Takes a lot of samples to converge to the mean of a fat tailed distribution.
If ever. The Central Limit Theorem requires the distribution to have finite standard deviation.
Readit Newszeroer commented on For reliable excess returns, VC funds need 500 investments institutionalinvestor.com... · Posted by u/dzink
zeroer commented on Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations businessinsider.com/micro... · Posted by u/sandGorgon
It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, organically viral content, positive/encouraging comment sections. I've been exposed to such a huge diversity of things on Tiktok: people with physical disabilities, hilarious and creative videos from high schoolers, an elementary school kids frog journal, dance videos with single-digit views, large engine repair tips, home improvement tips, pet ducks, absurdist memes. You owe it to yourself to not dismiss Tiktok as a time-waster for idle teens. Those positive aspects of Tiktok are something we should be figuring out how to expand elsewhere.
On your suggestion I browsed the front page for 10 minutes just to see what all the fuss has been about. Tiktok is worse than I could have imagined.
zeroer commented on Stanford students recreate 5,000-year-old Chinese beer recipe news.stanford.edu/2017/02... · Posted by u/benbreen
Coincidentally, a few years back, one of my application essay for Stanford undergrad was about "Cooking archeology", and how re-creating dishes from the past could deliver contextual insights for historical and anthropological studies among other things.
You're bringing into clear relief why I wasn't accepted to Stanford.
zeroer commented on Too many people have peed in the pool (2016) stephenfry.com/2016/02/pe... · Posted by u/oli5679
> Where Stephen Fry discovers the concept of the Eternal September.
zeroer commented on Tanzania bans newspaper for 2 years iafrikan.com/2017/06/17/t... · Posted by u/tefo-mohapi
zeroer commented on Tanzania bans newspaper for 2 years iafrikan.com/2017/06/17/t... · Posted by u/tefo-mohapi
Lacking a definite article is incorrect and worse, confusing.
"Tanzania bans fruit for two years"
"Tanzania bans song for two years"
The rules for newspaper headlines is not the same as for normal sentences.
> "Tanzania bans song for two years"
That's ungrammatical as a sentence but a perfectly good headline.
I was under the impression that the fractal dimension must be greater than the topological dimension for the space to be a fractal.
And that the fractal dimension is usually equivalent to the mincowski dimension (the limit of the area measured by finite boxes as the size of the boxes grows arbitrarily small) and hausdorf dimension (the limit of the perimeter as measured by an aproximting polygon with equal length sides as the number of sides grows arbitrarily large) along with others.
Yea, in metrizable spaces, those statements are equivalent.
I fail to see how the planting patterns are fractal. A fractal pattern is one which repeats itself at different scales. I realize that the repetition does not need to be exact but I don't see how there is any at all in this situation.
There's no One True Definition of what it means to be fractal, but a lot of working mathematicians use the criterion that a space's Hausdorf dimension is not equal to its topological dimension. Oftentimes (but not always), the Hausdorf dimension will be fractional, which is where the word comes from. Self-similarity is an easy way to satisfy that requirement in a way that's easy to explain, but it's far from the only way.
The article posits that maybe advanced alien civilizations may be motivated to build larger (and hence harder to to detect) Dyson spheres for the efficiency gains. While that's a possibility, it's also possible that being harder to detect is an end unto itself for safety reasons.
> A common example to help explain sunk costs is the movie theater experience, where a person buys a ticket and, 20 minutes into the movie, she realizes that it is a horrible movie and it will only get worse.
Offtopic I know, but twice in my life I've walked out of a terrible movie at the theater within the first 30 minutes and gotten a refund from the manager. Don't think you have to sit through terrible movies!