271–280 of 332 posts
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Physics is applied math and I think that is an important distinction.
^ This. I ended up majoring in pure mathematics as an undergraduate after finding out that applied mathematics courses had too much material to memorize after finding out that physics courses had too much material to memorize. Pure math was so much easier.
Does entrepreneurship feel like work to anyone?
This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…
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This is a bit of tangent, but I looked up Idris since I'd never heard of it. I'm currently learning Haskell and they look really similar. What differentiates the two? What can you do in one that you can't do in the other?
Although I am not expert on these things but it seems to me that Idris has better support for so called dependent types http://ejenk.com/blog/why-dependently-typed-programming-will...
> This means that whenever I call this function, I need to provide together with a and b a proof that b isn’t zero.
What might such a proof look like? And is this supposed to work at compile-time?
I built electronic parts for Westinghouse's Nuclear Reactor Simulators (near Monroeville PA) in the mid 1980's. There were a ton of intelligent people working there and since every reactor built had to have an identical training simulator, there was quite a bit of knowledge required to make the systems realistic. Sometimes simulating the required behavior of a nuclear reactor was more complex than what occurred in the real reactor (simulating the pulse shape and randomness of a Geiger counter or driving a synchroscope with hopped up audio amplifiers).
In any case, those guys provided a lot of on-the-job education for a young engineer ... thank your dad for me as I might not have interacted with him, but surely some other "youngster" did.
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I definitely wouldn't call it a sense of entitlement. What you say though is disturbing and unfortunate and I wish I had a good answer. Imagine you buy a plane ticket and fly to somewhere exotic. Passenger in seat 11a is thinking "flying is horrible. It is a huge polluter. You're all crammed in like sardines. The airline is owned by wealthy fat cats and I had to pay $1500 for the 'honor' of being stuck with horrible…
An interesting post and one that has me questioning quite a lot. I actually used to have that sort of viewpoint to a huge extent. I remember vividly thinking when starting University - there are so many other people begging to have this chance, I was the lucky chosen one, I should revel in it (I had a relatively poor upbringing). Fast forward a few years and it's all coloured by what I can only describe as... 'seeing…
You can get paid to do that kind of math. But what about stuff that doesn't pay? The things that don't seem like work to me aren't profitable or even monetizable. And please don't tell me something to the effect of "I'm not trying hard enough".
I think if that's the case holistically, that what you like to do that other people think is "work" literally can not be monetized in the current economy, then that's just a tragedy. If the economy hasn't developed a model for what you uniquely like to do then I think that's just a very unfortunate reality. However, I wonder if perhaps you're taking it too literally. It's quite possible that what you like to do has m…
I think part of it was growing up with a thesbian mother and painter father and seeing first hand how doing what you love isn't enough to feed yourself. It stings a little for other people to claim that you don't need to "work" if you just do what you love. I don't bemoan Paul Graham for his success... but its insulting.
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Ira Glass has some advice on the issue of when you start something you enjoy, but your skill doesn't match your taste. Push through and keep practicing until your skill matches your taste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbC4gqZGPSY
Thank you, I'm going through such a phase (similar to a very long burnout), and this helps.
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There are some skills in physics which are sort of foreign to the math method of problem solving. (Speaking as a physics major) For example, picking a nice reference frame in simple mechanics problems is something that a physical intuition is good for. Same with spotting symmetries in an EM problem. Also, in physics you need to have a good grasp of what to ignore because they have only a small effect on the solution…
I majored in math and physics. The same kind of intuition that you use for physics you also use for math. In physics you may call it choosing a reference frame, in math you call it choosing a coordinate system. At least for me it's exactly the same kind of thinking. You hit the nail on the head here though: > Also, in physics you need to have a good grasp of what to ignore because they have only a small effect on the…
It's odd that you chose that example, because there is a rich history leading up to Maxwell doing his work, then Hertz verifying it, then Heaviside refactoring the notation.
Perhaps the deeper issue is that there are only so many lecture hours in a semester for adding these details, and you gotta start somewhere.