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My Mathematical Regression

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Re: My Mathematical Regression

#31

Post by d_silin »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #25
d_silin wrote: post #22

Nobody forces you to use AI. It has become sort of junk food for the brain. Temptations and ads for it everywhere.

If you have performance based metrics about your AI usage then you are essentially being forced to use AI (or become unemployed) Plenty of people are experiencing this nowadays The idea that no one is being forced to use AI is nonsense

There is no metric a reasonably intelligent person can't sabotage or subvert...

...for example, you can write a script to burn tokens and write the code yourself.

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#32

Post by andredurao »

That Project Euler problem was my first encounter with memoization. At the time, it felt like a magical solution, so I ended up solving it using the central column of Pascal's triangle, which was easier for me to understand back then.

I also tried a weird idea involving popcount, but it didn't scale. My approach was to represent each possible path with 0s (don't turn) and 1s (turn), testing the same number of 0s and 1s. However, even with popcount running in O(1) with hardware support, the total number of possible paths made the idea impractical :)

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#33

Post by kccqzy »

I was sad in a different way. I immediately realized that this could be solved by dynamic programming by computing the recurrence F(x,y)=F(x-1,y)+F(x,y-1) with the base case F(0,0)=1 and F(x,y)=0 if xI feel sad because I had forgotten the simple and intuitive construction of choosing “go down” and “go right” directions. When a person learns more advanced mathematics, it is often the case that the person just applies such advanced mathematics by rote without realizing that a solution can be found with more elementary mathematics and more creativity. It reminded me of the time in middle school before derivatives were taught, when my teacher reminded me that using derivatives to solve a problem would receive no credit.

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#34

Post by shenberg »

dhosek wrote: post #24

There’s a bit of hand-waving in the jump to 2 n choose n solution, which I suppose is fine, and my ex–math teacher brain really wants to have a proper proof or at least solid reasoning rather than “it follows the pattern” based on three observations. But I am reminded of how during my engagement 24 years ago, my future father-in-law raised an issue of being able to determine whether they were getting the full amount…

You always either go left or down so total 40 steps, choose 20 to be down (or 20 to be right)

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#35

Post by abhaynayar »

jp57 wrote: post #7

I think one of the saddest thing is that the kind of person who would recognize, "we can solve this seemingly complicated problem by just applying this formula", would often have trouble even getting recognized in many corporate environments. I managed a guy like that. He was capable of very complex thinking, but he wasn't in love with complexity, he was in love with simplicity. His solutions tended to be of the form…

If his monetary value to the company was as said why would any other metric like complexity even remotely matter or need convincing assuming the main goal of the company was to make money.

Money would matter even more than the interpersonal stuff in most cases but on top of it even the managers treasured him so there should've been even less of an issue of communicating value.

Getting bored is totally understandable though given his calibre but that's a separate issue from how the company evaluates performance.

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#36

Post by thelonelyborg »

jp57 wrote: post #7

I think one of the saddest thing is that the kind of person who would recognize, "we can solve this seemingly complicated problem by just applying this formula", would often have trouble even getting recognized in many corporate environments. I managed a guy like that. He was capable of very complex thinking, but he wasn't in love with complexity, he was in love with simplicity. His solutions tended to be of the form…

great story.

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#37

Post by gobdovan »

dhosek wrote: post #24

There’s a bit of hand-waving in the jump to 2 n choose n solution, which I suppose is fine, and my ex–math teacher brain really wants to have a proper proof or at least solid reasoning rather than “it follows the pattern” based on three observations. But I am reminded of how during my engagement 24 years ago, my future father-in-law raised an issue of being able to determine whether they were getting the full amount…

You can go down or right at any point. To go in bottom-right corner, you need n down steps and n right steps. In how many ways can you arrange n things on type A and n things of type B? In C(2n, n). The problem is about modeling, once you model it correctly, you get the definition of combinations.

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#38

Post by gobdovan »

This is a pre-AI phenomena. I observe it quite a lot with stuff I did in high school but usually with complex problems. What's generally happening is that you were working with pen and paper through a hard problem. With adult brain, you'd expect just to know the answers, but in reality you're not much smarter than you were at 14, so you need to do the thing properly.

Also if you help little kids with homework, you'll see that some problems are quite difficult as well and require you to actually think, even if it's problems for 10 year olds.

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#39

Post by degamad »

d_silin wrote: post #31
bluefirebrand wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have performance based metrics about your AI usage then you are essentially being forced to use AI (or become unemployed) Plenty of people are experiencing this nowadays The idea that no one is being forced to use AI is nonsense

There is no metric a reasonably intelligent person can't sabotage or subvert... ...for example, you can write a script to burn tokens and write the code yourself.

e.g. https://github.com/dtnewman/burn-baby-burn>

Re: My Mathematical Regression

#40

Post by skydhash »

abhaynayar wrote: post #35
jp57 wrote: post #7

I think one of the saddest thing is that the kind of person who would recognize, "we can solve this seemingly complicated problem by just applying this formula", would often have trouble even getting recognized in many corporate environments. I managed a guy like that. He was capable of very complex thinking, but he wasn't in love with complexity, he was in love with simplicity. His solutions tended to be of the form…

If his monetary value to the company was as said why would any other metric like complexity even remotely matter or need convincing assuming the main goal of the company was to make money. Money would matter even more than the interpersonal stuff in most cases but on top of it even the managers treasured him so there should've been even less of an issue of communicating value. Getting bored is totally understandable…

> even the managers treasured him so there should've been even less of an issue of communicating value.

I’m not a fan of doing politicking, bjut after much courses on writing and communication, I strongly believe that such simple solutions could have been presented in a way to justify rewards.

There are people that do nothing worthwhile and can find words to justify themselves. If someone brings value, you can find words to earn him recognition.

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