For something completely different, Amelia Rauser, "The Butcher-Kissing Dutchess of Devonshire: Between Caricature and Allegory in 1784." Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (Fall 2002): 23-47.
Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
11–20 of 90 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#12Optimistic Replication - YASUSHI SAITO & MARC SHAPIRO, 2005 http://pagesperso-systeme.lip6.fr/Marc.Shapiro/papers/Optimi... Why: RPC and its ilk make a lousy model for mobile data, since mobile devices are only occasionally connected, not permanently. Similarly, in the face network and server failures, servers can be modeled as occasionally connected as well. The "replication" mindset is far more productive when deal…
Xerox PARC, Epidemic Algorithms for Replicated Database Maintenance, 1989
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/CSL-89-1...
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#13"Suppose it is the 1890s. Artificial flight is the glamor subject in science, engineering, and venture capital circles." -Intelligence without representation by Rodney Brooks http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/representation.pdf It's accessible, and it's a good intro to thinking about AI. The field oughta be called even more nifty algorithms.
Also, see elephants don't play chess:
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#14In the vain of generally appreciated papers, I really like "Whitesides' Group: Writing a Paper" by George Whitesides[0][1]. It gives a strategy for collaborating research based on using a paper as a living document. It seems like a lot of work, but it saves untold days in the long run. This is the first paper I give anyone I mentor. There have been derivative works on giving presentations, that I also particularly li…
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#15"The Letter S" by Donald E. Knuth. An entire paper on the typographical design of the letter S and variants based on type size and other attributes. An elegant paper on a single letter:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF03023051#page-1
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#16"The Letter S" by Donald E. Knuth. An entire paper on the typographical design of the letter S and variants based on type size and other attributes. An elegant paper on a single letter: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF03023051#page-1
It is a sad tragedy that this article is not freely available on the web (at least as I can find).
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#17Claude Shannon 1948, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Commun... This paper kickstarted the concept of information theory, and was hugely influential on many fields of research. Signal-to-noise ratio, the bit, information entropy, etc. are all theories and concepts presented by Shannon.
This was the first academic paper I ever read, way back when. For a brief, wonderful time, I thought all academic papers were of a similar caliber, and I was in awe (and not a little bit intimidated).
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#18Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, 1979 "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme" Some biologists may cringe (especially the Gould haters), but I don't think I've ever been so engrossed by any other scholarly paper. It is a joy to read. Very approachable for non-biologists. The papers critique of sloppy "just so" reasoning, could easily be extended to…
Related comic strip about adaptationism: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2713
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#19Some of the trippiest math I've ever seen. I sat with one of the authors while he wrote pecked out parts of his contribution. Smoking a bong. He's 83.
Completely dissociative groupoids. http://mb.math.cas.cz/mb137-1/6.html
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#20For something completely different, Amelia Rauser, "The Butcher-Kissing Dutchess of Devonshire: Between Caricature and Allegory in 1784." Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (Fall 2002): 23-47.
Can you explain the meaning of this paper to you?