graycat

151 ms·

991.
by graycat 7y ago
I was talking in general, a little more specifically about the news media, and not at all about Dr. Drosten.
992.
by graycat 7y ago
> Right now what the world needs more than anything is precise, clear, accurate information. Right: Among the things we need, good data is a biggie. Part of that is what I've been addressing here: Test quality , especially for te
993.
by graycat 7y ago
No, that misses a big point: (1) Now, in the present context, quite broadly, the testing is important . (2) The news media reports lots of testing , e.g., from China, South Korea, Italy, the US, etc., e.g., lots of the testing from early
994.
by graycat 7y ago
It's easy to get a low rate of false positives: Just always report no virus found. So, we care about both false positives and false negatives. Dr. Brix said as much recently.
995.
by graycat 7y ago
Wondered about such things and just looked into the subject. In simple terms, here in the US, we only have a little data. E.g., apparently a big fraction of the data we have closely relevant to these questions is in a US CDC report "S
996.
by graycat 7y ago
Of course optimization went back at least to Newton and his work to find the shape of a frictionless wire that would let a bead slide down in least time. That problem was a seed for the field of calculus of variations and later determi
997.
by graycat 7y ago
WOW! There is still some interest in optimization? I'm shocked! The message long was "Operations Research is dead." Gee, I got started in OR (operations research) at FedEx, covered a lot from some of the best people in gra
998.
by graycat 7y ago
How is the virus doing in Singapore, an island on the equator?
999.
by graycat 7y ago
20+ years ago I took a grad course in coding theory, e.g., W. Wesley Peterson and E. J. Weldon, Jr., Error-Correcting Codes, Second Edition , The MIT Press. -- gee, people are still studying/learning that? The prof knew the material r
1000.
by graycat 7y ago
Simmons? WOW! He's a serious mathematician, e.g., as in his George F. Simmons, Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis . I studied it one summer in an NSF program at Vanderbilt. Then I concluded that he is one heck of a good m
1001.
by graycat 7y ago
> it is impossible to minimize three different functions over the same parameters simultaneously. There is a topic called "multi-objective" optimization. Once I took a course in it from a guy, later President at CMU, who was
1002.
by graycat 7y ago
Sorry to get away from some really nice physics and suggestion of some really good news for some of relevant reality: The cooling towers? The photographs in the news commonly show huge clouds of water vapor escaping from the tops of the to
1003.
by graycat 7y ago
Okay, maybe I understand and have no question now!
1004.
by graycat 7y ago
> My point is, you can basically use the term AI to justify virtually anything when it comes to the value of software, which just makes articles like this not valuable at all. The article has SOME value!!!! E.g., a nice list of what can
1005.
by graycat 7y ago
> Statistics? As in David Freedman's books? Uh, statistics tries to be applied probability with some assumptions, theorems, proofs, results, and applications. E.g., the assumptions for regression analysis that let us use and F-rati
1006.
by graycat 7y ago
> practically to one trusted party with an SQL database. Nicely put. For some months I posted essentially this description to Fred Wilson's AVC.COM. Good to see that I'm not the Lone Ranger in this view. IIRC I also mentione
1007.
by graycat 7y ago
As I recall, way back in the years of IBM's language PL/I, there was some high quality documentation of the numerical methods of the code for the usual special functions. Since the functions haven't changed and numerical met
1008.
by graycat 7y ago
For the last 10+ years, I had TV service from my Internet access provider and three nice TV sets but NEVER watched TV, never turned on two of the TV sets, and used the third set only to watch VCR tapes of good movies. I had TV service from
1009.
by graycat 7y ago
Yes, one of my best tools is a single text file, FACTS.DAT, that I use to remember essentially all little facts . What is amazing is the combination of (i) how simple the file is, (ii) how easy it is to use, (iii) how little work it took t
1010.
by graycat 7y ago
The OP is talking academic secrets and essentially office politics . I've had some experience with such secrets and getting around the politics so will chip in! (1) Some Academic Ground Rules Some high end research universities sta
1011.
by graycat 7y ago
Yes, the important role of luck is what is true usually, and even nearly always. If you were picking life directions, startup projects, etc. from such directions and projects randomly , i.e., uniformly distributed across such directions an
1012.
by graycat 7y ago
IIRC, eventually Opsware was a success and, thus, Horowitz was on the main point successful . Congrats for his success. From that essay I see two points: (1) He was spending money, apparently mostly VC equity money, rapidly before he had
1013.
by graycat 7y ago
My favorite of such applications of probability is the Poisson stochastic arrival (get arrivals at discrete points in time) process. There are two amazing, powerful, useful, non-obvious biggie points: (1)Axiomatic Derivation As in Erhan
1014.
by graycat 7y ago
So, yup, we need at least old common high school term paper writing standards, e.g., support every claim with good references to high quality, credible, primary sources. And, of course, as you mention, give the darned dates. Ah, maybe a
1015.
by graycat 7y ago
Yes, to quote, as I wrote, > notes to get a nephew of 9 I'm writing the notes for my 9 year old niece. So, the notes are for a boy of 9. And it's calculus, for a boy of 9. Of course it's "calculus 1". I thought I
1016.
by graycat 7y ago
How to find an accurate numerical approximation to e, the base of the natural logarithm? Last weekend stumbled onto a shockingly easy and effective way! Google query "base of the natural logarithm e" reports e = 2.718281828459 th
1017.
Editor finds natural log base to 36 digits
2 points by graycat 7y ago|0 comments
1018.
by graycat 7y ago
Yes, but my understanding is that RNA life is not very "significant".
1019.
by graycat 7y ago
Yes, amazing stuff: (1) If we have a rock, can we expect slowly by small modifications to make it into a hammer? (2) If we have a horse, can we expect slowly by small modifications to make it into a Model T? (3) ... a mechanical adding mach
1020.
by graycat 7y ago
> #2 to #1 in the list of Google results. My user interface is very different from Google's, so different there's no real issue of #1 or #2. Actually that #1 or #2, etc. is apparently such a big issue for Google, SEO, etc. that

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