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dill_day | 12 years ago | on: What are the math heavy CS areas with high demand?

I think your thinking is right, machine learning is probably a good area as far as jobs go. Depending on your CS interests you'll find what areas of math they use most. AI / machine learning, learn lots of probability and statistics. High-performance, scientific computing, graphics, maybe more of a focus on linear algebra. Algorithms or theory or programming languages, lots of discrete math, logics, algebraic structures, etc. Of course it's good to get a good grasp of the basics of all these, since they're definitely not exclusive, and which you'll get from your degree, and beyond that, well explore, and enjoy!! Good luck!

dill_day | 12 years ago | on: Putin: A Plea for Caution From Russia

If there's "every reason to believe" it's the opposition forces and not the Syrian government in control of and using chemical weapons, what good does it do for the Syrian government to "place its chemical arsenal under international control"? How can these two statements be reconciled?

Putin says:

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

Then later:

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction.

dill_day | 13 years ago | on: Categories – What’s the Point?

There are two universal properties in the sense that a universal property is either defined in terms of a "terminal morphism" or (dually) an "initial morphism" (see the Formal Definition in the wiki article) -- the examples are particular instantiations of this general definition.

dill_day | 13 years ago | on: Distribution of colors in movie posters between 1914 and 2012

Many great films are made on a fraction of the budget required to produce something like Toy Story. And anyway I don't think it's hard to imagine Pixar artists saying they were more motivated by the pure joy of creating something than by their paychecks. There are bad movies that are created specifically to be monetized -- that people need money is beside the point that often those who create the really good stuff are probably doing it more for fun than for money. I think I see what you're saying, but it seems like an overreaction to what didn't strike me as a controversial comment by the parent.

dill_day | 14 years ago | on: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundametally similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. When you start Lisp, it does `read', `eval', and `print', all of which are missing in Python.

Could someone explain what he means? (Did Python not have a repl when he wrote that?)

dill_day | 14 years ago | on: Compiling to λ-calculus

FWIW, if you follow the link to his compilers class page, you can see that the projects do in fact deal with traditional topics:

  Lexical analyzer
  Parser
  High-level translator
  Normalizer & CPS converter
  Low-level translator
  Register allocator & Assembly code emitter
Anyway, when I took compilers it was similar to yours -- each week we compiled larger subsets of Python to x86.

dill_day | 14 years ago | on: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

Interesting, but I think there are some good comments (at the article) too -- pointing out that it also just seems to make sense -- like,

Undergraduates write to professors with singular first person pronouns because they are often requesting information, or this sort of thing... understandable then that there's less reason for I, me, and my in the professor's response (and easy to imagine similar situation in other relationships).

Still, a cool article. Interesting research.

dill_day | 14 years ago | on: A note to Google recruiters (and on Google hiring practices)

You are probably a very smart person, but your replies in this thread read like the epitome of academic pedantry, verbosity, pomposity, etc... the `my claim is (1) (2) and (3), my qualifications are these, my blah blah blah' -- Google is an engineering company; maybe you are better off working somewhere else?

dill_day | 15 years ago | on: Alan Turing Documentary

Definitely! I felt the same way. I'm just finishing my undergrad CS degree and I think there was maybe one AI lecture that mentioned Alan Turing-the-human-being out of all the classes I took... I would sometimes wonder.. are there other students who just hear things like "Turing complete", "Turing machine", etc., but don't have any idea who this "Turing" actually was?

I wish it was more common as part of these classes to actually talk about the great CS people.. who they are.. in our short history, because this is interesting stuff! Oh well.

dill_day | 15 years ago | on: Alan Turing Documentary

Yeah, I agree. I think I remember reading maybe in the Hodges biography that there unfortunately isn't any; I think there was some sort of recorded radio interview that got lost somehow...

dill_day | 15 years ago | on: ACM considered harmful

I think you're talking about different things-- there's the monthly CACM magazine, and then there are the huge books of conference proceedings and journals.
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