3 ms·

"Smart" is vague, but in any case I'm not sure it's possible. For sure I can't. Here's my anecdata with a very narrow but pragmatic definition of "smart". When

by stncls 6y ago

"Smart" is vague, but in any case I'm not sure it's possible. For sure I can't. Here's my anecdata with a very narrow but pragmatic definition of "smart". When I did academic research, there was no correlation between any aspect of the casual conversation I held with students and their abilities in maths and CS theory. N=O(10).

totololo 6y ago
Can you explain N=O(10)? is N their ability and O(10) the big O notation (flat and low)?
- MikeTheGreat 6y ago
  I think the idea is that 'N is on the order of 10 students or so'. It's stretching the Big Oh notation but it isn't terrible. I wonder about instead using notation like N = ~10
  - seotut2 6y ago
    > It's stretching the Big Oh notation but it isn't terrible I'd say it is terrible. O(10) is O(1), and it doesn't make a lot of sense in this context (measure of growth to represent a scalar).
    - jaredsohn 6y ago
      Which is also the same as O(1000000000) for which data would have different significance.
    - zests 6y ago
      f = O(n) makes no sense either. It should be f ∈ O(n). However, notation serves us and we don't serve the notation. People say "Big O" when they mean "Big Theta".
deleted 6y ago
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