tmoertel

35 ms·

421.
by tmoertel 6y ago
Alternative explanation: Oscar the cat was just really good at murder.
422.
by tmoertel 6y ago
Interestingly, nonplussed is one of those words having two meanings that are at odds with each other. According to Google, those two meanings are: 1. (of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react. "he
423.
by tmoertel 6y ago
What I heard was that Sony does not want to both sell a game and allow it to be refunded on their platform. That combination invites people to play the game for free by just buying it and returning it later. So when CD Projekt Red announced
424.
by tmoertel 6y ago
When testing solutions to algorithmic problems, it's often useful to use randomized property checking to verify that the solution's expected properties hold for approximately all inputs. The QuickCheck family of testing tools is p
425.
by tmoertel 6y ago
The trick I used for my last two workstations has been to buy a lower-end tower server to get ECC support for a low cost.
426.
by tmoertel 6y ago
Online "try before you buy" shopping, where you return everything you don't like, is more common than you'd think. Amazon actually uses this phrase as their pitch for the Prime Wardrobe program [1]: ""&quo
427.
by tmoertel 6y ago
I wrote a summary that goes into some detail: http://blog.moertel.com/posts/2006-01-20-wondrous-oddities-r...
428.
by tmoertel 6y ago
Yes. GROUP BY n refers to the nth column of the result set.
429.
by tmoertel 6y ago
> Would love more articles about probabilities... Well, I wrote a few articles on the topic from a Bayesian perspective few years ago: http://blog.moertel.com/tags/probability.html (Only one of them is about the Mon
430.
by tmoertel 6y ago
Definitely click on the second to last icon on the bottom of the SPECTROGRAM page to see the spectrogram applied to an old POTS modem dialing out to another modem. Notice in particular that the DTMF touch tones are indeed composed of two to
431.
by tmoertel 6y ago
A better, more satisfying explanation for Simpson's Paradox comes from Pearl et al.'s work in modern causation theory, in which they point out that the paradox exists only because we fail to consider the causal structure that gene
432.
by tmoertel 6y ago
Adjusting for the wrong confounders is one of the ways to create spurious correlations. For example, consider the causal system X -> Z <- Y in which X and Y are random coin tosses (heads=0, tails=1) and Z is their sum. Even t
433.
by tmoertel 6y ago
One copy-editing trick I employ is to use a text-to-speech system to read my work back to me. If I merely read it myself, my brain will autocorrect my mistakes into what I meant to write. When the computer reads my work, it pulls no punches
434.
by tmoertel 6y ago
I have a similar but more general theory: coffee is a mild stressor. People in poor health can't afford the extra stress and avoid coffee.
435.
by tmoertel 6y ago
Since squaring is a monotone transform over nonnegative numbers, why not just sort by (# of daily contacts in a closed space)?
436.
by tmoertel 7y ago
Related SIR model: COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics from the Predictive Healthcare team at Penn Medicine (press release): http://predictivehealthcare.pennmedicine.org/2020/03/14/acco... This one w
437.
by tmoertel 7y ago
Thanks for the great book recommendation! I just ordered a copy from a bookstore in Poland. I am eagerly awaiting its arrival. I don't really do competitive programming, but I enjoy the problems. Thanks for recommending some great new
438.
by tmoertel 7y ago
On the other hand, the current interviewing trend generates a steady supply of nifty, bite-sized problems to solve for fun. I keep a "practice" repo on Github, where I put my solutions. Often, for an extra challenge, I'll pro
439.
by tmoertel 7y ago
There's another possibility: The two variables are completely unrelated but we only get to observe them when some function of both of the variables is true. The classic example is two independent coin tosses that trigger a bell when bo
440.
by tmoertel 7y ago
Neat! An omission: I searched for "hat" and didn't find any results.
441.
by tmoertel 7y ago
Natto, a traditional Japanese dish made of fermented soybeans, is especially rich in mk-7. It's the result of an alkaline fermentation process, which makes it initially challenging to Western palates more familiar with the tangy acidic
442.
by tmoertel 8y ago
I don't think you've accurately represented the libertarian pitch, which is that government bureaucrats, even if they are well meaning and better planners than you are, are not likely to understand your needs, wants, and preferenc
443.
by tmoertel 8y ago
I have an amusing archaeological anecdote about the bubble sort. Around 1990, on my first real job out of college, I was assigned about 100K lines of C code to maintain. I was told that it had problems scaling up to larger networks (it was
444.
by tmoertel 8y ago
It's common in financial publications, and in other publications with numerically literate audiences, to focus statistical graphics on the region of interest (except in bar charts, in which bars are expected to sit on a baseline of zer
445.
DAK Industries (Wikipedia)(en.wikipedia.org)
1 points by tmoertel 8y ago|0 comments
446.
by tmoertel 8y ago
Important to note: The underlying meta analysis included interventional studies and might reflect a real causal link: """We included 103 observational and 40 interventional studies investigating ~100 health outcomes."&qu
447.
by tmoertel 8y ago
There are some fascinating railroad photographs from an earlier era in the Pennsylvania Railroad Photographs collection: https://historicpittsburgh.org/collection/pennsylvania-railr... Many of the photographs feature g
448.
by tmoertel 8y ago
Indeed. I think that the mark of sophistication is not complexity but irreducible complexity. Sophisticated solutions are those that have been reduced to their simplest form.
449.
by tmoertel 9y ago
Does the implementation handle the case that you want to do a write that is conditioned on a prior read finding no corresponding record(s)?
450.
by tmoertel 9y ago
> You can implement matrix exponentiation recursively however. And tail recursively, and – going full circle – you can convert that tail recursion into iteration (see [1] for example, using techniques described in [2]). [1] Iterative fas

More ›