michael_nielsen

13 ms·

1. 91.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   Just as an additional data point: I've heard something in that vein attributed to Durkheim, multiple times. Unfortunately, I do not know the source, and a cursory search doesn't turn anything up.
2. 92.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   The funny thing is, if I had to pick just one of those two, I'd definitely go for online payments.
3. 93.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   Probably: http://www.ctan.org/pkg/xypic Support for tikz would be great, too. More broadly: great project! Looks to bring us closer to the day when math on the web is easy and just works. If you don't mind me ask
4. 94.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   You're right about my background. Still, I know many experimental PhD students who enjoyed great freedom in deciding what to work on. It's not always possible in the most expensive experiments -- a student probably can't ea
5. 95.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   Thanks for the kind words. On institutions: I did my PhD at the University of New Mexico. A fine institution, but also not Harvard / MIT / etc. I went there because Carl Caves had created a great environment to work on quantum i
6. 96.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   I chose my own research questions for my PhD. So did many people I know. And, when supervising my own PhD students, I preferred them to work on their own problems, all other things being equal [1]. The reason is that choosing what proble
7. 97.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   It's a marvellous fact that the Apollo missions achieved escape velocity, or close enough that they could have done so with small design modifications. The calculation is fun: The kinetic energy required to escape Earth's orbit e
8. 98.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   If you're speaking specifically of this experiment, nowhere in the article does it say that it's using entanglement to do faster-than-light communication. So I don't think there's anything to explain. If you're as
9. 99.▲
   by michael_nielsen 12y ago

   Please don't repeat this. It is false. (For this kind of thing, stating credentials seems useful: I was a professional quantum physicist for 13 years, much of that time spent working on the theory of entanglement, and entanglement-bas
10. 100.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Reminds me of Netflix's "Chaos Monkey". Both Entropy and the Chaos Monkey force you to deal with failure as an eventual certainty, not something to ignore and hope it doesn't happen.
11. 101.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Every few weeks on Hacker News we have the following cycle: (1) News article! Prevailing view of physics overturned! Etc! Etc! Etc! (2) Many excited comments! (3) Much less excited comment, pointing to skeptical remarks by well-known prof
12. 102.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    You may enjoy this game, from Jin8 (much, much faster): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jw... It gets particularly incredible at the 5:10 mark.
13. 103.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    As a fun aside: Freud died in 1939, just 75 years ago. I know HN's demographic skews young, but I'll bet there are people reading HN who were alive at the time.
14. 104.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    I'm a bit surprised by this. Most mathematicians know Newton's method. And square roots are trivial to calculate using Newton's method: (1) Goal: compute square root of x. (2) Make a guess, g. (3) Compute an updated guess,
15. 105.▲
    The Lesson of Grace in Teaching(mathyawp.blogspot.com)

    2 points by michael_nielsen 12y ago|0 comments
16. 106.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    This is addressed in the marginal note attached to the sentence you quoted. The essential point is that we're considering classification problems, for which the output is intended to be 0 or 1. I address the more general case of regre
17. 107.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    The OP is quoting LeCun, so this is not a coincidence!
18. 108.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Which statement about cross entropy is confusing?
19. 109.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Thanks for the pointer, this is great. Tip for people without a subscription to Safari: many public libraries have subscriptions, and will allow online access. I'm reading mine through the Toronto Public Library site.
20. 110.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    I've read it before. To me, it looks unedited, and the product of an original mind, but not a kook. A good editor could quickly turn the text into a remarkable essay.
21. 111.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Could submissions from Wired (& other sites which practice link-baity titles) be automatically put in a moderation queue? They wouldn't appear in the "New" queue until the title had been reviewed by a moderator, and fixe
22. 112.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    It's interesting to look at what may be a homepage for the recipient of the letter: http://johnen.shinshu-u.ac.jp/~mano/profile_e.html The letter is from an excellent collection of Feynman letters, "Perfectly
23. 113.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Possibly you're thinking of my article "How the Bitcoin Protocol Actually Works": http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-a... It was on the HN front page 7 months ago.
24. 114.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    This is one of the most beautiful and insightful quotes about creative activity I've ever seen. Thanks for reminding me of it.
25. 115.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Thanks for the clarification. Yes, it would be great to have that policy in the FAQ.
26. 116.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Chapter 3 (of six) will be released mid-July. Apart from that, I haven't set a hard finish date. Some authors are helped by such deadlines, but my experience writing my previous two books is that (for me) such deadlines hinder more t
27. 117.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    I ran an IndieGoGo, which is long since over. Other than the IndieGoGo I haven't given much thought to setting things up so people can contribute, that's very kind of you to offer. I'll investigate adding PayPal or some al
28. 118.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    I'm the author. Thanks for the support! And I'm glad you're enjoying the book. The HN search results suggest that this is the second time the book has made it to the HN front page. However, you may have picked up a differen
29. 119.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    That's right. The search result, however, assumes the only way of accessing the database is through a black box oracle. That's why I wrote "non-oracle" in my previous comment. It's called an oracle because the int
30. 120.▲
    by michael_nielsen 12y ago

    Shor's algorithm is exponentially faster than the best existing classical algorithm for factoring. But that doesn't mean there's not an exponentially faster classical algorithm which would be comparable in speed to Shor&#x27