> When computers first started to become faster than mathematicians this was really a breakthrough. Mathematicians do not compute numbers.
We can formally add and subtract simplices. Homology is (very roughly) counting holes using the modulus (%) operator with respect to this addition and subtraction.
There's an old joke that goes something like this. A math professor was giving a lecture and then remarked that something was trivial. Somebody raises an objection and asks why. The professor stops and thinks hard for…
No, I don't think there is much of a demand, at least not enough to sustain an entire business. You would need to be pulling in serious money from publishers, and on top of that, you're trying to change a system that…
If you're selling worse quality products at a higher price than Wal-mart, then yes, it is silly to start a store right next door. You will probably lose money, like most startups based on bad ideas.
Starting an entire company based on collaborative writing is a junk idea. It's a niche service without much room for improvement, and it's currently being provided for free by one of the largest software companies in…
> So what? Why is lowering wages a bad thing? If the wages are lower across the industry, it means consumers get lower prices. You're totally ignoring the consumer side of the equation. This is incredibly naive. There…
Completely agree. In terms of buzzwords, "passion" is the new "disruptive".
I think this is silly. A BS or MS degree is where you should acquire employable skills. A PhD is an apprenticeship for a research topic.
This is completely wrong. Nobody expects an academic career anymore, and all the PhD students I know are doing it because they really like their subject. It's like aspiring to be an artist.
No. Feynman never took issue with integration notation or how integration is defined or taught. The story you're referring to is how he learned of a technique for computing integrals that was not covered in schools. The…
Many mathematical concepts cannot be translated into programming, since computation is by definition discrete. For example, even a simple concept like irrational numbers cannot be completely captured by code.
This is akin to stating that "public static void main(String[] args)" is complete nonsense when one didn't take the time to learn a little Java first. The linked formula has been completely removed from its context…
Not really. This is more of an example of a "failed experiment" than showing off. Research is hard. You never know if what you're doing will be useful, or just plain wrong.
Lebesgue measure is actually simpler than Borel measure, since it includes all null sets for convenience. Yes, you could not talk about Lebesgue measure at all. However, the importance of theory is that you gain a…
This is abstracted and very understandable. The picture is the definition of a function, which in turn invokes the definition of other functions. The P's are abstractions for conditional probability, the sums are loops…
A lot of the difficulty in mathematics is trying to come up with the correct, precise definitions for "fundamentally simple" ideas (the French are historically well known for this). There is literally no way to get the…
Google often also hires people to do work they are overqualified for. Had a friend turn down Google because it was boring compared to research.
My experience in academic computer science has been the complete opposite. In industry, what I've seen is that often engineers are scrambling to please managers or customers, with work divided among multiple people, so…
> When computers first started to become faster than mathematicians this was really a breakthrough. Mathematicians do not compute numbers.
We can formally add and subtract simplices. Homology is (very roughly) counting holes using the modulus (%) operator with respect to this addition and subtraction.
There's an old joke that goes something like this. A math professor was giving a lecture and then remarked that something was trivial. Somebody raises an objection and asks why. The professor stops and thinks hard for…
No, I don't think there is much of a demand, at least not enough to sustain an entire business. You would need to be pulling in serious money from publishers, and on top of that, you're trying to change a system that…
If you're selling worse quality products at a higher price than Wal-mart, then yes, it is silly to start a store right next door. You will probably lose money, like most startups based on bad ideas.
Starting an entire company based on collaborative writing is a junk idea. It's a niche service without much room for improvement, and it's currently being provided for free by one of the largest software companies in…
> So what? Why is lowering wages a bad thing? If the wages are lower across the industry, it means consumers get lower prices. You're totally ignoring the consumer side of the equation. This is incredibly naive. There…
Completely agree. In terms of buzzwords, "passion" is the new "disruptive".
I think this is silly. A BS or MS degree is where you should acquire employable skills. A PhD is an apprenticeship for a research topic.
This is completely wrong. Nobody expects an academic career anymore, and all the PhD students I know are doing it because they really like their subject. It's like aspiring to be an artist.
No. Feynman never took issue with integration notation or how integration is defined or taught. The story you're referring to is how he learned of a technique for computing integrals that was not covered in schools. The…
Many mathematical concepts cannot be translated into programming, since computation is by definition discrete. For example, even a simple concept like irrational numbers cannot be completely captured by code.
This is akin to stating that "public static void main(String[] args)" is complete nonsense when one didn't take the time to learn a little Java first. The linked formula has been completely removed from its context…
Not really. This is more of an example of a "failed experiment" than showing off. Research is hard. You never know if what you're doing will be useful, or just plain wrong.
Lebesgue measure is actually simpler than Borel measure, since it includes all null sets for convenience. Yes, you could not talk about Lebesgue measure at all. However, the importance of theory is that you gain a…
This is abstracted and very understandable. The picture is the definition of a function, which in turn invokes the definition of other functions. The P's are abstractions for conditional probability, the sums are loops…
A lot of the difficulty in mathematics is trying to come up with the correct, precise definitions for "fundamentally simple" ideas (the French are historically well known for this). There is literally no way to get the…
Google often also hires people to do work they are overqualified for. Had a friend turn down Google because it was boring compared to research.
My experience in academic computer science has been the complete opposite. In industry, what I've seen is that often engineers are scrambling to please managers or customers, with work divided among multiple people, so…