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Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

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Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#301

Post by opinionator1 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #265
insensible wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economies of scale. The kids work together, play together, teach each other, and parents facilitate (often leading to interesting conversations like the one in the article). It's actually probably a little easier than having 5.

A coworker keeps telling me (I'm a parent of one, and intend to stay that way) that having a big family like his is easier, since the older kids can take care of the younger kids. Which sounds totally plausible and correct, 'cept it'll take you awhile to get up to that sort of economy of scale :P

It's not wrong, but it's a real dick move toward the older kids.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#302

Post by jimbokun »

Double_Cast wrote: post #294
rkangel wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment would be valuable if it provided some support to the assertion that the original author was wrong.

The problem with the above explanation is that it starts at a lower level of abstraction than is warranted. Analogously, it explains MOSFET's rather than algorithms. The fundamental unit of Music Theory is the Interval (as in "frequency interval between notes"). A better explanation would have explained Intervals, how particular combinations of Intervals form various Scales, and how Scales influence Chord Progression…

"E.g. Smoke on the Water, Sunshine of your Love, and Fight for your Right (to Party) all sound similar because they use the Blues Scale."

Is there a good YouTube video introducing some of these concepts using popular songs?

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#303

Post by insensible »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #287
insensible wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This being Hacker News, we can talk about it in terms of graphs, right? Let's look at the sociogram when one parent is present. The transition from zero to one is of course world-changing. But at one child, 100% of the connections in the sociogram connect to a given parent: zero economy of scale. At two children they have each other, but that is only 1/3 of the children's connections when one parent is present. At th…

> At this point the sociogram is rich enough to become interesting. But the family is poor enough to become boring! (I can't resist a good pun.) Anyway, kids aren't raised in isolation with their parents. Our two year old tot already has two kids that I would consider her friends; she mentions them when she's home, and she prefers spending time with them to spending time with other kids.

Ask any member of a large, poor family whether they would trade (life improvement costing $XX,XXX) for having fewer children in the family. Life is beautiful and easily beats filthy lucre. It's worth the struggle. People lose sight of this.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#304

Post by insensible »

opinionator1 wrote: post #301
pavel_lishin wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker keeps telling me (I'm a parent of one, and intend to stay that way) that having a big family like his is easier, since the older kids can take care of the younger kids. Which sounds totally plausible and correct, 'cept it'll take you awhile to get up to that sort of economy of scale :P

It's not wrong, but it's a real dick move toward the older kids.

It can be done that way, but there are alternatives. One family I know, the kids actually sometimes quarrel to be allowed to take care of the youngers. In our family, we have "chore points" that are mutually negotiated, and babysitting is a favorite way to get one's points racked up easily.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#305

Post by Double_Cast »

jimbokun wrote: post #302
Double_Cast wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the above explanation is that it starts at a lower level of abstraction than is warranted. Analogously, it explains MOSFET's rather than algorithms. The fundamental unit of Music Theory is the Interval (as in "frequency interval between notes"). A better explanation would have explained Intervals, how particular combinations of Intervals form various Scales, and how Scales influence Chord Progression…

"E.g. Smoke on the Water, Sunshine of your Love, and Fight for your Right (to Party) all sound similar because they use the Blues Scale." Is there a good YouTube video introducing some of these concepts using popular songs?

I didn't learn music through Youtube. So unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any videos that I would consider comprehensive or canonical. At best, I can share videos that highlight a particular pattern, or share examples of popular songs that I recognize as having a commonality. Which might give you a better feel for what music theory is.

Another thing to keep in mind is that musical patterns accrete into genres. And there's a wide variety of genres. So it's difficult for any single video to cover everything in detail. I think it's more common for videos to cover the patterns of a particular genre. E.g. if you're interested in Blues, consider searching for videos about Blues.

-----

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm4LO22-cyY I remember the above Vox video highlights a unique chord which sounds "melty" and is often used in holiday music. The chord is known as a "minor_7th, diminished_5th" aka "m7d5".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I This video is about the infamous "4-chord pop progression". It's ubiquitous on the radio. Elitists and connoisseurs tend to look down on it for appealing to casuals. The progression is "I V vi IV" (capital denotes major chords, lowercase denotes minor chords).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfjXp4KTTY8 When I think of the "12-Bar Blues (Chord Progression)", I think of Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride and Joy". But there's tons of educational videos on this. It's very popular in not only Blues, but Rock & Roll. It's "I I I I; IV IV I I; V IV I I". But things get interesting here because musicians often substitue "jazzy" chords like Dominant_7th's (aka V^7). For bonus points, look up "tritone" (N.B. Rock is truly the devil's music).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dISEg1ydQoM I'm not actually sure what song I'm thinking of, but there's a particular trope often used in Hollywood films to denote a bullfight. It's based off the Phrygian Mode, which tends to sound very "spanish-y". In lieu, I've linked the the first bullfight track I found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fa44_sq2E A genre I'm particularly fond of is House. Which is often characterized by its "Four on the Floor" drum beat. It's very simple, just continuous quarternotes of kicks. The rhythm is sometimes denoted "1 2 3 4" (where the structure of a single bar is "1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a"). The above video is Daft Punk's "Superheros".

And then there's Jazz. Which is hard to explain, because it's the genre where anything goes. And besides jazz, there's lots of other techniques and obscure genres that I can't possibly cover in a single post.

---------------

In any case, I'd suggest looking up a particular genre you like and studying it. If you're a musician, learn scales. 90% of pop music these days uses either Major or Natural Minor. But you can really expand your horizons by learning other scales. It's boring, but it builds a strong foundation. Like how a basketball player will run laps rather than shoot freethrows all day.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#306

Post by khedoros1 »

Double_Cast wrote: post #295
khedoros1 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. What is music theory about? The explanation using frequencies, ratios, etc matched my understanding of the underlying physics and their effects on human perception.

Frequencies : Music Theory :: Logic Gates : Computer Science. See my other comment.

Well...logic gates are (at a slightly abstracted level) just the reification of some of the logical concepts in computer science. Those concepts could be arrived at by observing the behavior of the gates.

Similarly, it seems like studying the frequencies and their relationships illuminates at least a portion of what music theory covers.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#307

Post by pavel_lishin »

insensible wrote: post #303
pavel_lishin wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point the sociogram is rich enough to become interesting. But the family is poor enough to become boring! (I can't resist a good pun.) Anyway, kids aren't raised in isolation with their parents. Our two year old tot already has two kids that I would consider her friends; she mentions them when she's home, and she prefers spending time with them to spending time with other kids.

Ask any member of a large, poor family whether they would trade (life improvement costing $XX,XXX) for having fewer children in the family. Life is beautiful and easily beats filthy lucre. It's worth the struggle. People lose sight of this.

Sure. Can I ask the how many more kids they plan on having? Can I ask you the same question? Can I ask why that number is less than 16?

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#308

Post by fao_ »

nicoburns wrote: post #233
fao_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My problem is unschooling is that just because you’re not interested in something (as a kid) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn it. In my experience as an unschooled child who was in constant contact with the parents of other unschooled children, and other unschooled children, if a child isn't interested in something, that almost always changes over time. One example was where one kid did not wish to learn to read, u…

7 isn't really that late for reading. Lot's of well respected schoolin systems don't even attempt to teach reading until 7.

> 7 isn't really that late for reading. Lot's of well respected schoolin systems don't even attempt to teach reading until 7.

This is very interesting to me. I come from the UK, and the government's attitude to education is contrary to all of the pilot schemes, studies, and research I've seen. Namely they seem to have warmed their heads with the idea that the only way to advance learning is to put the student into the education system earlier and earlier. Rather than waiting until later (when they are ready), and improving material concerns so that good nutritional health from birth onwards is available to everyone.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#309

Post by ryanpcmcquen »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #143
ryanpcmcquen wrote: post #139

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein Brent definitely understands it well enough.

Einstein never said that, though: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8742/did-einste... .

Good find! Looks like he said something similar, but never those exact words.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming

#310

Post by OJFord »

gowld wrote: post #260
OJFord wrote: post #179

I remember exercise sheets at school (in the UK) like this - I think called 'number machines'. I _hated_ it; felt patronised by the illustrations of these machines, so I rebelled by trying to come up with a different correct solution - aware that there were infinitely many answers given just a few example domain/range pairs. But if anyone's interested in them for a car journey or some time you can't play this game al…

What's to hate? You solved the problems correctly and creatively. Any given reasonable limits on complexity of solutions (simpler -> better, Occam's razor), there are only a few solutions to any given problem.

I was just being facetious. It was too easy to identify that numbers are being doubled, so I'd contrive something else instead, that happens to be equivalent for the few examples given.
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