One of my math professor (Canadian) once told us a story (~10 years ago) that the US border control asked him to "state and prove Rolle's theorem" after he had told them he was traveling to a math conference. Apparently he answered "it's something to do with the mean value theorem, right?" and that was good enough.
Thanks for the answer, I deleted my original question shortly after posting because I thought it was abit disrespectful.
For those who are curious, the question was: is "for Hackers" a new way of saying for those who don't feel like actually studying the math, going through the proofs and working through the problem sets?
>For those who are curious, the question was: is "for Hackers" a new way of saying for those who don't feel like actually studying the math, going through the proofs and working through the problem sets?
When I find a news reader that supports kill files; "for hackers" will go in it.
"Peer-reviewed" does not mean correct, or vice versa. The study they are talking about was done by the Research Council of Norway. I am assuming the goal was to inform the public, not to get published in a scientific journal. It was not an academic exercise. I, for one, am very happy that the Economist included this study in their survey.
The primary advantage to being peer reviewed is to avoid stupid mistakes. That's not to say it's correct, but it's like saying here is my book I did not have anyone proofread it. It could be a great book, but I just had a few red flags pop up.
Now, if the goal is to inform the public you base it on some peer reviewed research and repackage that instead of releasing original research in that fashion. All I am saying is the way the economist presented it was odd. I was assuming they where looking for something to create a little controversy to keep things interesting, but it just seemed odd to use something as a reference and then make it seem less credible at the same time.
> I was assuming they where looking for something to create a little controversy to keep things interesting, but it just seemed odd to use something as a reference and then make it seem less credible at the same time.
If a report like that is well written, it will provide a decent introduction to the ideas, and also have an exhaustive list of references. In that sense it makes a better reference for a journalist or layman than the original papers, which can be hard to interpret! And you can still go and look at the original sources if you like.
I am in the process of migrating all of my analyses from Matlab and R to Python. I have been meaning to do this for quite some time and finally pandas is mature enough to be able to completely replace both Matlab and R for straightforward tasks. If I need something Python doesn't offer, it's still fairly simple to do isolated tasks elsewhere. For me the biggest reasons for change are easy integration with the web and better language features (for Matlab, R language is great, just terribly slow for intensive tasks).
What I miss the most:
- Matlab <--> Excel link (on Windows) - an excel add-on that lets you send back and forth arrays very easily. You need a spreadsheet when you work with datasets, and interchanging data through files just isn't that convenient.
- Matlab's IDE features (debugging, documentation, publishing, variable inspection).
Thanks for the comment! We've actually been thinking about some of these ideas too. There's a Yhat Excel plugin-in in the works, so stay tuned! Should be available shortly.
You want to spend your day solving problems. OK cool. Which ones? All of them?
In terms of work efficiency, you generally want to focus quite tightly on a specific part of the solution space. The part which adds value and is novel or advances the state of the art.
Everything else is fodder for judicious library use, outsourcing to third-party services, and occasionally recipes or gists.
Google is just the user-interface for code re-use in 2013.
On the other hand, recreationally, why yes I do enjoy inventing a better wheel from time to time :)
Doing that occasionally between projects, or regularly on your own time (a.k.a. sharpening your saw) is essential to improving as a programmer
But in the context of programming as a job (which is the topic of the post), if one repeatedly spends hours solving already solved problems simply because "one enjoys it", it's a waste of the team's time.
[using old-fashioned "one" here instead of "you" not to make it personal]
I agree, the pleasure is arriving at the solution yourself. That's why CS is so appealing to so many people. It's fun and when you correctly solve a tough technical problem you feel great.
I'm glad I finally saw someone say this. It seems like we're a dying breed: those of us who got into CS for the sheer enjoyment of solving problems. Making fancy things happen on the screen is simply a positive side effect for us. I abhor that development these days is 90% Googling shit and 10% actual creativity. I go out of my way to keep my day job interesting.
