That's a great page. Would you happen to know of a similar type of resource for statistics?
This site is not as ground-up or comprehensive as Susan Rigetti's page, but I have found it useful: https://statisticsbyjim.com/
Readit Newsninly commented on The Mysterious Disappearance of a Revolutionary Mathematician newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/Anon84
ninly commented on A few things to know before stealing my 914 hagerty.com/media/advice/... · Posted by u/garrepi
Got it. Now, where is the car?
ninly commented on Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons cpcwiki.eu/index.php/472... · Posted by u/meithecatte
This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tarrif.
Tarrif averted, thousands sold!
Its reputation is eternal: http://achewood.com/index.php?date=12012003
This lends credence to the educational reform that I always found the most compelling: kids/people should be reading the chapters for the lecture ahead of time as their homework, and doing the practice problems in class instead of a lecture, so the teacher can actually help students work through problems (rather than parents who don't know the material).
A brief review/lecture at the end to tie together all of that practice intoa coherent story then wraps it all up.
When I first went back to school for tech stuff (ultimately a master's in EE), my instructor for the entire calculus sequence -- and later on for linear algebra -- struck what I found to be the ideal balance. Something like:
0. Homework is never collected or graded, but don't be fooled into thinking it's not required -- that is, if you don't do the homework, you are extremely unlikely to pass the exams/course. Essentially, this is not knowledge we were learning -- it is skills that require practice. Homework is an opportunity to practice and hone skills.
1. Each lecture introduces a concept and/or technique, and works through a few demonstrative problems to show what it means or how it is done. Homework is assigned from textbook problems that involve the same techniques with progressive difficulty or complexity. The textbook used that pattern where odd-numbered problems included solutions, and assignments usually involved the ones with solutions.
2. The last one-quarter to one-third of every class period was dedicated to review and questions about the homework assigned for the previous class. Because we had the correct solutions in the text, we knew what to ask about (i.e. the ones we couldn't get to come out right). This particular instructor was fantastic at thinking on his feet and working problems on the fly, correctly and without preparation, so usually he'd just work the problem on the board and we could stop him to ask for a more detailed explanation if necessary.
Granted, this model didn't work as well for his linear algebra class. Since many of those problems involve long slogs through tedious and error-prone matrix operations before/while you were really dealing with the concept or technique being introduced, he couldn't as easily demo entire solutions during the question/review periods. I suppose that difficulty would apply to several other higher-math topics, as well, but even so, later in my education I often found myself wishing this or that professor would follow the pattern of my humble calculus teacher.
ninly commented on The Uncertain Future of Ham Radio spectrum.ieee.org/ham-rad... · Posted by u/Stratoscope
To me, the encryption things is a big issue. In 1950, transmitting for the world to hear seems reasonable. In 2021, virtually anyone with a few grand could record literally everything transmitted on the 160, 80, 40, 30, and 20 meter bands and archive it for all eternity.
Do I want my casual conversations going into some historical record?
Probably not.
Testing is also a bother. I support testing, mind you, but so much of this is memorizing factoids. "What segment of the 20-meter band is most often used for digital transmissions (avoiding the DX propagation beacons)? (A) 14.000 - 14.050 MHz (B) 14.070 - 14.112 MHz (C) 14.150 - 14.225 MHz (D) 14.275 - 14.350 MHz."
At least we finally got rid of Morse Code.
And aside from that, the authorized modes of transmission aren't that interesting anymore. I'd enjoy experimenting with things like spread spectrum, or similar types of innovative things. Building an SSB radio in 2021 seems archaic.
I think these things are changing, though I hope the changes come sooner than I suspect they actually will. I know there is ongoing discussion about how to bring rules more in line with modern practice and tech, such as the explosion of interest in digital operation over the past decade or so. I doubt this will reach to authorization of fully encrypted casual comms, though some form of encryption isn't out of the question when you get into the emergency comms piece of amateur radio, which is restricted from passing certain health and welfare information over the essentially "open line" of ham radio.
ninly commented on The Uncertain Future of Ham Radio spectrum.ieee.org/ham-rad... · Posted by u/Stratoscope
I'm a newish ham and got my license a couple of years ago. One thing that may not be obvious to long-time hams is how alienating the testing experience can be. Many of us learn online or through printed resources, and our first time meeting the local club is test day. The test process leaves a lot to be desired.
For example, my local area only has exams once per quarter. The time frame is 9 AM - noon on a weekend day, theoretically you can start any time. So I show up at 10 and quickly fill out the 30 question multiple choice technician exam. No problems so far! But then I have to sit and wait over an hour for 3 different examiners to get to my exam and grade it one after the other. I don't know why this rule about grading in triplicate exists, but it meant that despite finishing my exam maybe 90 minutes before the session ended, I was told there wouldn't be enough time for me to take the general exam and get it graded that day. Meaning I had to get up at 8 AM and travel to a neighboring city on the next exam date to get my general license.
The whole thing just feels unnecessarily bureaucratic and alienating, particularly for a hobby. It was less of a hassle last time I went to the DMV.
It's unfortunate that that was your experience. The VE experience does vary a lot from one region or group to another. I know there are VE groups that absolutely do better than this even with the conventional paper approach, make it a priority to do things efficiently, and make sure people can sit for all the exams they need/want during any given session. Also, for what it's worth, the entire study and exam process has been undergoing a lot of transformation, especially in response to the pandemic. I expect to see changes in this process, including expansion of online test opportunities, in coming years.
ninly commented on A catalog of wealth-creation mechanisms (2009) blog.rongarret.info/2009/... · Posted by u/xojoc
> 8. Find entirely new ways of doing any of the above more efficiently or effectively. This is "research" or "invention."
I think automation fits squarely into #8.
I agree, but would add the importance of #3. You can't transform/manufacture things without some process for doing so (or doing so more efficiently or effectively than was previously possible), and the physical means to this itself needs to be created/manufactured. It's 'tooling' and there's a kind of chicken-egg thing going on. Also related to the distinction between algorithms in the abstract sense and the infrastructure (software or otherwise) that enables their implementation.
ninly commented on Show HN: Create your own cellular automata aperocky.com/cellular-aut... · Posted by u/Aperocky
A couple years ago I threw together some MATLAB functions to take a wolfram number and a seed row, along with some cosmetic parameters, to generate elementary cellular automata. Nothing very big or elaborate, but fun and handy for exploring the ECAs themselves.
ninly commented on Shamelessness as a Strategy (2019) nadiaeghbal.com/shameless... · Posted by u/etherio
Duty defined by society and not individuals themselves is a mark of a non-free society. In free society everyone is responsible for choosing their fate and their commitments, externally imposed commitments are kind of oppression.
The survival and progressive sophistication of human society and culture has always depended on the effective function of community-level values -- whether understood in terms of duty, honor, shame, mores, rule of law, or other mechanisms. Some influential portion of a population agrees (organically, culturally) that certain ways of behaving are more valuable (or unacceptable) to the community, even if not every individual necessarily agrees. This can obviously result in extremely non-free societal structures, as you suggest, but community at any significant scale will always require some compromise of individual freedoms.
This is necessitated by the very diversity of individual human proclivities and interests. To refer to the compromise, sacrifice, or diminishment of some of those interests as "oppression" strikes me as selfish and melodramatic, even if it is often regrettable from certain perspectives. Certainly sometimes it is oppression, and it is frequently unfair, but extreme individualism doesn't fix or even address this fundamental tension.
"Spotify touted major user growth to finish out the year, and after announcing that it had best revenue expectations, the company’s stock price jumped."
Then, why would this author choose as title this: "Spotify's podcast bet went wrong"?
Not as professional as I would expect. Just another publisher seeking controversy and clickbait.
There are always deals gone wrong and bad management decisions in a company with the size and notoriety of Spotify. But, its not cool to post a piece that doesn't balance out all valuable info.