Chinjut

79 ms·

811.
by Chinjut 12y ago
I think they're using "idempotent" to mean "If you do it again, you'll get the exact same result as the first time". (The usage isn't quite the same as in the jargon sense of "f is idempotent in case
812.
by Chinjut 12y ago
"The suggestion that universities might be more efficient than private corporations at anything is almost comic." It's not a priori implausible to me. Why shouldn't there be things universities do better than corporation
813.
by Chinjut 12y ago
"Let's say we have a whiteboard and we have to count how many individuals visit our home. If our neighbor visits 5 times, they count as one unique visitor. If a friend comes over once, that's another unique visitor. So far, w
814.
by Chinjut 12y ago
The problem dragonwriter was moving towards pointing out is that, for example, if the active voice version of a sentence is "John eats food", then the passive voice version would be "Food is eaten by John", not "Foo
815.
by Chinjut 12y ago
"Complaining is great." Such integrity! Even on this issue, they stick to their non-complaining principle!
816.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Nevermind 1.618... What a silly number. All that was special about it was that its square was one plus itself. Well, so what? That's also true of f: f^2 = 1 + f. And continuing in this way, we find that f^3 = f^2 * f = (1 + f) * f = f
817.
by Chinjut 12y ago
There are more solutions than just that; for example, we could take x to be the matrix [[387, 320], [-480, -397]] (so x^2 = [[-3831, -3200], [4800, 4009]]), or the split-complex number 8j - 5 (so x^2 = 89 - 80j), or 5 in the ring of integer
818.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Does prose not also often come with huge leaps and unstated assumptions?
819.
by Chinjut 12y ago
(Minor clarification: I wrote "paternity leave" thinking "That's the gender-neutral term, right? The one with 'parent' in it?". In retrospect, I realize my brainfart, but can no longer edit. Please pretend
820.
by Chinjut 12y ago
> The result is decreased productivity, which hurts the economy. The economy is an abstraction which we care about only to the extent that it tracks people's aggregate happiness. So if you're going to consider the harm to &quot
821.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Because it would be a nicer world to live in (in my opinion and many others') if becoming a parent didn't practically require sacrificing one's career and thus future livelihood. Mind you, I'd be happy to see paternity l
822.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Sounds like an argument for detangling healthcare from the employer-employee relationship, possibly through a single-payer system...
823.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Mind you, there are also a number of old, old discussions of the problems of Bayesian statistics, which I fully expect to grow and die without the world having resolved (or, even worse: considered resolved too glibly!).
824.
by Chinjut 12y ago
> By definition luxuries are not necessities. If people can do without them fine (millions of people don't drink or smoke), they are not necessities. I daresay, it's a necessity for human beings to experience less than complete
825.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Is any attempt to get people to consider changing their behavior to be dismissed as censorship and ostracism? We should never be able to say to anyone "Hey, you're being a jerk. It would be better if you were less of a jerk."
826.
by Chinjut 12y ago
I'm glad you pointed this out to your teacher. It is worth noting, though, that if it weren't for the arbitrary "If it's exactly halfway inbetween, you should just round it up" rule taught as received wisdom in scho
827.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Your translation does not capture what they are saying. They are asking what quantity the slope of the line (as in, rise over run) corresponds to. The answer should be a noun phrase describing some numerical quantity, not a sentence describ
828.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Sure, you could just as well predict one from the other. But the question asks "What is the following is the best interpretation of the _slope_ of the line of best fit in the context of this problem?", and you are expected to inte
829.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Physicists reject that thought experiments have value? I'd say the context in which I most frequently hear the phrase "thought experiment" (or "Gedankenexperiment") is physics! Indeed, that is historically where the
830.
by Chinjut 12y ago
p-adic numbers are actually quite simple; so simple, I've actually seen children invent it on their own!! They're just like ordinary decimal notation numbers, except instead of allowing these to extend infinitely to the right (as
831.
by Chinjut 12y ago
I'm perfectly happy claiming lots of things which have been hotly debated in (politico-)-philosophical circles for a long time. And so, I imagine, are most people, including (politico)-philosophers themselves. That everyone doesn'
832.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Just to clarify where this number comes from: Wikipedia tells me the number of deaths caused by the 9/11 attacks was "2,996 (2,977 victims, 19 hijackers)". Where do I find 2953?
833.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Just to clarify where this number comes from: when I follow your first link, I get "2381 INCIDENTS". Where do I find 3467?
834.
by Chinjut 12y ago
I suppose, if the game doesn't end immediately upon solution, of course it could be possible to have both an even- and an odd-length solution: if it's possible to solve ending on a white square, then it's also possible to giv
835.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Hm... You're saying it can be possible to solve two different ways with two different numbers? Suppose the corners and the center are black and the other squares are white. Then every two moves in a row adds one to black and one to whi
836.
by Chinjut 12y ago
In support of the grandparent comment, one does suppose Ford was motivated to his actions not purely of his own accord, but, rather, was also influenced by the ambient environment of a thriving and contentious labor movement, which in its a
837.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Small correction: "Gandhi". [The fact that you included Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah in your list suggests to me you quite possibly are South Asian and thus perhaps are already aware of this and simply made a typo; however, as this m
838.
by Chinjut 12y ago
As a mathematician, I was all ready to be dismayed by or dismissive of the article, as with almost all popular discussion of mathematics (and particularly so with the reams of nonsense which have been written in the past about "the gol
839.
by Chinjut 12y ago
Or, what's needed is for us as a society to decide we have some other fundamental goal than "productivity".
840.
by Chinjut 12y ago
What does "wanky" mean in this context?

More ›