November 2011
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins...”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (in Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -A scandal in Bohemia-)
i-m-a-ge:
“Jump in the Line (Shake...
“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly...”
– John W. Gardner
FAVORITE DOCTOR WHO QUOTES
The First Doctor: The least important things, sometimes, my dear boy, lead to the greatest discoveries.
The Second Doctor: Well now I know you're mad, I just wanted to make sure.
The Third Doctor: Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.
The Fourth Doctor: You're a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain.
The Fifth Doctor: An apple a day keeps the... Ah, never mind.
The Sixth Doctor: Planets come and go. Stars perish. Matter disperses, coalesces, forms into other patterns, other worlds. Nothing can be eternal.
The Seventh Doctor: Yes, that's right, you're going. You've been gone for ages. You're already gone. You're still here. You've just arrived. I haven't even met you yet. It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time.
The Eighth Doctor: I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there.
The Ninth Doctor: The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guidebook, you've got to throw yourself in! Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers!
The Tenth Doctor: People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect... but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff.
The Eleventh Doctor: The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.
“If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two...”
– Billie Holiday
“You may not have thought about it before but Classical Philosophy (Greek...”
– “Ancient Philosophy and Programming Languages,” cyokum (via lifeandcode)
Free online Computer Science courses at Stanford...
- Game Theory http://www.game-theory-class.org/ - Design and Analysis of Algorithms I http://www.algo-class.org/ - Cryptography http://www.crypto-class.org/ - Software Engineering for Software as a Service http://www.saas-class.org/ - Natural Language Processing http://www.nlp-class.org/ - Computer Science 101 http://www.cs101-class.org/ - Human-Computer Interaction http://www.hci-class.org/...
A second experiment at the European facility that... →
inothernews:
joshsternberg:
More tests are needed. But, still.
No no, they just traveled back in time. IT’S JUST THE SAME EXPERIMENT OVER AND OVER AND OVER. THIS IS THE DARKEST TIMELINE.
Bartender: *feels like he’s done this before* “We don’t serve faster than light particles here”
Neutrino: *walks into a bar*
Does Mathematics Make you Money?
Dave Clark: People who can do high level math are practically a commodity. People who can figure out which problem is the right one to solve and then apply high level math are both expensive and elusive. Those who can communicate effectively the answer in such a way managers can understand, priceless.
(Dave Clark = Vice President of North American Fulfillment @ Amazon.com, quoted by Timothy Hopper, shared by John Cook)
Daniel Lemire: My concern is that "priceless" can mean two things: "no money" or "infinite money". Which is it?
John Cook: James Goodnight of SAS is worth $6.9 billion.
Lao Tzu: To be so employed _at Amazon_, one needs as well a BA-level knowledge of computer science.
Lao Tzu: +Daniel Lemire I've wondered that specifically with regard to mathematical finance. Otton Nikodym, Johann Radon, Igor Girsanov, Robert Cameron, W.T. Martin all have theorems named after them that are taught in the MFE, but none of the men attained wealth.
Daniel Lemire: +John Cook As someone who was forced to use SAS software for years, I doubt very much that James Goodnight's wealth is derived from his work in mathematics. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
Preston Bannister: As the guy who can understand complex systems, and (unexpectedly - ask my high school English teachers) can write well enough to bring everyone (including managers) to understanding and concurrence ... there seems to be "less" to the "priceless".
Then again, perhaps I am doing it wrong.
“It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at...”
– John Wheeler (via hollowskin)
un:
STOP SOPA, SAVE THE INTERNET
wilwheaton:
Google knows it. Viacom knows it. The Chamber of Commerce knows it. Internet democracy groups know it. BoingBoing knows it. But, the Internet hasn’t been told yet — we’re going to get blown away by the end of the year. The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. Law is very real here in the United States and legal language is often...
4 Words: DOCTOR.WHO.MOVIE.CONFIRMED. →
frakyeahbsg:
aradicaldreamer:
I don’t know what my feelings are yet if it’s not a movie with what’s established already to the TV franchise.
We interrupt your usual BSG-related posts to bring you this frakking incomprehensible news.
if this movie gets made my world will no longer make sense
On Physical Lines of Force →
Exactly 150 years ago James Clerk Maxwell published Part I of his seminal work in E/M. Here are all 4 parts.
(via @mathematicsprof)
9 Equations True Geeks Should (at Least Pretend... →
Even for those of us who finished high school algebra on a wing and a prayer, there’s something compelling about equations. The world’s complexities and uncertainties are distilled and set in orderly figures, with a handful of characters sufficing to capture the universe itself.
“There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed...”
– Richard P. Feynman (1985). QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.
“Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it...”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Cellular Automata Using Infinite Computations. →
arxiv-cs:
Authors: Louis D'Alotto
This paper presents an application of the Infinite Unit Axiom, introduced by Yaroslav Sergeyev, (see [11] - [14]) to the development of one-dimensional cellular automata. This application allows the establishment of a new and more precise metric on the space of definition for one-dimensional cellular automata, whereby accuracy of computations is...
“There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion,...”
– Linus van Pelt 