mikebenfield

21 ms·

271.
by mikebenfield 10y ago
Thank you. As someone who is tangentially connected to software (I'm a mathematician who sometimes intersects with CS/software), the anti-intellectual attitude of some software people is really baffling. You're working in a f
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
I think (hope?) that user5994461's post was tongue in cheek. BTW, you are way off saying Don Knuth introduced Big O. It was invented by physicists and mathematicians like Paul Bachmann and Landau, many decades before the 1970s.
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
Just about any introductory anthropology textbook. I think the idea may have originated with anthropologist Donald Brown, who wrote a book Human Universals (which I haven't read) about traits that are pretty much ubiquitous across all
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
Well, I hate to crap on someone agreeing with me, but no, I don't think so. There are no known societies that are clearly matriarchal. The idea that early human society was matriarchal comes out of wild speculation by certain authors w
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
From the article: "In earlier societies where marriage did not exist..." I could stop reading right there. There are essentially no known human societies, past or present, in which marriage does not exist. (Possible exceptions for
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
FYI, the schoolboy is CF Gauss, early 19th century German mathematician who did... tons of stuff. (That's why so much in mathematics and physics is called "Gauss" or "Gaussian.") The graduate student was George Dant
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
"Because if not, you're kind of disproving yourself. Of course genetics can assist you in becoming a good chess player..." I don't understand how I'm disproving myself. I was trying to disprove Ericsson's claim
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
I read The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, co-edited by K. Anders Ericsson, the psychology professor mentioned in this article. His work inspired Malcolm Gladwell's popular work on deliberate practice. I found E
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
There are potentially very politically inflammatory issues that could come up if we start talking about genetic variation in intelligence in humans. Modern anthropologists are extremely keen to avoid any semblance of justifying racism. But
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
> Failing a PhD thesis during the defence is apparently a 'rare occurrence' in most universities. Yes, but not for the reasons you think. Typically the advisor and thesis committee simply will not let the student defend (or at
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by mikebenfield 10y ago
> Writing a 100 page thesis is not hard work either. Maybe don't belittle things you've never done? Doing a PhD is not just sitting down and writing a thesis, and it's also not just taking a few classes that occasionally r
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by mikebenfield 15y ago
There is a lot less to learn (and, probably more relevant, it's much easier to learn) in the world of baseball statistics than there is in mathematics. Nobody knows more than a small fraction of the math that's out there, including people w