Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 299 posts

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#251

Post by asiachick »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #227

Much respect for Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to load) but this much CSS makes it so much more readable: html { display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 1.1em; } body { width: 650px } As for the actual content, I agree with it a lot. I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is…

You posted

> I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is, it's probably lost upon kids due to their lack of executive decision making skills.

And then you said tutor kids. Do you find your previous statement to be true? Are most of the kids quite bad a learning and do most of the kids lack executive decision making skills?

Or did I mis-understand? I was expecting that after you said "most people are ..." and that you tutor kids that you find the kids match your statement about "most people"

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#252

Post by tybit »

pja wrote: post #230
hardwaregeek wrote: post #227

Much respect for Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to load) but this much CSS makes it so much more readable: html { display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 1.1em; } body { width: 650px } As for the actual content, I agree with it a lot. I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is…

I always end up hitting Firefox’s readability mode button when reading Dan’s site. Normal browser width is just too wide for wall-to-wall text.

Thanks for the reminder, reads much easier on mobile Safari reader mode.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#253

Post by jodrellblank »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #227

Much respect for Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to load) but this much CSS makes it so much more readable: html { display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 1.1em; } body { width: 650px } As for the actual content, I agree with it a lot. I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is…

> Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to load)

He has an article[1] about speeding up his site, too, with the summary:

"I'm not sure what to think about all this. On the one hand, I'm happy that I was able to get a 25x-50x speedup on my site. On the other hand, I associate speedups of that magnitude with porting plain Ruby code to optimized C++, optimized C++ to a GPU, or GPU to quick-and-dirty exploratory ASIC. How is it possible that someone with zero knowledge of web development can get that kind of speedup by watching one presentation and then futzing around for 25 minutes? I was hoping to maybe find 100ms of slack, but it turns out there's not just 100ms, or even 1000ms, but 10000ms of slack in a Octopress setup. According to a study I've seen, going from 1000ms to 3000ms costs you 20% of your readers and 50% of your click-throughs. I haven't seen a study that looks at going from 400ms to 10900ms because the idea that a website would be that slow is so absurd that people don't even look into the possibility. But many websites are that slow!4"

[1] https://danluu.com/octopress-speedup/

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#254

Post by h2odragon »

the_af wrote: post #225
huac wrote: post #151

The Overwatch example reminds me of Playing to Win ( http://www.sirlin.net/ptw ), and in particular, "the scrub" section ( http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub ). "A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win."

I always liked the Scrub post by Sirlin, but I think it's too confrontational and likely to generate a negative reaction in the person you're mentioning it to. Nobody wants to be called a scrub. I'm not into card or videogames, but I like tabletop miniatures wargames (like Warhammer et al) and if you're familiar with them, you'll know there is this stereotype of a gamer derisively called a "WAAC" -- a "Win At All Cos…

If you're part of a community that expects newbies to adhere to rules that aren't published or articulated... where's the blame really lie? I have social handicaps, I could join your group and never realize that I upset people by failing to adhere to unwritten rules (its the story of my life, really)...

I can't really tell when the "unwritten rules" are unwritten so that they may apply to some but not others, and when they're unwritten because everybody actually did agree they're good ideas, but prefers not to share that revelation.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#255

Post by the_af »

h2odragon wrote: post #254
the_af wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always liked the Scrub post by Sirlin, but I think it's too confrontational and likely to generate a negative reaction in the person you're mentioning it to. Nobody wants to be called a scrub. I'm not into card or videogames, but I like tabletop miniatures wargames (like Warhammer et al) and if you're familiar with them, you'll know there is this stereotype of a gamer derisively called a "WAAC" -- a "Win At All Cos…

If you're part of a community that expects newbies to adhere to rules that aren't published or articulated... where's the blame really lie? I have social handicaps, I could join your group and never realize that I upset people by failing to adhere to unwritten rules (its the story of my life, really)... I can't really tell when the "unwritten rules" are unwritten so that they may apply to some but not others, and whe…

To be clear -- and I see maybe my post wasn't -- I think many Warhammer* players are too trigger-happy about labeling other players "WAAC" simply because they don't follow the unwritten rules of what they consider "sportsmanlike" behavior. In the extreme case, they'll call WAAC anyone who plays to win using the actual written rules instead of playing thematically rich but underperforming armies or strategies, which they consider The Right Way To Play (but which is not what the actual rules dictate). That is, they are playing an arbitrarily different game where the objective is not to win, and dislike people who play to win.

* I say Warhammer but I mean Warhammer, Age of Sigmar, Warhammer 40K and the whole family of games.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#256

Post by bonoboTP »

fyp wrote: post #215
bonoboTP wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather, it should be... "people who lifted a thing from the ground at any point of their lives"? Not that impressive. And, sure, just converting yourself from "people who lifted a thing" to "people [of the same sex] who actually go to the gym regularly and deadlift" will get you into 95%-ile of the first, broader domain within a couple of years, because people who regularly deadlift would already be less than 5% of…

> If you always had to be 95th percentile in your current peer group (general couch potatoes, high school championship participants, world championship participants, Olympians, Olympic medalists, Olympic champions, Olympic champions twice in a row), then the 95 just doesn't mean anything. Then you just have to be the single very best according to your logic. This is the typical experience for the ivy league types com…

The typical HNer passed 95 in all those things you listed?

I think you're vastly overestimating the readers of this forum. Just by the numbers, you can't have so many people who aced through top-5% in Ivy League schools and darted through the corporate ladder in a top SV company. Not to mention that not everyone is American here.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#257

Post by markus_zhang »

taurath wrote: post #242
hardwaregeek wrote: post #227

Much respect for Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to load) but this much CSS makes it so much more readable: html { display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 1.1em; } body { width: 650px } As for the actual content, I agree with it a lot. I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is…

Any Donald Glover quote is great. There's something similar with programmers - if you're ever the smartest person in the room, find a new room. If nobody is around thats either better than you or interested enough in order to give you good feedback, then its easy to stagnate. Just being around people who are all pushing hard can lead to a huge increase in skill - I think this is one of the reasons being at a top tier…

Exactly. That's also what deliberate practice means in the ten thousand hours rule. You keep push yourself or getting pushed and you improve really quickly. People like Carmack can push themselves rigorously so they are the first tier. After all it's bery expensive to hire someone to keep pushing you.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#258

Post by _hardwaregeek »

asiachick wrote: post #251
hardwaregeek wrote: post #227

Much respect for Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to load) but this much CSS makes it so much more readable: html { display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 1.1em; } body { width: 650px } As for the actual content, I agree with it a lot. I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is…

You posted > I suspect most people are quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when it is, it's probably lost upon kids due to their lack of executive decision making skills. And then you said tutor kids. Do you find your previous statement to be true? Are most of the kids quite bad a learning and do most of the kids lack executive decision making skills? Or did I mis-understand? I was…

Yeah totally. I don't mean that as a slight against the kids, but they do have poor executive decision making skills and they are not amazing at learning. As did I in high school and middle school. Brain development plays a factor. The commonly cited fact is that executive function is still developing in teenagers and young adults. I'd also argue that teenagers are often sleep deprived or facing other challenges that make school hard to prioritize (dating, drama in social life, change in familial dynamics, etc).

I think schools and many adults have it completely backwards when they see that kids struggle to get their homework done, get enough sleep, handle extracurriculars and have some sort of social life, and blame the kids' lack of organization or lack of proper education. Blaming a teenager's lack of organization is like blaming a toddler struggling to walk. They're still developing the necessary coping mechanisms and discipline to handle adult life.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#259

Post by cloverich »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #131
krick wrote: post #57

Yeah, no, that's just about lousy definitions. The premise suggests that it's easy to become 95%-ile in anything, say, deadlifting among men who deadlift and not just entire population of the planet Earth. Before I can suggest author to try, he hastily corrects himself, that it doesn't mean "95%-ile among people who practice regularly", so "men who deadlift" is invalid domain after all. Rather, it should be... "peopl…

95th percentile of the Overwatch ladder is also not the same thing as 95th percentile of competitive tournament players. This entire article is just full of category fallacies to try to support a vague subjective assertion. Gaming ladders with automated ELO systems are also not run like tournament ELO systems in more controlled environments like competitive chess. Games like Overwatch, WoW, Starcraft, Hearthstone, et…

Last I played, overwatch does indeed drop your elo once you are diamond and above (approx top 10%). Though I disagree with the author as one who climbed from bottom 25% to top 10% - it was quite hard and took months of deliberate, regular practice (~1000 matches). I found it nearly comparable to improving at medical school. I think the author underestimated the complexity of being good at overwatch.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#260

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

bonoboTP wrote: post #208
timerol wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that when I say 95%-ile, I mean 95%-ile among people who participate, not all people (for many activities, just doing it at all makes you 99%-ile or above across all people). This is the start of the second paragraph of the article, so it sounds like you disagree with the premise of what we're discussing

Depends on how interpret participation. Unless someone participates, you cannot know their score, so I guess a bare minimum participation is indeed required to be able to make comparisons. Theoretically there may be a guy who can already deadlift more than you, he just never tried.

He gave another example which I think is more illustrative -- Overwatch. There it's clear he's referring to 95%ile of people who play Overwatch, not any video games, and even less so everyone on Earth. My guess is, though, that he would include the people who play the casual modes in Overwatch, not just the competitive modes.
Post reply on HN