crntaylor

15 ms·

91.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I can't resist a quick plug for this beautiful O(n) implementation of the fibonacci sequence in Haskell. One line to define the list `fibs` -- an infinite list of fibonacci numbers -- and one line to define the function `fib` which sim
92.
Big data meets the bard: using technology to study literature(ft.com)
2 points by crntaylor 13y ago|0 comments
93.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I disagree with the advice to "focus on the positive feedback". You will already have an unrealistically optimistic view of your app, because it's your baby. Your purpose in showing it to HN (or any other audience) is to get a more accurate
94.
by crntaylor 13y ago
Nice, work! One minor gripe though - every tag I've tried (Java, C, C++, Python, PHP, Haskell, Scala) has had a dropoff in the number of questions asked over the past couple of months. This suggests that there may be some seasonality in the
95.
by crntaylor 13y ago
Gwern wrote a lengthy blog post on improving recall[0] that is worth at least a cursory read. As usual, it is deeply researched and well referenced. The two main takeaways seem to be 1. Spaced repetition works, and 2. Intermittent testing w
96.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I made a quick and filthy script[0] to pull out job listings from indeed.co.uk - it's pretty scrappy but maybe someone wants to try and improve it (or generalize it to other countries) In [348]: %run salary.py "London" "graduate devel
97.
by crntaylor 13y ago
Author of the blog post here. It's amusing to see this submitted by Don Stewart, since it was his explanation[0] of algebraic data types that first made them "click" for me! I think I forgot to mention him in this post, but I remembered in
98.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I'm very skeptical, for the following reasons: 1. The author first released this paper (well, a version of it) in April 2009. It seems unlikely that it would have gone unnoticed for four years if the proof was valid. 2. Aside from a 1979 te
99.
by crntaylor 13y ago
It's a piece of internet slang meaning "I strongly agree" and it adds just as much to the conversation (that is, nothing).
100.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I've read both the Google Trends paper and the Wikipedia paper, and implemented both of them. Two major things jumped out at me - 1. They tried out 40-50 words in Google Trends and backtested all of them. The word 'debt' is the one that per
101.
by crntaylor 13y ago
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "Yo, I'll solve it." Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it.
102.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I don't know where the "Einstein had little formal education in physics" meme originated, but I'd like to kill it. Einstein was awarded a PhD before the publication of any of his seminal 1905 papers.
103.
by crntaylor 13y ago
Music notation does not express concurrency easily. It expresses parallelism easily. It can do this each part can be played in isolation - in other words, they are pure.
104.
by crntaylor 13y ago
http://xkcd.com/610/
105.
by crntaylor 13y ago
The latest iteration of the code (I fixed the bug you pointed out, and another one that I spotted myself) reports 1 death per 0.66 years, which is close to 2 per year. The remaining difference, as you said, could be due to the mortality rat
106.
by crntaylor 13y ago
There's an excellent quotation attributed to Alexandre Grothendieck, one of the greatest mathematicians alive. At a seminar he was giving on analytic number theory, someone suggested that they should consider a particular prime number. "You
107.
by crntaylor 13y ago
Do you have a link for 3? It would probably affect my answer[0] as I was assuming that the probability of dying between ages x and x+1 increases as a power law after age 60 (which fits well for 60 <= x <= 100, but I don't have data
108.
by crntaylor 13y ago
Hah. It's a common trait among mathematicians. I had a stab at an answer myself[0], and gave a ballpark answer (once every 1.62 years). [0] http://math.stackexchange.com/a/387581/4873
109.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that mathematical constructs are part of the universe. David Deutsch has a method for ascertaining whether something can can be said to exist or not - ask whether it "kicks back" when you i
110.
by crntaylor 13y ago
I'm not really disputing that. I just thought it was interesting that the GP's comments didn't seem any less 'truthy' if you switched the roles of the US and China. Think of it as a fun exercise in examining unconscious bias, if you like!
111.
by crntaylor 13y ago
It's always interesting reading reports on China through a US media perspective. Stories go round relatively regularly using very carefully selected snippets of news to paint a particularly negative portrait that isn't factually wrong, but
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by crntaylor 13y ago
Have you also seen the Open Exoplanet Catalogue proposal by Hanno Rein? ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.7121 ) I have no idea if you know him or not, but if not, you should consider getting in touch!
113.
by crntaylor 13y ago
The canonical way to benefit positively from unanticipated random events is to buy volatility. There are many ways to do this - long delta hedged put/call options, long straddles/strangles, long butterflies etc. But perhaps the easiest way
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by crntaylor 13y ago
The implementation is really simple. Buy 1 BTC at current prices. Wait a year. Now your 1 BTC is either worth 1000x as much (with low probability) or nothing (with high probability). Instant lottery!
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by crntaylor 14y ago
> Why bash him? *her
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by crntaylor 14y ago
Read what you quoted. Karazamov didn't say that the hypothetical CEO is 100x more productive, he said that he/she is worth 100x more.
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by crntaylor 14y ago
> By referring to "future returns", he went beyond any rational position, and he directly contradicts the position taken by the SEC on this issue. You asked for an example of a strategy which could reliably beat the market. I offered
118.
by crntaylor 14y ago
It's tough to know where to begin here. To refute the EMH you don't need a 'surefire winning strategy'. You only need a strategy that is profitable in expectation. And it doesn't need to be laid down in advance - all sources of expected ret
119.
by crntaylor 14y ago
Certainly you need to protect against over fitting your models, and you need to consider tail events. But to say that the entire market is fully random is to claim that the efficient market hypothesis holds, which it clearly doesn't - not e
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by crntaylor 14y ago
The general thrust is spot on. Models are approximations. Don't confuse your models with reality. Know what your assumptions are, and have a plan for what to do when those assumptions no longer hold. Know why your models work, so that you

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