3 ms·
When the original "If Feynman Applied for a job at Microsoft" was posted (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866305 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=186630
by rflrob 16y ago
When the original "If Feynman Applied for a job at Microsoft" was posted (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866305 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866305), a lot of people commented that this doesn't actually sound like something Feynman would say. Sheldon Cooper, maybe, but Feynman would have loved the simple, elegant solution that relied on no extra tools.
- cruise02 16y agoAlthough I found the article amusing, I have to agree with you. Surely Feynman would have seen the "correct" answer as quickly as any of us mere mortals.
- kd0amg 16y agoThat doesn't mean he'd give that solution right away. This sort of run-around seems to fit his sense of humor.
- jerf 16y agoI felt like the middle of the post wandered around, but the final tirade felt suitably Feynmanish to satisfy me. It reminded me of some comments made about processes in his Challenger analysis. For instance, the bit about claiming a 3x safety margin on ring erosion while not establishing how it actually works to know whether that was a reasonable assumption. Also, part of the assumption of these dialogs is not that Feynman is actually proposing these solutions, but that he is using them to Socratically establish to the listeners the flaws in their layout of the problem. http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.html http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.html
- georgecmu 16y agoReading this reminded me of an old story of an exam question about measuring height of a building with a barometer: http://iws.collin.edu/jtsizemore/4fun/StudentAndBarometer.htm http://iws.collin.edu/jtsizemore/4fun/StudentAndBarometer.ht...