> You think of n/2 of them in the first 5 minutes. The word that leaps to mind here is "half". :)
If your brain is in algorithm mode, n/2 might actually be easier to process.
The List of N Things
31–40 of 68 posts
Re: The List of N Things
#32Re: The List of N Things
#33Re: The List of N Things
#34> You think of n/2 of them in the first 5 minutes. The word that leaps to mind here is "half". :)
Because the moment I read n/2 I wondered which kind of distribution n has, for t.
It could be (cumulative) exponential. Ideas would then be independent and random. That doesn't feel right, because ideas are very much related, but a better model doesn't immediately spring to mind.
Had he said half, I would never consider the distribution of ideas over time. And I bet pg considered the distribution while writing the essay, and he probably also realized it wasn't really all that interesting, and consequently left it out.
Re: The List of N Things
#35My favorite is when N is a nice round number like 25, 50, 100 or 101. What is the likelyhood that the exhaustive list ends up being such a marketable number? Must be very low. So I always wonder what was omitted or, more likely, what pork was added to get to the round number.
I actually tend to trust non-round numbers. Like 9, or 17. It indicates to me that author didn't try to fit the ideas to a number, but actually thought things through and came up with the number after the essay was written
Re: The List of N Things
#36Re: The List of N Things
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why use four characters when you can use three?
To generalize: why use n characters when you can use n-1?
bc it sux
On a related note, here's how to abuse the concept of URL shorteners in order to produce messages in which embedding a URL costs zero additional characters:
http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/steganographic-typo-based-ur...
Re: The List of N Things
#38This article may have held my attention longer if it had been a list. It lost me after the 7th paragraph when I realized he was going to continue to ramble on about lists. So I skipped to the final paragraph just to be sure.
Re: The List of N Things
#39My favorite is when N is a nice round number like 25, 50, 100 or 101. What is the likelyhood that the exhaustive list ends up being such a marketable number? Must be very low. So I always wonder what was omitted or, more likely, what pork was added to get to the round number.
I actually tend to trust non-round numbers. Like 9, or 17. It indicates to me that author didn't try to fit the ideas to a number, but actually thought things through and came up with the number after the essay was written
That's why, when I write an article like this, I pick a number like that.