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> Somehow I doubt "Leo" actually understands anything about NP-completeness The parent is a Stanford professor that studies scientific reasoning. I would assum

> Somehow I doubt "Leo" actually understands anything about NP-completeness The parent is a Stanford professor that studies scientific reasoning. I would assume he is a good judge of what his kid understands. This article was 4 years into a series about teaching his child STEM concepts. https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/about/ https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/about/

rejectedandsad 5y ago
I love seeing that I’m literally mentally challenged compared to this third grader. Christ I hate myself.
CaptainNegative 5y ago
An adjunct*. Also, I'm going to go ahead and say it. I don't buy it. The third grader with three different sets of handwriting who needs to write down carries in order to compute 2.16 + 0.87 and who 30 days earlier was still learning basic algebra suddenly has his own programming language in which he's doing implicit typecasting into bit vectors to enumerate a set of 2^n solutions?
- MontyCarloHall 5y ago
  You’re right, the handwriting depicting the “SnuffyCode” program is far neater than the handwriting enumerating basic arithmetic on the worksheet. Looks like Leo’s dad wrote the “SnuffyCode.” I guess Leo could have been dictating to his dad, but why not just write it himself? If he’s capable of coming up with his own programming language as a third grader, he’s definitely capable of writing ~10 lines of code in it himself. The handwriting on the worksheet is actually really neat for a third grader!
  - abrax3141 5y ago
    I can clear this up, at least a bit, since I was there. (Although I can’t say that I clearly remember every detail.) All the writing on the problem page is definitely Leo’s, and, yes, he wrote the misspelled “NP Complete”, and did (does) know what it means, at least in the sense of a problem that has an easy to check solution, but for which you have to try every possible combination to find them. As for Snuffycode, the writing is obviously mine, and the language is obviously nonsense. (I guess he wrote out the template.) I think that what was happening is that we were talking through an algorithm using a binary selection mechanism (APL-Like, as mentioned). As with the Lisp, I was “typing” but we were talking it through collaboratively. At least that’s my recollection.

rejectedandsad 5y ago

I love seeing that I’m literally mentally challenged compared to this third grader. Christ I hate myself.

CaptainNegative 5y ago

An adjunct*. Also, I'm going to go ahead and say it. I don't buy it. The third grader with three different sets of handwriting who needs to write down carries in order to compute 2.16 + 0.87 and who 30 days earlier was still learning basic algebra suddenly has his own programming language in which he's doing implicit typecasting into bit vectors to enumerate a set of 2^n solutions?

MontyCarloHall 5y ago
You’re right, the handwriting depicting the “SnuffyCode” program is far neater than the handwriting enumerating basic arithmetic on the worksheet. Looks like Leo’s dad wrote the “SnuffyCode.” I guess Leo could have been dictating to his dad, but why not just write it himself? If he’s capable of coming up with his own programming language as a third grader, he’s definitely capable of writing ~10 lines of code in it himself. The handwriting on the worksheet is actually really neat for a third grader!
- abrax3141 5y ago
  I can clear this up, at least a bit, since I was there. (Although I can’t say that I clearly remember every detail.) All the writing on the problem page is definitely Leo’s, and, yes, he wrote the misspelled “NP Complete”, and did (does) know what it means, at least in the sense of a problem that has an easy to check solution, but for which you have to try every possible combination to find them. As for Snuffycode, the writing is obviously mine, and the language is obviously nonsense. (I guess he wrote out the template.) I think that what was happening is that we were talking through an algorithm using a binary selection mechanism (APL-Like, as mentioned). As with the Lisp, I was “typing” but we were talking it through collaboratively. At least that’s my recollection.