kalid

16 ms·

181.
by kalid 13y ago
(Disclosure: I'll be working with Maria on the calculus series for kids.) I'm a big fan of the conceptual approach. One of the largest problems I see with math education is that we don't check if things are really clicking. I
182.
by kalid 13y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I'm in general agreement with your second summary; basically, the properties of triangles end up appearing all over math, so our trig terminology/relationships become generally applicable, especially to ci
183.
by kalid 13y ago
Shameless plug, I just wrote about how to learn trig without onerous memorization ( http://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-trigonometry/ ). A reader made some simulations based on the dome/wall/ceil
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by kalid 13y ago
I have a self-published math book, more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870015 It began as a beta, then a full PDF + supplement package, then a video course a year later. I'm currently working on a c
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by kalid 13y ago
I vastly prefer Bayes Theorem as ratios vs. percentages (plug, wrote about it here: http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-bayes-theo... ) I like a "factor label" style approach where you can see th
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by kalid 13y ago
Random startup idea, just for fun: have mechanical turk (or a game) to tag the items in the photo. Upload your photos: shed-shelf1.png shed-shelf2.png shed-main.png After a few hours (or days) they are tagged with hammer, wheelbarrow, drill
187.
by kalid 13y ago
If you are keeping a blog anyway (like the author did), then the marginal effort to edit/repackage your best work into a book is not that great. (Another data point: I have a math blog, and did the same ebook repackaging for 12 of my f
188.
by kalid 13y ago
This is the right amount of brevity, IMO. "Omit words" doesn't give you a hueristic about what to omit. "Needless" gives a test you can apply to every word. "Omit words" sounds simpler, even obvious, but o
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by kalid 13y ago
Agreed. There's often a pedantic need to point out some structural "flaw" in a statement and dismiss it, vs. making an effort to gain insight from its message. "All Cretans are liars" - Epimenides The logical robot
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by kalid 13y ago
Thank you for saying this. Logical arguments, especially around fuzzy notions like the feel of a controller, are useful for prioritizing the hypotheses we test. But not for deciding on them. Given 15 different controller designs, use logi
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by kalid 13y ago
Agreed, congrats Dave!
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by kalid 13y ago
Incentives drive behavior (not 100%, but hugely influenced). When real estate agents are incented to sell,your house quickly (vs. at the highest price possible)... they sell your house quickly, and not the highest price possible. For their
193.
by kalid 13y ago
Sure, unless that bathroom is occupied by someone who had gastric issues before you did :). The meta point: If you can't plan around a 30-minute window of no bathroom access, that biological restriction is a bigger concern than arrivin
194.
by kalid 13y ago
The same thing that happens when you develop gastric issues on a 30-minute helicopter tour, as the minister in a wedding ceremony, or in a dentist's chair.
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by kalid 13y ago
Hi, I hope you take my comment well. This need to avoid some theoretical logical contradiction far down the road is similar to explaining the perils of split infinitives before teaching a child to say "I want food." 99.9% of calcu
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by kalid 13y ago
I enjoy using metaphors to explain technical subjects, especially math. Here's an example: http://betterexplained.com/articles/developing-your-intuitio... One strategy I like is laying out the initial analogy, the
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by kalid 13y ago
Exactly. That type of cynicism and one-upmanship is grating.
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by kalid 13y ago
(Author here) Thanks for the feedback! I originally wrote this in 2007 when I was diving into Javascript to build instacalc.com. I agree with the examples vs. trying to read in a book. Books often get in their own way, trying to overgeneral
199.
by kalid 13y ago
An analogy I like to use: imagine you own a Thai restaurant. People come in and love the food. Others don't like it, saying things like "You know, I really prefer sushi, can you serve raw fish?" or "I really like spaghetti, can you use more
200.
by kalid 13y ago
You can effectively leverage 100x with stock options. You can by deep in the money LEAPs (long-term options, expiring 18 months-2 years out) and effectively have the risk profile of the stock itself. You can then sell and roll those over to
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by kalid 13y ago
People often pay double the cost of the house, so on average (for the life of the loan), half of your mortgage payment is equity. In the beginning the vast majority (90%+) is interest. Here's a calculator I whipped up: http://instacalc.com
202.
by kalid 13y ago
As a blogger of 10+ years, I agree. A few more benefits: * "Serializing" your thoughts. You (2013) can explain an idea that you (2014 onward) won't remember. I try to explain "gotcha" moments to myself, in language that works for me, so I w
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by kalid 14y ago
Be really careful about drawing conclusions from thought experiments. Would you assume that people searching for "Toyota Camry" were interested in repairing one or buying one? And why would it be exclusively one group or another? I have a b
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by kalid 14y ago
Given the tone in the initial paragraph, I'm not sure if you're receptive to these arguments, but here goes. Using the very wiki page you linked, over 5 years the changes were: * 4x in default storage * 8x in default RAM * over 4x in number
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by kalid 14y ago
Interesting point, thanks for sharing. I might do CSS targeting for site-wide images, and leave the in-post images (i.e., the ones coming via email & rss) with the high-res versions.
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by kalid 14y ago
I began retina-ifying my website ( http://betterexplained.com ). I'm serving up the high-res images. Something like a logo should be downloaded once and cached for a long time. I have a lot of LaTeX-generated images, which is too painful to
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by kalid 14y ago
I made a calc to crunch the numbers, here: http://instacalc.com/10103 [Shameless plug since it's my own pet project :)]
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by kalid 14y ago
Don't feel bad about charging for your app. Imagine you are opening a new restaurant. Q: The food plucked from the ground tastes better than yours. A: Great! Pluck away. I offer convenience. Q: I want your meal but don't want to pay for it.
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by kalid 14y ago
Exactly. People say they lose $X/hour. The next hour when they come up, is the order rate back to $X/hour, or $X + delayed demand / hour? (Surely there's some loss from being down, but it's not a simple loss = current order rate * downtime
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by kalid 14y ago
You can dynamically create an iframe in JavaScript and do a regular form post to localhost:3000 thorough it.

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