HN Explorer

21 comments

[ 110 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] thread
shoo
based on "bad extrapolation of trends by eye": we should expect to hit saturation point with a proportion of 1.0 cs papers containing colons by 2180.

this leaves directions for future research: "Colons in paper-titles: are other characters even necessary?"

jaclaz
>"Colons in paper-titles: are other characters even necessary?"

Of course: question marks, but are smiley making characters also needed ;-)?

ape4
Next time I am going to write algorithm64() instead of quicksort()
leothekim
"XYZ considered harmful" is the other one I see in various papers and online posts. Boy does that one get mileage.

https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html

If only that were titled "'Considered Harmful': Considered Harmful".

ljm
‘Considered Harmful’ considered harmful: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the contrived title.

Another format I see maybe a little too much

DominikPeters
There's also The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Colons.
chrisseaton
I don't think those 'considered harmful papers' are actually computer science papers though? Things like 'Go To Statement Considered Harmful' were magazine articles rather than papers.
ncmncm
It was more like a letter to the editor. But the editor invented the title.

Probably should have been "considered as harmful". We would all be better off today.

wyldfire
An English teacher that I had around ~20 years ago told the class that there were studies that considered the effect of a colon in the title alone and they suggested that having a colon in your title resulted in a better grade for your paper.

As a result, I generally take a second or two to write a title that works as phrases separated by a colon. I'll assume I've reaped some ever-so-mild benefit in my career. ;)

cgriswald
I wonder if more colons in the title improves grades further: "The Broadcast MAC Address: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF"

Edit: On second thought, I think there might be some secondary psychological effects with that title that might harm the grade after all.

mannykannot
Right now, 6 of the 30 headlines on the HN front page contain colons.
leblancfg
Minor gripe: that error band needs some tweaking. You can't have negative proportions.
phyzome
It must have taken superhuman willpower not to title this "Colons in computer-science paper titles: Threat, or menace?"
klyrs
Colons in computer-science paper titles: considered unreasonably harmful
bloak
At least papers don't have subtitles (I think). When I have to record the title of a book, if there's a colon or a dash in it then I find it hard to know whether it's being used to separate the "title" from the "subtitle". Alternatively, if I know there's a subtitle then I don't know what to do when entering the data into a form that doesn't accept a subtitle. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(titling) for more information on this point of pedantry.
GGfpc
A lot of the most recent titles featuring colons aren't the type "Proposition: Question?". Most of the papers I read with colons in the title are similar to "Project Name: Project Description"
joker3
Somebody ought to do a breakdown by subfield.