xkcd

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Something occurred to me a while ago: Is it possible to code a program that randomly generates new code, which the program then tests? Like assign a number to every code piece, generate a string of pseudorandom numbers, translate that string into a generated code which the program then runs. Consid...

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tl;dr: To calculate trig functions by hand should not be required of someone just learning how to use them. Calculate, no. Simplify, yes. I had several no-calculator trig exams, it's just the expected answers were expressions rather than numbers. Yes, exactly. This. And then estimate , through any ...

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I think only Math related major students should be the only ones allowed to use calculators for their math classes. An odd perspective. My attitude: Learning doesn't ever require a calculator. Doing math, in practice, may involve much bigger and more tedious calculations than are necessary for lear...

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Okay, but complex numbers and limits are immensely useful for (the technology underlying) everyday life, irrespective of how uncomfortable you are with the implications thereof in certain contrived cases. I agree completely with the main point here (and now that we're talking about usefulness inste...

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What is "objective validity"? Where in objective reality can you find pi? I don't mean some approximation to a few dozen digits, I mean the actual exact value of pi. A circular object can be viewed. It is circular. It has a shape. It has a center. It has a rim. There is space (distance) b...

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What is "objective validity"? Where in objective reality can you find pi? I don't mean some approximation to a few dozen digits, I mean the actual exact value of pi. A circular object can be viewed. It is circular. It has a shape. It has a center. It has a rim. There is space (distance) b...

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You would probably greatly enjoy the game "Tak." http://cheapass.com//wp-content/uploads ... -Rules.pdf

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What is an induction proof if not an example of a supertask? PeteP has answered this very nicely. Proof by induction directly invalidates the agreed-upon solution to the original puzzle, so that's evidence in favor of my point, rather than a counterexample. If Wildcard's assertions were correct, th...

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Quotes the favorite moves made so far. Talks too much about an ancient game.

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This post apologizes for the necro but necroes anyway with a verbose attempt to get the game back on track and join in.

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Nope!

Not that you had a chance to guess me.

Flicky birdy?

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I'd love to give this game a try. Unfortunately I already looked at both your above spoilers before realizing that no one ever picked up on them—so I can't use those as a starting point. (I guess I could but I'd like the challenge of actually not knowing , rather than just trying to logically prove ...

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The fact that you can't describe the numbers on the balls using a specific numbering system does not, to my mind, mean that the balls do not exist. YMMV. But if the problem as posed is unanswerable then I think it's just time to move on. You know, I think I said this much back on page 8. The questi...

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>>> import networkx >>> g = networkx.Graph() >>> my_dict = {"x": 0, "y": 0} >>> g.add_node("node", my_dict, y=1) >>> print(my_dict) {'y': 1, 'x': 0} >>> my_dict["x"] = 1 >>> print(g.node["node"]) {'y': 1, 'x': 1} >>> my_other_dict = {"x": ...

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I'll just leave this here.... Why isn't finitism nonsense? Also, this: Making the statement of "what if the endless task ended" indirectly by declaring your are halving the time each iteration to create an endpoint and making the statement that the action that ended was removing every ball...

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My opinion on this problem has changed since I first posted about it. This experiment can't be performed according to the laws of the physical universe in which we live. (The balls must have mass; infinite mass cannot be placed in a finite space; to move mass any distance in zero time as must occur ...

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If you care about the result, why do you use a deliberately bad algorithm? :roll: Just to remind you: "Deliberately bad" refers to writing correct algorithms that are extremely, mind-bogglingly inefficient, whether in terms of time or space (or both). But kudos for entertaining imaginativ...

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This is nonsensical. The "leftPad" thing was a problem with NPM's policies. NPM is the primary package repository for Node; it has nothing to do with Node itself. NPM has since updated their unpublishing policies to be saner in the face of malice. No, the problem has to do with a develope...

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David Conrad wrote:It's perfectly safe to write PHP if you're an expert and know how to avoid all the foot guns in the same way it's perfectly safe to walk in a minefield if you know where to put your feet.

I enjoyed this quote.

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But the concept of "what a functor does" is much wider than that. I know there is an (evidently heated) discussion of the niceties of functors in full play here, much of it over my head at present. I was interjecting an actual "Fleeting Thought" into the flow of things. ;) My co...

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This is probably heretical, but here goes my fleeting thought. So, I just read the clearest explanation of monads I've ever encountered, after wading through the second clearest explanation of monads I've encountered. Coming from a shell scripting background (with lots of text processing and extensi...

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Meteoric wrote:Is it valid to say that a set which is not open must be closed? Or is there some third possibility?

Yes, there is a third possibility. (Also see mouse-over text.)

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Fleeting thought: Closures don't really seem that complicated. No more complicated than the concept of first-class functions, at least. Is it even possible to have a language with first-class functions without support for closures? (It seems like it would be theoretically possible, but very weird.) ...

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Metal Gear Solid 2 made a pretty good case for why data loss is a good thing. I don't know about Metal Gear Solid 2, but have you read Haunted By Data ? Alt text is alternative text to be used if the image itself can't be shown; title text is additional information that's historically rendered as a...

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...the Cron updating of Cron puts me in mind of the idea of a Cron job that reset its own timing to wait twice as long until its next occurence, each time it runs. That sounds fun. Seems like it might be easier with "at," though. A self-modifying shell script whose last line calls `at -f ...

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I've just reinvented navbars in a GitLab documentation project. It has the added bonus that since the link target is just a relative path within your directory tree, you can navigate it easily in Vim with "gf" (in the Markdown source). I should probably do a blog post or something about th...

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I believe you're looking for this book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/766917.Homer_Price Not easy to google. AHA! Yes, I am indeed! Thank you so much! :D It's downright impossible to Google. Yes, there was something in the ball. :wink: I don't remember if it was a walnut or something else,...

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There's an old book I read many years ago; can't find it on my shelf or remember the name and it's driving me crazy. It's not a sci-fi book, just fiction. It's a kid's book from perhaps the 50s (?); it had the 50s feel to it and I had it from an old collection of my mom's from when she was a kid. It...

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http://abstrusegoose.com/394

I laughed so hard....

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Nice work, RCT Bob. I guess by now you've read the spoilers.... Good you filled in the gaps, although I think it's more straightforward to say: Designate a unit distance such that BA = BD = BC = 1 unit. Define theta as the measure of angle ABD (and likewise the measure of angle DBC). Note th...

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@ucim (Jose?), you are going to have a really fun time programming software that networks between spaceships moving at relativistic speeds and multiple planets. "Time is immutable" indeed. :D Also, more concretely: Wrapping our heads around behaviours that happen in parallel, at multiple l...

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Ho hum.

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Yay for migration. (Boo for hamburgers.) The screen width is irritating, but the only killer for me is the erratic-ness of the egosearch. When I first opened it up, it showed only one post. (???) When I changed the search scope from "All results" to "1 year" I got a nice big page...

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there's a rumour in our school that i hv an affair with my biology teacher.. i accept that she is so beautiful and i liked her.. but it didn't mean that she also like me. she treated me just as a special student. coz i was inteligent in my class... but affair was not true... whole shchool's student...

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Wolfkeeper wrote:There's a subtle difference between the greatest mathematician of all time, and the greatest mathematician in history.

There is, but it appears you missed it too....

All time includes more time than just the past.

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Had a weird glitch today, did a Google search to see if anyone else was having it... Found 3 results... all of them were the same guy, back in 2012, asking in a bunch of different places, and in all of them getting told to ask elsewhere instead. Obligatory link . Thank goodness today we have Stack ...

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One of the many, many things I will never forgive Atlassian for is inventing their own crappy markup language to compete with the several markup languages I already have to carry around in my head. Oh, ugh. JIRA "markdown." Amen. Here's a start.... ex -sc '%s,^### ,h3. , | %s,^## ,h2. , |...

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PTGFlyer wrote:I think that I need a step-by-step of the 100 case, because it seems that the logic breaks down once you hit 6, because everybody sees 5 and knows that everybody else sees at least 4.

Have you checked through the last 35 pages of step-by-step explanations?

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<a graph-theoretic algorithmic question> You may also want to ask on our sister thread . I don't know the answer offhand (though some have been offered already which sound good) but if I were facing such a problem, I would pull out my copy of "Introduction to Algorithms" and review the gr...

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Mikemk wrote:I'm saying, maybe he put the results somewhere secret without telling anyone and is waiting for someone to randomly stumble on the page. It wouldn't be the first time.

Ah, that makes more sense. I doubt it, though.

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