematical logic. I like the rigour of foundational mathematics and theoretical CS.
Unfortunately, CS courses don't transfer well, and I don't feel like paying large ammounts to private school to finish non-major coursework (unfortunately I can't transfer non-major coursework in from another university at my old school).
I hate writing stupid code. I hate paying someone for the privilege of writing trivial classroom code. I'm working without the degree, so a math/physics double major with a minor in CS will work for me. Frankly, no one cares what your major was in IT. CS-based math courses (theory of computation|algorithms|discrete math) tend to lack rigour. My experience is that they often stop sort of proof. How can you study graph theory without proofs? Erdos and Dykstra are rolling over in their graves! CS is the one field you can teach yourself.
Do you want to be in IT or do you like applying computers to scientific problems? Frankly, physics, chemistry, and biology have computational subfields. There are even a few bioinfomatics programs for undergraduates. You might find cognitive science or statistics interesting. Heck, many good physics departments offer a computational physics/scientific computing course(s). It just depends.
The other option might be to suffer through a few CS courses, and get a degree in something else and study CS at the graduate level. Most CS departments take people from other disciplines. Math is the best in that regard. Some MIS programs (like CMUs) allow you to focus on non-programming areas and are pretty good. You might like a program like Boston University's "Cognitive and Neural Systems". CalTech has a similar program at the Koch Lab. I even saw a "computational mathematics" program at JHU that required little programming. In fact, some of the best computer scientists are secretly mathematicians. Knuth, (Martin) Davis, Minsky, Ritchie, and many others have PhDs in math.
The little joke among computer scientists is that the best don't often study it. Logicians and combinatorical mathematicians tend to be better with the theory. Engineers are better with hardware. EEs are usually the ones who write device drivers. Heck, who wouldn't want a Claude Shannon or Lofti Zadeh working on CS problems. Frankly, I don't understand the point of modern-day CS. It's not math and it's not quite engineering. I like CS, but I just hate the boring coursework.
If you're still not convinced take a look at "The Feynman Lectures on Computation" and "Feynman and Computation". One of his hobbies was algorithm analysis. The man wasn't just a brilliant physicist. He did ground-breaking work with computers. I was first introduced to analog computation and quantum computation by Richard Feynman's work. He also worked on some deeper computational problems during the Manhattan Project (see "Surely You're Joking" [his memoirs]).
Type analog computation in a search engine and you'll see that this area of CS is done by other other fields. I've been reading about the applications of analog computation and their relation to limits of computation (see Neural Networks and Analog Computation: Beyond the Turing Limit). In fact, the future of computing may lie in some analog world. The computer program is math (see An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications). Church's Thesis may prove to be the most valuable piece of 20th century mathematics. In fact, I've seen a few logicians that use LISP code to do mathematical work (like Gregory Chaitin).
Ultimately, I think you need to figure out what you really enjoy doing and find other people who are doing it.
I've spent the last 5 years writing code. I've gone back to school to finish my degree.I hate writing code. I enjoy mathematical logic. I like the rigour of foundational mathematics/theoretical CS.
Unfortunately, CS courses don't transfer well, and I don't feel like paying large ammounts to finish non-major coursework (unfortunately I can't transfer it in from another university) at my old school.
I hate writing stupid code. I hate paying someone for the privilege of writing trivial classroom code. I'm working without the degree, so a math/physics double major with a minor in CS will work for me. Frankly, no one cares what your major was in IT. CS-based math courses (theory of computation|algorithms|discrete math) tend to lack rigour. My experience is that they often stop sort of proof. How can you study graph theory without proofs? Erdos and Dykstra are rolling over in their graves! This may be differ by school. CS is the one field you can teach yourself.
Do you want to be in IT or do you like applying computers to scientific problems? Frankly, physics, chemistry, and biology have computational subfields. There are even a few bioinfomatics programs for undergraduates. You might find cognitive science or statistics interesting. Heck, many good physics departments offer a computational physics/scientific computing course(s). It just depends.
The other option might be to suffer through a few CS courses, and get a degree in something else and study CS at the graduate level. Most CS departments take people from other disciplines. Math is the best in that regard. Some MIS programs (like CMUs) allow you to focus on non-programming areas and are pretty good. You might like a program like Boston University's "Cognitive and Neural Systems". CalTech has a similar program at the Koch Lab. I even saw a "computational mathematics" program at JHU that required little programming. In fact, some of the best computer scientists are secretly mathematicians. Knuth, (Martin) Davis, Minsky, Ritchie, and many others have PhDs in math.
The little joke among computer scientists is that the best don't often study it. Logicians and combinatorical mathematicians tend to be better with the theory. Engineers are better with hardware. EEs are usually the ones who write device drivers. Heck, who wouldn't want a Claude Shannon or Lofti Zadeh working on CS problems. Frankly, I don't understand the point of modern-day CS. It's not math and it's not quite engineering. I like CS, but I just hate the boring coursework.
If you're still not convinced take a look at "The Feynman Lectures on Computation" and "Feynman and Computation". One of his hobbies was algorithm analysis. The man wasn't just a brilliant physicist. He did groundbreaking work with computers. I was first introduced to analog computation and quantum computation by Richard Feynman's work. He also worked on some deeper computational problems during the Manhattan Project (see "Surely You're Joking" [his memoirs]).
Type analog computation in a search engine and you'll see that this area of CS is done by other other fields. I've been reading about the applications of analog computation and their relation to limits of computation (see Neural Networks and Analog Computation:
Beyond the Turing Limit. In fact, the future of computing may lie in some analog world. The computer program is math (see An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications)
"Good artists plagiarize; great artists steal."
I'm taking a class on Shakespeare this semester. One of the things I've learned is that Shakespeare seems to have lifted all of his plots from other sources. He put out a great deal of effort adapting their work for the stage. Yet no one (other than students) would question the great bard's place in history.
Incidentally, I first heard Steve Jobs use the above quote. It was from a Bob Cringly PBS special. Steve Jobs had been accused of "stealing" the Mac's features from XEROX PARC.