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How did you answer the final application question?!

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#11
One of my cofounders came up with our answer:

"In 2005, Matt discovered the best way to deal with Nigerian 413-scams on CraigsList: when someone offers thousands of dollars for your stereo via some phony money-wiring organization, just request a receiver-pays-shipping slip and FedEx them 40 pounds of bricks."

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#12
post #2

Kevin has discovered the universe's greatest civilization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." - Van Gogh Images of galaxy clusters always sadden me. Our insignificance in the Universe is laughable.

http://www.futuroscope.com/eng/attraction-cosmos.php

I had the chance while in France to visit Futuroscope by luck. When I found my self in this Cosmos attraction, a huge sphere room watching the universe as a spectator like you are among the stars, has caused me one of the most undescribable, fascinating feelings in my life.

I advice it highly, if you ever find your self in France, go to Futuroscope! Most of the attractions are in AMAZING 3D!

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#13
post #2

Kevin has discovered the universe's greatest civilization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." - Van Gogh Images of galaxy clusters always sadden me. Our insignificance in the Universe is laughable.

Looking up at the nigkt sky has that effect on me too. What makes it worse is that whenever I mention it to anyone else they clearly don't understand why.

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#14
Vervet monkeys have three main predators, and can alert the rest of their group to the presence of each. The rest of the group responds appropriately to the type of call given. If, for example, a monkey gives a loud, barking call, signifying the approach of a leopard, the other monkeys run to the trees.

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#15
post #2

Kevin has discovered the universe's greatest civilization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." - Van Gogh Images of galaxy clusters always sadden me. Our insignificance in the Universe is laughable.

python_kiss wrote, "Images of galaxy clusters always sadden me. Our insignificance in the Universe is laughable".

Only if you do not know what the purpose of life is. http://juwo.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-is-purpose-of-life.html

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#16
post #4

I actually care a lot about the last question. It often makes me give an application a second look. I don't think the other 3 YC partners care very much about it though.

I'm cringing inside because I wrote the most bland and uninteresting thing in the world.

I'm going to rewrite and resubmit by the deadline tonight, if that's alright.

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#17
I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound trite when I first filled out the form, so I left it blank and decided to come back to it later.

(As far as I'm concerned it's a long shot. I don't think my idea and my goals for my business line up that well with what YC is really looking for, based on what they've done in the past. So I filled out the form more for myself than for them.)

But then I thought of the best answer to that question -- the most personally meaningful thing I've discovered, something that I don't think anyone else has ever noticed -- over the weekend, and only realized this morning that the deadline had whooshed right by while I was sleeping.

Oops.

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#18
post #17

I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound trite when I first filled out the form, so I left it blank and decided to come back to it later. (As far as I'm concerned it's a long shot. I don't think my idea and my goals for my business line up that well with what YC is really looking for, based on what they've done in the past. So I filled out the form more for myself than for them.) But then I thought of the best…

The deadline is yet to arrive. is you mesage from the future?

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#19
I mentioned the discovery of a hypergeometric combinatorial enumeration formula with a useful decomposition that could be used to find a limit probability distribution for the objects I was enumerating. I edited out the following: Richard Stanley had previously derived a rational generating function for enumerating the almost-injective functions, however, I could find no obvious way to manipulate this to obtain the limit probability distribution, nor did it suggest the decomposition of a non-machine summable formula into machine summable, asymptotically significant and non-machine-summable, asymptotically insignificant parts. The two-term formula was obtained by classifying the almost-injective functions using a regular grammar; the closed term arose from a sub-language closed under concatenation. Computer experiments suggest that a class of enumeration problems arising from regular monoids have closed form hypergeometric enumeration formulas.

Finding an algorithm for computing closed forms of indefinite binomial coefficient sums was an open problem in Knuth's Art of Programming; it was solved by Wilf and Zeilberger. In the example I considered, there is no closed form solution; however there is a way of finding a decomposition of the sum with good properties. Finding the asymptotically significant term required an idea: the point is that the algorithms I used don't help you find this. One of those algorithms I used was due to R. W. Gosper, a legendary hacker.

Re: How did you answer the final application question?!

#20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." - Van Gogh Images of galaxy clusters always sadden me. Our insignificance in the Universe is laughable.

python_kiss wrote, "Images of galaxy clusters always sadden me. Our insignificance in the Universe is laughable". Only if you do not know what the purpose of life is. http://juwo.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-is-purpose-of-life.html

That's less useful for those of us who don't believe in a creator.
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