Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

ams.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 53 posts

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#31

Post by jimhefferon »

jamessb wrote: post #6
lorey wrote: post #3

Damn, I really like the design/layout. Anyone know where to find it by any chance?

The AMS uses LaTeX for typesetting. They release packages for their other journals [1], but not Notices , which apparently [2] uses Lucia Bright, a font that is not free. [1]: https://www.ams.org/arc/journals/journal-produce.html [2]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/76053/which-font-is-...

They are for sale from the TeX Users Group, https://tug.org/store/lucida/index.html, which helps out the group and gives you nice fonts also.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#32

Post by cableshaft »

kleer001 wrote: post #26
cableshaft wrote: post #23

"Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.” Basically just did this again this week. I was re-reading a three year o…

RUMINATING! I just watched a bunch of Marvin Minsky lectures about his theory of the Society of Mind. One of his early questions was (paraphrased) "With all these words for emotions where are the words for thinking?" He eventually popped the ones he'd found up on the board. And, of course, I sketched up some of my own. But nowhere in either of those lists was the quite apropos reference to how a whole swath of unrela…

I'll check out Marvin Minsky, thanks for the mention.

I am planning to take advantage of this weekend and try to get a little caught up on how to play videos for my games. I've got 6 designs already filmed (Cake Walk is the one that's a finalist in a game competition): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDjU-rdSngu-eeqJnc2On...

If I get the newest one up this weekend, it will probably be called 'Shared Fate'.

I didn't think Show HN is really the place to show off analog board games, so I wasn't really considering it. I don't have anything published yet anyway (just one game signed with a publisher), so they're all prototypes.

Does anyone know if posting my game design videos on Show HN would be appreciated? I come up with a lot of designs, though (my 'need to make a how to play video' backlog is like 30 games at this point). Assuming I got more consistent at filming videos, I could probably post one every week or two. Several of them you could probably play at home with components from other games.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#33

Post by mgreenleaf »

dorkwood wrote: post #29
kleer001 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RUMINATING! I just watched a bunch of Marvin Minsky lectures about his theory of the Society of Mind. One of his early questions was (paraphrased) "With all these words for emotions where are the words for thinking?" He eventually popped the ones he'd found up on the board. And, of course, I sketched up some of my own. But nowhere in either of those lists was the quite apropos reference to how a whole swath of unrela…

I love the metaphor of digestion to describe the brain's process. I once tried explaining to a friend how my brain works on problems in the background and they looked at me like I was spouting some new-age nonsense.

You might like Lewis Carrol's "Feeding the Mind", it takes that metaphor and applies it to a method of how to read books.

On Gutenberg.org too: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35535/35535-h/35535-h.htm

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#34

Post by generationP »

mxschumacher wrote: post #5

I wonder how the "Publish the Same Result Several Times" recommendation ties into the "publish or perish"-mantra. I suspect that 1997 was a different time. Many academics have a super-human publication cadence, not so much because of all the new knowledge they've extracted from the universe but because they aggressively re-publish their existing results. Very low read- and citation counts are common implications. Fro…

> "Publish the Same Result Several Times"

Do not take this too literally. Usually it won't work or will get you branded as a self-plagiarist (not exactly a deadly sin, but not a good reputation either; people will discount your work for this). In Rota's example of Riesz, the first publication was "in some obscure Hungarian journal", the second one was in Comptes Rendus, and the third was in a "real" journal. The choice of venues is no accident; you couldn't do it the other way round. Comptes is specifically for short (ca. 4 page long) communications that mostly serve to announce results and ideas; it's not unlike the "extended abstracts" you submit to conferences. And there are no obscure Hungarian journals any more in the age of the Internet. You won't get the same result published in 3 "normal" journals unless at least two referees are asleep at the wheel.

The modern way to get high publication count "for free" is doing a lot of incremental work (as opposed to trying to write up something definitive and general) and splitting your papers up into "least publishable units". These aren't bad things to do, though: Often you have to do incremental work as a warm-up before you have a chance to see the full picture (unless you are Grothendieck, presumably), and the thinner your papers are, the easier (and faster) they will get through peer review. It's a matter of knowing where to stop.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#35

Post by dmitrybrant »

durnygbur wrote: post #13

These hints reminded me that we don't have "great scientists" anymore. Can you list recent Nobel Prize laureates? Great scientists were basically people-institutions and all the mundane and scrupulous work was done by assistants, doctoral candidates, technicians, as we have an example of Hilbert and some much less known mathematician. There still exist relicts of this system in the academia. With increasing emancipat…

All of that may be true, but there's also the uncomfortable fact that the pickings of major discoveries are much fewer than they were in previous generations. Not to say that the great scientists (or their assistants) weren't geniuses, but as our knowledge advances it gets exponentially more difficult to make meaningful contributions, much less significant discoveries.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#36

Post by xenonite »

The author writes that a scientist is probably best remembered by his or her expository work. How ironic that I have never heard of this author before, and this paper is probably the only one I will ever read of him. So his statement rings true. His name is Gian-Carlo Rota.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#37

Post by dehrmann »

durnygbur wrote: post #13

These hints reminded me that we don't have "great scientists" anymore. Can you list recent Nobel Prize laureates? Great scientists were basically people-institutions and all the mundane and scrupulous work was done by assistants, doctoral candidates, technicians, as we have an example of Hilbert and some much less known mathematician. There still exist relicts of this system in the academia. With increasing emancipat…

Arguably, this is because all the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and all the remaining problems are too complex for a single person to solve.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#38

Post by kleer001 »

cableshaft wrote: post #32
kleer001 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RUMINATING! I just watched a bunch of Marvin Minsky lectures about his theory of the Society of Mind. One of his early questions was (paraphrased) "With all these words for emotions where are the words for thinking?" He eventually popped the ones he'd found up on the board. And, of course, I sketched up some of my own. But nowhere in either of those lists was the quite apropos reference to how a whole swath of unrela…

I'll check out Marvin Minsky, thanks for the mention. I am planning to take advantage of this weekend and try to get a little caught up on how to play videos for my games. I've got 6 designs already filmed (Cake Walk is the one that's a finalist in a game competition): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDjU-rdSngu-eeqJnc2On... If I get the newest one up this weekend, it will probably be called 'Shared Fate'. I d…

> I didn't think Show HN is really the place to show off analog board games

Let's game it out:

Worst case scenario it gets flagged for removal and your account gets deleted. How likely is that? ;)

Most likely scenario, I think, it goes the way of most posts, ignored.

Best case scenario, people like it and you get some good conversations about it, some interest, and a few new players.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#39

Post by BurningFrog »

kleer001 wrote: post #26
cableshaft wrote: post #23

"Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.” Basically just did this again this week. I was re-reading a three year o…

RUMINATING! I just watched a bunch of Marvin Minsky lectures about his theory of the Society of Mind. One of his early questions was (paraphrased) "With all these words for emotions where are the words for thinking?" He eventually popped the ones he'd found up on the board. And, of course, I sketched up some of my own. But nowhere in either of those lists was the quite apropos reference to how a whole swath of unrela…

This feels very related to the "sleep on it" technique.

Works well for me. I recognize pretty well when my brain is in a "needs to garbage collect and analyze" state. Then I stop pushing and wait for tomorrow when the results are in.

Re: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (1997) [pdf]

#40

Post by mulmen »

cableshaft wrote: post #32
kleer001 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RUMINATING! I just watched a bunch of Marvin Minsky lectures about his theory of the Society of Mind. One of his early questions was (paraphrased) "With all these words for emotions where are the words for thinking?" He eventually popped the ones he'd found up on the board. And, of course, I sketched up some of my own. But nowhere in either of those lists was the quite apropos reference to how a whole swath of unrela…

I'll check out Marvin Minsky, thanks for the mention. I am planning to take advantage of this weekend and try to get a little caught up on how to play videos for my games. I've got 6 designs already filmed (Cake Walk is the one that's a finalist in a game competition): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDjU-rdSngu-eeqJnc2On... If I get the newest one up this weekend, it will probably be called 'Shared Fate'. I d…

I’d definitely take a look at a board game post. Games are fun but I don’t play much and know nothing about designing them. Would be interesting to see more of that process. I like seeing creative hobby projects on this forum because if we have a shared interest of whatever HN is then we probably also have a common interest in other areas. That cross-pollinates to other areas. Maybe I’ll learn something in your board game post that helps me solve a problem at work.
Post reply on HN