As someone who took a standard undergrad linear algebra course but never really used it in my work, what are some good ways to get acquainted with practical applications of linear algebra?
Readit Newsjean_lannes commented on The Little Book of Linear Algebra github.com/the-litte-book... · Posted by u/scapbi
jean_lannes commented on How to avoid P hacking nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/benocodes
The worst part about this:
> Running experiments until you get a hit
Is that it's literally what us software optimization engineers do. We keep writing optimizations until we find one that is a statistically significant speed-up.
Hence we are running experiments until we get a hit.
The only defense I know against this is to have a good perf CI. If your patch seemed like a speed-up before committing, but perf CI doesn't see the speed-up, then you just p-hacked yourself. But that's not even fool proof.
You just have to accept that statistics lie and that you will fool yourself. Prepare accordingly.
These seem like two different things. Testing many different optimizations is not the same experiment; it's many different experiments. The SE equivalent of the practice being described would be repeatedly benchmarking code without making any changes and reporting results only from the favorable runs.
Head to your local physics/engineering/geophysics/climate physics department and offer your help. They will have tons of C++ code requiring work. They will even pay you while you gain experience.
That's a decent idea, thanks
Compilers is a pretty small field, yes. Perhaps developer tooling in general might be a bigger pond? You could try some experiments: writing a language server or a debug server, look into some static analysis, something regarding software manifests?
Otherwise, looking at C++, there's work in finance, gaming, embedded, scientific computing, (and others) ... all quite different areas, with different skills and experiences that would be relevant. You might also think about which companies (or even countries) you'd like to work in, and consider where you'd fit.
Do some research on presentations for C++ conferences: where do the presenters work? Look at open source libraries -- who sponsors the projects? Where do the people work for their day jobs?
If nothing else, doing a bit of thinking and research will give you a good story for why you did a particular project, or tried for a particular internship. Almost anything is a better answer than "it fell in my lap and I had no other ideas" (or "some rando on HN suggested it", for that matter).
Good points, thanks for the help.
If you're wanting an internship, demonstrating an interest in a specific field might help attract people's attention.
I'd suggest looking for a project with a little more specific relevance to a target field (unless you want to work for eg. chess.com, I guess)?
What sorts of target fields do you think would be worth looking at? I'm very interested in compilers, but my sense is that there isn't much entry-level work there.
>This would prevent the kind of situation we have right now where the court is controlled by a minority group that is imposing its views with impunity
You're completely missing the point of the supreme court. It's explicitly not a democratic institution; it's purpose is to protect the constitutional rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The other two branches are democratic; isn't that enough for you?
Surely you see the point of the US being a republic; rule by law, not by men. In your vision of the supreme court, if the majority decided they wanted to lock up some minorty and send them to gas chambers, the court couldn't do anything to stop them because the populace would vote for it in a referendum. That kind of thing has happened countless times in history in countries that didn't have a strong court system capable of protecting people's rights from the tyrrany of the majority.
> In your vision of the supreme court, if the majority decided they wanted to lock up some minorty and send them to gas chambers, the court couldn't do anything to stop them because the populace would vote for it in a referendum
I don't agree with the commenter you responded to, but I think this sort of view is similarly flawed. Many developed Western democracies endow the courts with much weaker powers of judicial review than the US. In the UK, for example, judicial review applies only to Orders of Council, while Acts of Parliament are exempt.
I guess I don't get why the arguments against the Constitution of the time would be useful for "understanding the intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights"?
The Bill of Rights came about largely as a product of anti-federalist agitation. Many prominent federalists felt that a Bill of Rights would be redundant; in federalist 84, Hamilton writes the following:
> There remains but one other view of this matter to conclude the point. The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS. The several bills of rights in Great Britain form its Constitution, and conversely the constitution of each State is its bill of rights. And the proposed Constitution, if adopted, will be the bill of rights of the Union. Is it one object of a bill of rights to declare and specify the political privileges of the citizens in the structure and administration of the government? This is done in the most ample and precise manner in the plan of the convention; comprehending various precautions for the public security, which are not to be found in any of the State constitutions. Is another object of a bill of rights to define certain immunities and modes of proceeding, which are relative to personal and private concerns? This we have seen has also been attended to, in a variety of cases, in the same plan. Adverting therefore to the substantial meaning of a bill of rights, it is absurd to allege that it is not to be found in the work of the convention. It may be said that it does not go far enough, though it will not be easy to make this appear; but it can with no propriety be contended that there is no such thing. It certainly must be immaterial what mode is observed as to the order of declaring the rights of the citizens, if they are to be found in any part of the instrument which establishes the government. And hence it must be apparent, that much of what has been said on this subject rests merely on verbal and nominal distinctions, entirely foreign from the substance of the thing. [1]
I studied Dari own my own and at college as an elective, and ended up taking a job with the ICRC to investigate ISAF war crimes in Afghanistan right after I graduated
These days Dari is my most comfortable second language (and I have quite a few of them)
I'm not sure if, given I had to start from scratch again, I'd go down this route - the description and screenshots seem very overstimulating for me
The most important parts of my language learning in Dari (and Pashto) - the "aha" moments if you will, were trying to express something, making a fool of myself, making everyone around me laugh, and then being gently corrected in a long-winded way (usually because I couldn't understand a simpler, more direct correction)
In hindsight this feels like a very equitable cultural exchange - I learned something valuable about the language and culture while giving my interlocutors a funny memory to share with their friends and family