The Mundanity of Excellence: http://lillyfellows.org/Portals/0/Chambliss-Mundanity%20of%2...
A study of competitive swimmers and what separates the mediocre from the great, but widely applicable to many forms of excellence or greatness.
Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#32Not tech related but...
Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care by Kenneth Arrow (1963) [1].
This paper effectively makes the case that medical care shouldn't be treated like other goods.
If you're remotely interested in health econ/health industry, I recommend reading it.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#33Watson, James D., and Francis HC Crick. "Molecular structure of nucleic acids." Nature 171.4356 (1953): 737-738.
http://www.nature.com/physics/looking-back/crick/index.html
Partly because of the fundamental importance of the paper, elucidating the structure of DNA; partly for the wonderfully understated third to last paragraph: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Came here to say this. It really is awesome; and I hate Krugman! It's really an interesting situation; thinking about how there would no longer be an 'unambiguous' measure of time when we have faster than light travel.
> and I hate Krugman! I try to separate academic Krugman from New York Times Krugman. It helps.
But it's so hard!
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#35Einstein, Albert. "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies." Annalen der Physik 17.891 (1905): 50.
http://ganapathymani.com/On%20the%20electrodymics%20of%20mov...
This paper establishes special relativity, and is remarquable for how clear it is, revolutionizing physics while using only elementary math. The first "Kinematical" part in particular does not use anything more complex mathematically than Pythagorus theorem. It is so clear that the explanations and though experiments are reproduced in all textbooks to this day; the only change is that textbooks include diagrams.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#36Not tech related but... Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care by Kenneth Arrow (1963) [1]. This paper effectively makes the case that medical care shouldn't be treated like other goods. If you're remotely interested in health econ/health industry, I recommend reading it. 1. https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/top20/53.5.941-973.pdf
Big fan. Have you read Norm Daniels' Just Health? It's a riff off a Rawls/Social Contract world view, and it really spoke to me.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#37Not tech related, but this paper on an urban movement in India: "Urban Upheaval in India: The 1974 Nav Nirman Riots in Gujarat"
It gives insight into the nexus between politics and student unions/student bodies in India. It reads more like a story than a scholarly article.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2643482?uid=3739536&ui...
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#38Claude 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.
+1! I find the whole notion of "typical set" to be absolutely amazing.
I would like to share with you a few pages from the intro to my thesis which cover Shannon's channel coding theorem. There are some nice TiKZ illustrations. http://minireference.com/static/excerpts/Shannon_channel_cod... (it's not super detailed, but the definitions of all the moving parts are given)
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#39Quantum random number generation on a mobile phone (2014)[1]
A topic which seems at first rather obscure overlaps with something relatable to yield a fascinating result. The blog post [2] was especially enticing for non-specialists like myself.
1. http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0435
2. https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/quantum-random-num...
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?
#40Joe Armstrong 2003, "Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors" https://www.sics.se/~joe/thesis/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf