English majors like to quantify things for effect. Engineers are notoriously precise.
English professor: Teens always fall pray to peer pressure!
Engineer: Teens have a tendency to be swayed by peer pressure.
Sweeping generalizations and hand-waving logic is the norm. While I find some the best writers are notorious sticklers for details, most english professors are not.
Teach engineers to write by number.
Most engineers want to find a mechanical process or mathematical model to describe physical phenomena. Their creativity comes from finding and exploiting that model. In other words, show them examples of good writing. Teach them to outline the arguments in the paper. Show them different methods. After seeing several templates in action, most engineers will be happy to deviate from the standard and let their creativity take hold. Engineers like concrete things. They need something to see something 'mechanical' before they can be 'brilliant'.
While I think the best writers are more mechanical than most liberal arts majors want to admit, too often introductory composition and writing courses are taught by flakes. These pseudo-intellectuals like to stuff big words into sentences and construct long-winded diatribes. They're more than happy to deconstruct everything and assume that a book is inherently as consistent as the real world. Reason transcends any field of study and all of the good scholars embrace it. This is true whether the scholar is an english professor at Yale or a physics professor from CalTech.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." -Pablo Picasso
Of course, Steve Jobs copied|stole the quote. (I haven't quite figured out which.)
Shakespeare 'lifted' most of his work from other sources. Of course, in our day we call it 'adapting'. To be quite frank, most of the work that gets 'adapted' is his. So, I'm not so surprised that Hollywood is looking back to old classics for stories. I'm more shocked they aren't going to back to 'real' classics.
Actually a centrifuge (a traditional one) is the opposite of a mixer. It would remove the mix from the liquid alcohol. I don't know much about margaritas, so pardon my dilettante bartending knowledge.
If I start a company in Uzbekistan selling counterfeit IPods, I'm sure I could get money from legitimate investors. How different is that from say large hedge funds that speculate on foriegn currencies? What's illegal on the national level is usually overlooked on the international level. Frankly, I seriously doubt Uzbekistan would extricate me, espcially if I paid them off. Plus, I doubt the US or Japan would want to really get involved in my prosecution, beyond the diplomatic channels. The biggest problem would be distribution channels. Maybe I could start a site called XPods.com. I could send spam and place annoying pop-up ads....
The key reason conterfeiters do what they do is that they can stomp all over any IP law that they want too. They can reverse engineer your best technology. They can sell inferior products with your trademark.
Let me get this straight. You read an exceptionally geeky post and are forced like the 'salivating dog that you are' to imagine it in the Comic Book Guy's voice! That sounds like a rather 'Comic Book Guy' thing to do!* In the voice of Nelson Muntz -- 'HA HA!'
*Yes, I do see the irony in using cliches from other Simpsons characters to ridicule your use of cliches from various Simpsons characters.
Re:There's a reason why retro games are popular...
on
Retro Gaming Hacks
·
· Score: 1
It's not that players have become mindless, it's that gaming has become more pervasive. Your average teenager wasn't about to fire up a C64 or play a MUD in Unix. Gaming has become a form of mass-media. In many ways, especially in terms of money, it's like Hollywood. Frankly, I hope gaming on the PC doesn't die. Even when I was a kid with a Nintendo, all of the 'interesting' games were on the PC. Okay, it was on the Amiga -- but you get my point!
Perhaps I'm getting too old|bitter, but this seems like a dumb joke. Essentially 3 grad students in a relevent field submit a bogus, although somewhat cleverly* generated paper. Frankly, they got accepted because their paper said MIT EECS, not because their program was so great. Sure, I suppose it says a lot about academia. Frankly, if anything, it should be an eye-opening look at the 'Publish or Perish' mania that these kids are walking into.
*I'm impressed in the same way I impressed when a 12 year old script kiddie writes some malicious VBA code and passes it off as a virus. Incidentally, Claude Shannon published a series of papers on such work over 50 years ago. You can find a description of his work, and more, John Pierce's great pop-sci book "An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals, and Noise". Plus, it's a Dover book -- so it's cheap!
I write code for a living professionally. I agree this competition is far from useful. However I think we Americans are overlooking some relevant facts.
We're very fortunate in the United States. It's true that we do very badly on any sort of mean international measures of educational quality. Yet, how many foreign students would give their right arm to go to Caltech or MIT? Most Americans don't have to fight for a successful life. If you want a good job, it's clearly within your grasp. Heck, you get to reach for your dreams. How many kids in a third-world country get a chance at that? If you're born into the wrong caste in India, it can be a challenge just to get an education. (Incidentally, I find the caste system [which seems to be pretty rampant to me; however feel free to correct/enlighten (or the slashdot equivalent ?flame?) me on this] pretty abhorrent.)
Sure, most tests and competitions are garbage. You could argue the Putnam and mathematical olympiads are garbage too. Is it fair that some kids compete against other kids at schools that have classes to study for the Putnam? On the other hand, some previous winners include Irving Kaplansky and Richard Feynman.
If you want to talk about a test that doesn't accurately measure one's worth or ability.... Look at any of the GREs. Incidentally, I'm studying to take the Physics GRE. I do this because I want a chance at going to a good grad school. Sure, if I could afford to go to a better undergrad program, I would. In fact, my professors have suggested it. However, I can't and the GREs are my best shot at acceptance.
At one state university (a somewhat notable one) you can take classes to study for the Math GRE. While I'm not directly competing with those kids, I am competing with other kids who get professional preparation on the physics GRE. All I've got is a bunch of web sites and textbooks. How am I supposed to compete with this? Yet I will. I don't begrudge anyone trying their best to improve their chances for success in life.
Most of these kids in Russia (and other foreign countries) are dying for a chance to get noticed. What looks better on a CS grad school application to United States than winner ACM programming competition? Obviously good grades and research. However, I wouldn't be shocked if some these kids had that as well.
Whoever believes you can't train a genius is full of bunk. Is there any coincidence that Norbert Wiener's father was a linguistics professor at Harvard? How about Von Neumann's private tutors as a young boy? Don't you think those advantages in life make a difference? I for one congratulate everyone for their effort in the competition.
I've noticed that Amazon has a habit of 'lightly editing' reviews if the review will directly hurt their sales. For instance, I once mentioned that the author placed a pdf version of the book on his site. While the reason for this omission is obvious, I didn't like the fact they reworded the review to cover up the modification. I would have prefered they flat out reject the review, insted of rewording it and putting my name on it.
In short, I like amazon.com, but I wish there was a non-profit entity that would provide amazon like content.
(Ahem... I'm looking in your direction Wikipedia!!:) )
I'm not saying Berkeley's contribution to the information superhighway is meaningless, but DARPA, Stanford, and XEROX (PARC) are hardly bastions of liberal hippieness!
What a worthless article. Don't bother to RTFA. It's about as meaningless as you can get. Sheesh, I could write a perl script that does better reporting. No researchers are named. I know that somebody at MIT is doing research of nanotech/biotech batteries. I also that there's some sort of international consortium. I'm not even sure what continent these other researchers are on. I guess I can always look for the article in Science. Sorry if I'm ranting, but I'm actually interested in the article.
Say that we have evidence that information does not exist. Then, it can only be expressed through information.
However, if there is evidence that information doesn't exist, then the only real explanation is that we lack the proper language to express that information. Thus, with no proper language to adequately express itself, information appears to not exist.
Hardy once said that he could prove anything if it given a contradiction to begin with. McTaggart denied the consequence: "if 2+2=5, how can you prove that I am the pope?" Hardy replied: "if 2+2=5, 4=5; subtract 3; then 1=2; but McTaggart and the pope are two; therefore McTaggart and the pope are one."
Having been in similar situations I understand your pain.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere. So commuting to work is hard. Unfortunately, I've often not had stable (i.e. contract) positions where permanency is not guaranteed. Money is often incredibly tight and I had family obligations.
Find the cheap motel rooms in the area. See if you can negotiate a deal with one of them. Perhaps pay for a month or two of 3 nights at a time. Look around the colleges and find a family looking to rent a room. Put an ad in the paper looking for a room to rent.
Find a room to rent. Find someone who wants a low-maintenance roommate. Tell him that you only intend to be there 3-4 nights a week. It's probably cheaper than a motel room.
Could you take a train to work? How about Amtrak? Could this be faster? Could you sleep on the train (may not be a good idea)? I can tell you a 3-hour ride is definitely better than a 3-hour drive.
How big is the company? Could you telecommute part of the time?
What it seems the article is really saying is that "higher-level" brain functions and worrying use the same memory space. There's a lot inferring going on here.
I'm not a logician in real life, but I play one on TV..... One day while casually reading I ran across a natural langauge explanation of the 'Axiom of Choice'. Like everything I find in deep mathematical logic, words can't caveat the details of rigourous foundational axiomatics. For example Godel didn't exactly prove:
In any consistent formalization of mathematics that is sufficiently strong to axiomatize the natural numbers -- that is, sufficiently strong to define the operations that collectively define the natural numbers -- one can construct a true (!) statement that can be neither proved nor disproved within that system itself.
it's just interpreted that way (probably based on reasonable assumption).
What does sufficently strong mean? Does this imply any possible axiomatic system or just those based on primitive recursive functions. I'm sure I'll get flamed by real mathematicians here, but the point I'm trying to make is that taking rigourous quantified statements and expressing them in natural language causes ambiguity. Oversimplifications arise and precious detail is lost. Normally you don't deal with deep meta-theorems about deep meta-theorems so this oversimplification is harmless. However, in the world of science, meta-analysis occurs all the time.
Just for the record, I'd take Godel's simplification of mathematical rigor over anyone else's any day of the week.
In this case, a researcher notices that the same area where "higher-level" brain functions occur is also the same 'working memory space' for worried thoughts. Does this mean smart people can't adapt? Maybe the REALLY smart can? Could Feynman work under pressure? Did Von Neumann eat pressure for breakfast? Not all geniuses are created equal.
The article states: The study analyzed 93 undergraduate students from Michigan State University to determine their working-memory capacities.
So they didn't exactly raid the IAS at Princeton for their study. What you didn't examine Ed Whitten? Oh, but you've examined 'smart people'. What I've found is that after you've mucked in the foundations of your field, you don't have to reason about deep theorems the same way. Rigor trains you in developing your 'intuition'. Thus, you've learned the hard lessons and the work of your field now enters into 'low-level' brain function. I've seen to many stories where the Von Neumanns of the world could perform massive proofs or calculations on the fly because they've managed to place what we view as "higher-level" brain functions as "lower-level" brain functions through practice. They created step-by-step processes out of seemingly creative thought. They've made a seeming complicated process into a rote one (i.e. a step-by-step; daresay 'computable process'). They learned the essence of their trade. Isn't that what analytical reason is all about, explaining complex and meaningful phenomena as a step-by-step, rote process. That's real genius.
Perhaps I'm just rambling, but I don't take all research at face value.
In the future an engineer will write a paper about a new type of computer. It will be the fastest running computational fluid dyanmics simulation in the world. It will be nothing more than a man blowing through a straw. Not every "computer" is digital. Unless of course you are a logician.
Richard Feynman had quite a bit of experience with computers. Aside from heading up the scientific computing program during the Manhattan Project, he published several papers on scientific computation, and lectured frequently about the outer limits of computation (analog and digital).
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to sound like a troll, but what is he supposed to do on Slashdot? Engage in deep and scholarly debate?
English professor: Teens always fall pray to peer pressure! Engineer: Teens have a tendency to be swayed by peer pressure.
Sweeping generalizations and hand-waving logic is the norm. While I find some the best writers are notorious sticklers for details, most english professors are not.
Teach engineers to write by number.
Most engineers want to find a mechanical process or mathematical model to describe physical phenomena. Their creativity comes from finding and exploiting that model. In other words, show them examples of good writing. Teach them to outline the arguments in the paper. Show them different methods. After seeing several templates in action, most engineers will be happy to deviate from the standard and let their creativity take hold. Engineers like concrete things. They need something to see something 'mechanical' before they can be 'brilliant'.
While I think the best writers are more mechanical than most liberal arts majors want to admit, too often introductory composition and writing courses are taught by flakes. These pseudo-intellectuals like to stuff big words into sentences and construct long-winded diatribes. They're more than happy to deconstruct everything and assume that a book is inherently as consistent as the real world. Reason transcends any field of study and all of the good scholars embrace it. This is true whether the scholar is an english professor at Yale or a physics professor from CalTech.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." -Pablo Picasso
Of course, Steve Jobs copied|stole the quote. (I haven't quite figured out which.)
Shakespeare 'lifted' most of his work from other sources. Of course, in our day we call it 'adapting'. To be quite frank, most of the work that gets 'adapted' is his. So, I'm not so surprised that Hollywood is looking back to old classics for stories. I'm more shocked they aren't going to back to 'real' classics.
Actually a centrifuge (a traditional one) is the opposite of a mixer. It would remove the mix from the liquid alcohol. I don't know much about margaritas, so pardon my dilettante bartending knowledge.
If I start a company in Uzbekistan selling counterfeit IPods, I'm sure I could get money from legitimate investors. How different is that from say large hedge funds that speculate on foriegn currencies? What's illegal on the national level is usually overlooked on the international level. Frankly, I seriously doubt Uzbekistan would extricate me, espcially if I paid them off. Plus, I doubt the US or Japan would want to really get involved in my prosecution, beyond the diplomatic channels. The biggest problem would be distribution channels. Maybe I could start a site called XPods.com. I could send spam and place annoying pop-up ads....
The key reason conterfeiters do what they do is that they can stomp all over any IP law that they want too. They can reverse engineer your best technology. They can sell inferior products with your trademark.
*Yes, I do see the irony in using cliches from other Simpsons characters to ridicule your use of cliches from various Simpsons characters.
Sorry, that's only for young people!
It's not that players have become mindless, it's that gaming has become more pervasive. Your average teenager wasn't about to fire up a C64 or play a MUD in Unix. Gaming has become a form of mass-media. In many ways, especially in terms of money, it's like Hollywood. Frankly, I hope gaming on the PC doesn't die. Even when I was a kid with a Nintendo, all of the 'interesting' games were on the PC. Okay, it was on the Amiga -- but you get my point!
Perhaps I'm getting too old|bitter, but this seems like a dumb joke. Essentially 3 grad students in a relevent field submit a bogus, although somewhat cleverly* generated paper. Frankly, they got accepted because their paper said MIT EECS, not because their program was so great. Sure, I suppose it says a lot about academia. Frankly, if anything, it should be an eye-opening look at the 'Publish or Perish' mania that these kids are walking into. *I'm impressed in the same way I impressed when a 12 year old script kiddie writes some malicious VBA code and passes it off as a virus. Incidentally, Claude Shannon published a series of papers on such work over 50 years ago. You can find a description of his work, and more, John Pierce's great pop-sci book "An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals, and Noise". Plus, it's a Dover book -- so it's cheap!
I write code for a living professionally. I agree this competition is far from useful. However I think we Americans are overlooking some relevant facts.
We're very fortunate in the United States. It's true that we do very badly on any sort of mean international measures of educational quality. Yet, how many foreign students would give their right arm to go to Caltech or MIT? Most Americans don't have to fight for a successful life. If you want a good job, it's clearly within your grasp. Heck, you get to reach for your dreams. How many kids in a third-world country get a chance at that? If you're born into the wrong caste in India, it can be a challenge just to get an education. (Incidentally, I find the caste system [which seems to be pretty rampant to me; however feel free to correct/enlighten (or the slashdot equivalent ?flame?) me on this] pretty abhorrent.)
Sure, most tests and competitions are garbage. You could argue the Putnam and mathematical olympiads are garbage too. Is it fair that some kids compete against other kids at schools that have classes to study for the Putnam? On the other hand, some previous winners include Irving Kaplansky and Richard Feynman.
If you want to talk about a test that doesn't accurately measure one's worth or ability.... Look at any of the GREs. Incidentally, I'm studying to take the Physics GRE. I do this because I want a chance at going to a good grad school. Sure, if I could afford to go to a better undergrad program, I would. In fact, my professors have suggested it. However, I can't and the GREs are my best shot at acceptance.
At one state university (a somewhat notable one) you can take classes to study for the Math GRE. While I'm not directly competing with those kids, I am competing with other kids who get professional preparation on the physics GRE. All I've got is a bunch of web sites and textbooks. How am I supposed to compete with this? Yet I will. I don't begrudge anyone trying their best to improve their chances for success in life.
Most of these kids in Russia (and other foreign countries) are dying for a chance to get noticed. What looks better on a CS grad school application to United States than winner ACM programming competition? Obviously good grades and research. However, I wouldn't be shocked if some these kids had that as well.
Whoever believes you can't train a genius is full of bunk. Is there any coincidence that Norbert Wiener's father was a linguistics professor at Harvard? How about Von Neumann's private tutors as a young boy? Don't you think those advantages in life make a difference? I for one congratulate everyone for their effort in the competition.
I've noticed that Amazon has a habit of 'lightly editing' reviews if the review will directly hurt their sales. For instance, I once mentioned that the author placed a pdf version of the book on his site. While the reason for this omission is obvious, I didn't like the fact they reworded the review to cover up the modification. I would have prefered they flat out reject the review, insted of rewording it and putting my name on it.
:) )
In short, I like amazon.com, but I wish there was a non-profit entity that would provide amazon like content.
(Ahem... I'm looking in your direction Wikipedia!!
I'm not saying Berkeley's contribution to the information superhighway is meaningless, but DARPA, Stanford, and XEROX (PARC) are hardly bastions of liberal hippieness!
What a worthless article. Don't bother to RTFA. It's about as meaningless as you can get. Sheesh, I could write a perl script that does better reporting. No researchers are named. I know that somebody at MIT is doing research of nanotech/biotech batteries. I also that there's some sort of international consortium. I'm not even sure what continent these other researchers are on. I guess I can always look for the article in Science. Sorry if I'm ranting, but I'm actually interested in the article.
Ironically, you picked a topic out of number theory, which is certainly more accessible to the average joe as opposed to topology or analysis.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
--John von Neumann
Maybe they'll give you a nobel prize for verifying its existence.
While you can't get an MS in Engineering from Stanford from the comfort of your own home, you can get a PhD from Columbia.
Actually, you'd be suprised how many 'prestigious' schools are offering degrees online. We live in an era of 'cheap paper' (or not so cheap...).
Either information exists or it doesn't.
Say that we have evidence that information does not exist. Then, it can only be expressed through information.
However, if there is evidence that information doesn't exist, then the only real explanation is that we lack the proper language to express that information. Thus, with no proper language to adequately express itself, information appears to not exist.
This reminds me of an anecdote about the famous mathematician G. H. Hardy (it's been credited to others as well):
Hardy once said that he could prove anything if it given a contradiction to begin with. McTaggart denied the consequence: "if 2+2=5, how can you prove that I am the pope?" Hardy replied: "if 2+2=5, 4=5; subtract 3; then 1=2; but McTaggart and the pope are two; therefore McTaggart and the pope are one."
In other words, Hardy argued, and most philosophers would agree, given one false idea or inconsistency you can prove anything.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere. So commuting to work is hard. Unfortunately, I've often not had stable (i.e. contract) positions where permanency is not guaranteed. Money is often incredibly tight and I had family obligations.
These are just some thoughts. I hope this helps.
What it seems the article is really saying is that "higher-level" brain functions and worrying use the same memory space. There's a lot inferring going on here.
I'm not a logician in real life, but I play one on TV.....
One day while casually reading I ran across a natural langauge explanation of the 'Axiom of Choice'. Like everything I find in deep mathematical logic, words can't caveat the details of rigourous foundational axiomatics. For example Godel didn't exactly prove:
In any consistent formalization of mathematics that is sufficiently strong to axiomatize the natural numbers -- that is, sufficiently strong to define the operations that collectively define the natural numbers -- one can construct a true (!) statement that can be neither proved nor disproved within that system itself.
it's just interpreted that way (probably based on reasonable assumption).
What does sufficently strong mean? Does this imply any possible axiomatic system or just those based on primitive recursive functions. I'm sure I'll get flamed by real mathematicians here, but the point I'm trying to make is that taking rigourous quantified statements and expressing them in natural language causes ambiguity. Oversimplifications arise and precious detail is lost. Normally you don't deal with deep meta-theorems about deep meta-theorems so this oversimplification is harmless. However, in the world of science, meta-analysis occurs all the time.
Just for the record, I'd take Godel's simplification of mathematical rigor over anyone else's any day of the week.
In this case, a researcher notices that the same area where "higher-level" brain functions occur is also the same 'working memory space' for worried thoughts. Does this mean smart people can't adapt? Maybe the REALLY smart can? Could Feynman work under pressure? Did Von Neumann eat pressure for breakfast? Not all geniuses are created equal.
The article states:
The study analyzed 93 undergraduate students from Michigan State University to determine their working-memory capacities.
So they didn't exactly raid the IAS at Princeton for their study. What you didn't examine Ed Whitten? Oh, but you've examined 'smart people'. What I've found is that after you've mucked in the foundations of your field, you don't have to reason about deep theorems the same way. Rigor trains you in developing your 'intuition'. Thus, you've learned the hard lessons and the work of your field now enters into 'low-level' brain function. I've seen to many stories where the Von Neumanns of the world could perform massive proofs or calculations on the fly because they've managed to place what we view as "higher-level" brain functions as "lower-level" brain functions through practice. They created step-by-step processes out of seemingly creative thought. They've made a seeming complicated process into a rote one (i.e. a step-by-step; daresay 'computable process'). They learned the essence of their trade. Isn't that what analytical reason is all about, explaining complex and meaningful phenomena as a step-by-step, rote process. That's real genius.
Perhaps I'm just rambling, but I don't take all research at face value.
I use my Russian space pen everyday.... (actually it's just a pencil)
I'd correct you, but...
Clearly crossing the road was a process that was hard-wired into his brain.
This reminds me of a joke by Richard Feynman...
In the future an engineer will write a paper about a new type of computer. It will be the fastest running computational fluid dyanmics simulation in the world. It will be nothing more than a man blowing through a straw. Not every "computer" is digital. Unless of course you are a logician.
Richard Feynman had quite a bit of experience with computers. Aside from heading up the scientific computing program during the Manhattan Project, he published several papers on scientific computation, and lectured frequently about the outer limits of computation (analog and digital).