elliptic

11 ms·

61.
by elliptic 13y ago
And yet Ed Thorpe, from 1969-88, had 227 months where he made money, and 3 where he lost. Over that time frame, he had a mean return of well north of 15%, with a standard deviation of 4%. What precisely did you prove? Edit - your argume
62.
by elliptic 13y ago
It doesn't bother me that he feels like this. I kinda want the director of national intelligence to be a super-secretive, paranoid psycho. What's disturbing is that his elected handlers apparently feel the same way.
63.
by elliptic 13y ago
There's an amusing though mean-spirited article of Paul Samuelson's purporting to debunk the use of the Kelly Criterion - [url]www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~steele/Courses/434F2005/Context/Kelly%20Resources/Samuelson1979.pdf[/url] (pdf). All
64.
by elliptic 13y ago
Well, that's fair. I suppose I don't in general think much of stories that are essentially philosophical inquiries, with a little bit of "plot" added on. I'm just not emotionally affected by the "Wow" at the end, like I was in Nightfall, o
65.
by elliptic 13y ago
Odd that this is Asimov's favorite - it seems so inferior to Nightfall, or The Dead Past, or probably some others that I am forgetting.
66.
by elliptic 13y ago
Well, in that case the analogy is virtually meaningless, since "witch hunts" have always occurred.
67.
by elliptic 13y ago
Witch hunts were primarily a phenomenon of the early modern period, not the middle ages, during which both the political authorities and the Church repeatedly cautioned against blaming e.g poor crops on supposed witches. Also, I believe abo
68.
by elliptic 14y ago
Jesus, this sounds like my nightmare. Just lead me to my cube and let me get to work.
69.
by elliptic 14y ago
First I've heard anyone referring to James Simons as a physicist.
70.
by elliptic 14y ago
And now Continental's just as bad. Almost makes me want to move to Singapore.
71.
by elliptic 14y ago
I believe Newton and Galileo worked alone for much of their lives. Kepler was far more intellectually generous.
72.
by elliptic 14y ago
I don't agree with your point or its opposite, but the example you give seems like it is at odds with your observations on brevity and symbol usage.
73.
by elliptic 14y ago
Quick note - Nutt is incorrect. The Elysian Fields were a Greek domain of the dead. He probably means the city of Eleusis, which was the location of the famous mysteries, during which some (1) speculate that the participants did in fact u
74.
by elliptic 14y ago
Probably not for useful definitions of "generous," which should take into account the actual utility (in money or time), given away. Someone who donates half of their life savings of 50k is (I would say, at least) more generous than someon
75.
by elliptic 14y ago
Its query planner may be good (I don't know about this), in the sense that it can typically choose the best of a bad lot. However, the query executor (of stock MySQL) is awful - no hash joins? No merge joins? It is good compared to what
76.
by elliptic 14y ago
Let's keep in mind that Exxon and Apple are the world's most valuable publicly traded companies. There are a number of state-owned 0&G companies that are more valuable than both. I believe I read that the market cap, if it were to go
77.
by elliptic 14y ago
If the author was named Henry, the probability that this post would have been written would be far lower. For better or for worse.
78.
by elliptic 14y ago
Oh, that's good to know. What if a security guard had pulled a weapon on him? Would anyone have been injured then? Or what if one of the other customers had rushed him? I used to think that a man (it's almost always a man) brings a loade
79.
by elliptic 14y ago
To anyone who is really interested in the subject, I recommend a book called "Night Falls Fast." It's available as an e-book.
80.
by elliptic 14y ago
< here is nothing inherent to any of the languages I mentioned that makes them slow. I don't agree. The inability to explicitly allocate on the stack in Java and OCaml? The lack of threads in OCaml? Java GC pauses (by the time you're
81.
by elliptic 14y ago
An analytic database like Vertica? A computer game with cutting-edge graphics? Etc.
82.
by elliptic 14y ago
Completely false. Like much of the rest of Bill of Rights, the second amendment has been incorporated (see Chicago vs McDonald), and thus held to apply to the states. It slightly irritates me when people say this, because usually those peo
83.
by elliptic 14y ago
I prefer to solve problems like Hercule Poirot
84.
by elliptic 14y ago
I'd recommend Xenophon's Anabasis.
85.
by elliptic 14y ago
Accutane is pretty miraculous, if you want to risk the side effects and can get it somewhere it's available. It worked for me (~ 10 years ago).
86.
by elliptic 14y ago
Is this situation similar to that of Louis de Branges & the Riemann Hypothesis a few years back? I.e, a well-respected mathematician (de Branges had settled the Bieberbach conjecture in the 80s) releases a proof of an important unsolve
87.
by elliptic 14y ago
Surely the burden is squarely on the author to show what the generalization (in this context) offers that the specific concept of sufficient statistics does not? In other words, how else can a statistician or ML expert use this foreign "mo
88.
by elliptic 14y ago
Have you a link for that?
89.
by elliptic 14y ago
NaN is incredibly useful, but I'm not so sure that 1/"a" = NaN is a great idea.
90.
by elliptic 14y ago
I believe the title should be: From the Times, Advice on Writing Well

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