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Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

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Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#41

Post by andmis »

paulpauper wrote: post #28

If someone like Gian-Carlo Rota took the International Math Olympiad how well would he do? Would someone with a PhD in math and some published papers find it easy? Or do Olympiad problems require a separate technique to solve them efficiently compared to dissertations and papers. Olympiad problems seme to be heavy in combinatorics, symmetry, and 'tricks' to find ways to simply them.

Contest math problems require specialized skills and tricks that are different from doing research. It's like asking how an elite soccer player would perform running the hurdles. Better than a lay person, perhaps very well with training, perhaps not.

Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#42

Post by [deleted] »

kamaal wrote: post #5

>>10 Be prepared for old age Like my dad adviced me. As you age worry only about four things: Health, Relationships, Side income and Free time. Forget about career, accolades, titles, awards or recognitions, nothing is really remembered in this world where kids can't remember their parent's birthday or what they had in dinner yesterday.

[deleted]

Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#43

Post by basch »

Arubis wrote: post #24
paulpauper wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol ppl keep submitting this. I knew what it was before even clicking the link.

It's new for someone! https://xkcd.com/1053/ (Playing HN on easy mode: grab almost any top story from a few years ago and repost it. It's not even bad if people are interested.)

Id say it means there needs to be another way to browse the site, where an old story can be bumped, with a new comment section, but inherits the old link, with the old comments available, and old score data visible. You can see how many upvotes it got each time it came about.

Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#46

Post by thematrixturtle »

paulpauper wrote: post #29
kamaal wrote: post #5

>>10 Be prepared for old age Like my dad adviced me. As you age worry only about four things: Health, Relationships, Side income and Free time. Forget about career, accolades, titles, awards or recognitions, nothing is really remembered in this world where kids can't remember their parent's birthday or what they had in dinner yesterday.

If you cannot see your legacy, then why do anything. What difference does it make if others don't remember if you cannot witness it anyway. I understand the part about family and relationships, but success sure feels good too even if no one cares after you are dead.

The legacy that matters is not the plastic cube engraved to commemorate you winning the 2021 Q3 Mid-Atlantic Region Corporate Synergy award.

I'm staring at one of these on my desk as I type this, and it took me a solid minute to even remember what I won it for. Everybody involved, including the VP who handed to it me and the product it was for, is long gone.

Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#47

Post by dredmorbius »

basch wrote: post #43
Arubis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's new for someone! https://xkcd.com/1053/ (Playing HN on easy mode: grab almost any top story from a few years ago and repost it. It's not even bad if people are interested.)

Id say it means there needs to be another way to browse the site, where an old story can be bumped, with a new comment section, but inherits the old link, with the old comments available, and old score data visible. You can see how many upvotes it got each time it came about.

You can ... kind of ... use Algolia in this way. It's pretty easy to search for the top submissions of the past day, week, month, or year:

Day: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...

Week: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...

Month: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...

Year: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...

I really wish there were an easier way to list top stories for a specific period --- month or year would be good. Algolia does have a date-range-picker, but like many, it's cumbersome. It also generates date specifiers based on Unix timestamps (seconds since 1970-1-1). So here's the Best of 2012:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1356912000&dateRange=custom&...

That is:

  https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1356912000&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1325376000&page=0&prefix=false&query=&sort=byPopularity&type=story
Where:

  dateEnd=1356912000
  dateStart=1325376000
I've suggested using a shell script to generate URLs of interest. This could also of course be done in JS or the programming tool of your choice:

  for i in {5..15..5} do
      echo "https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=$( date -d "$i years ago" +%Y-%m-%d )"
  done
(See earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806795)

There's also the "past" link, which can be used to show any one day's top stories: https://news.ycombinator.com/front

Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#48

Post by barry-cotter »

Fargoan wrote: post #6
beernet wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Check yourself. Your comment is coming from a privileged position. The fact that you have time to be on a website like this commenting on others privilege means you're likely quite privileged yourself.

Congratulations on reinforcing their frame, that this is a good way to think about the world.

Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#49

Post by Diesel555 »

> My late friend Stan Ulam used to remark that his life was sharply divided into two halves. In the first half, he was always the youngest person in the group; in the second half, he was always the oldest. There was no transitional period. I now realize how right he was. The etiquette of old age does not seem to have been written up, and we have to learn it the hard way. It depends on a basic realization, which takes time to adjust to. You must realize that, after reaching a certain age, you are no longer viewed as a person. You become an institution, and you are treated the way institutions are treated. You are expected to behave like a piece of period furniture, an architectural landmark, or an incunabulum.

This was unexpectedly accurate.

Re: Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)

#50

Post by sixstringtheory »

zabzonk wrote: post #14

> Blackboard Technique Use Whiteboard. Worst teaching experiences in my life have featured blackboards. Ooh that scree of the chalk and the eraser that does no such thing. Mind you, I haVE bad experiences with whiteboards too, particulary when the previous user defaced the board with non-whiteboard markers

I don’t know why but I find the chalk-on-a-blackboard in the MIT courseware lectures on algorithms so satisfying.

This is also my favorite one I’ve seen so far: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms...

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