var foo = Object();
    foo.blah = function(x,y) { ... };

    foo = object()
    foo.blah = lambda x,y: ...
 

edit: ah, as someone noted, the second code snippet should be something like foo = Foo() where

    class Foo(object):
        pass

    foo = object()
    foo.name = "Hi thar"
    def hello(self):
       print "Hello, I'm %s" % self.name
    foo.hello = hello

    class Foo(object):
        pass
    foo = Foo()
    foo.name = ...
    def hello(self): 
        ...
    foo.hello = hello

  foo = Foo()
  def hello():
      print("hello, %s" % (foo,))
  foo.hello = hello

  def hello(self):
      print("hello, %s" % (self,))
  foo.hello = types.MethodType(hello, foo)

    In [21]: def hello(self):
    ....:    print self.name
    ....: 
    In [22]: class Foo(object):
    ....:     name = 'blah'
    ....: 
    In [23]: goo = Foo()
    go
    In [24]: goo.hi = hello
    In [25]: goo.hi
    Out[25]: <function hello at 0x103985aa0>
    In [26]: goo.hi()
    TypeError                                 Traceback (most     recent call last)

    TypeError: hello() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)

    >>> import types
    >>> 
    >>> def hello(self):
    ...     print self.name
    ... 
    >>> class Foo(object):
    ...     name = 'blah'
    ... 
    >>> goo = Foo()
    >>> goo.hi = types.MethodType(hello, Foo)
    >>> 
    >>> goo.hi()
    blah

    In [27]: class Foo(object):
    ....:     pass
    ....: 
 
    In [28]: def hello(self):
    ....:     print self
    ....: 

    In [29]: blah = Foo()

    In [30]: blah.hello = hello.__get__(blah, Foo) 

    In [31]: blah.hello()
    <__main__.Foo object at 0x10397f650>

n [8]: class Foo(object): ...: pass ...:

In [9]: blah = Foo()

In [10]: blah.asdf = lambda x: x

In [11]: blah.asdf(3) Out[11]: 3

In [12]: blah.asdf(5) Out[12]: 5

Successful man fails 10th grade standardized test, concludes that success is not correlated with being able to do math.

Aside from the obvious logical/statistical falacy of making an overreaching conclusion from a sample size of one, and various other illogical claims("if this guy doesn't need math, why does anyone??") this article assumes that the purpose of education is developing vocational skills.

Why should that be? Kids should learn to appreciate the world, get exposure to different things. There's no reason to make them hunker down at age 5 and start preparing for their future careers. If they don't like math, that's fine. Likewise for history, science, whatever. But it's a shame for anyone to miss out on the beauty inherent in all of these subjects.

For anyone who is serious about learning abstract algebra but lacking mathematical background (i.e. an analysis course under the belt), consider the book "Abstract Algebra" by Dummit and Foote. It's at the undergraduate level (so it goes through the motions of rigor that research math texts often omit), and well presented. A more advanced, terse and elegant, text would be Hershtein's Topics in Algebra.

Is it perhaps because they've adapted to the increasingly common practice of adblocker(and browsers which prohibit unprompted javascript popups)? Let's not forget that adblocker is a great thing, if only because it incentivized a move towards less obtrusive ads.

Another thing: ads may be less visibily intrusive but things like tracking cookies are still widely (100%?) used. So if privacy is any sort of a concern, an adblocker is probably still a good thing to have.

Read his opening paragraph again.

"As usual I get a ton of mail on subjects that are controversial, and one of the more painful ones was the fact that the Dropping out is probably not for you post gave people the impression that I'm against studying the arts, literature or any other non hard science."

Awkward, no? That's because it's a run on sentence.

The things that a liberal arts education teaches you are not always obvious. Of course you can read Plato or Homer or Augustine by yourself, but unless you're in a collegiate environment, it's very very easy to be lazy.

How many times have you picked up a book, skimmed through it, and never opened it up again? How many times have you actually read a book, and then for some weird reason, forgotten all of its contents very soon after? Formal schooling forces you to reengage with texts again and again. Formal schooling forces you to be critical of yourself and your own work before someone else has a crack at it. All of these things can be accomplished by a very motivated and disciplined individual. But how many of us are actually that motivated and that disciplined?

Awkward, perhaps, especially when cut-and-paste de-highlights the link around "Dropping out is probably not for you".

But it wasn't a run-on sentence, jacquesm properly connected the independent clauses with a conjunction instead of just smooshing them together.

As opposed to the sentence that I just wrote, which did not, and actually constitutes a run-on sentence (though some purists might object to lumping comma-splices together with run-on sentences).

If you're going to insinuate that someone's education is lacking based on their grammar, please make sure to actually point out a grammatical mistake.

Or better yet, let's leave the grammar policing aside, it doesn't add much to the discussion given that jacquesm writes plenty good English for blog-format prose...

Of course it would be nice if such comments were accompanied by suggested fixes and/or constructive criticism of the content. But you can't have everything ;)

Here's my feedback, though: I thought your post read as if it had been written hastily. There were some mistakes that seemed careless, like not capitalizing Wikipedia or omitting hypens and dashes in constructs like non-hard science and pro-education. Additionally, there were some issues with sentence structure, especially comma splices, which bermanoid referred to above. For example, the second paragraph:

I guess it was to be expected the way I phrased things there so let me take a moment to correct this perception, the offending lines are right at the start in:

The comma there isn't valid, as it splits two independent clauses without a conjunction. I'd use a period instead, but I'd also rephrase slightly:

I guess it was to be expected with the way I phrased things, so let me take a moment to correct this perception. The offending lines are right at the start:

I'll take one last example:

You can study those subjects to your hearts content and there are lots of places online where you can discuss them until the cows come home.

First, hearts vs. heart's seems like another hasty oversight. This sentence, though, is a different type of run-on. Technically, if you put a comma before and, you're safe, but without it, us grammar nerds call it a fused sentence. This is a pretty serious nitpick, and this is very common among native speakers as well, but two of these in a row caught my eye.

It was written while being disturbed about 30 times by a very active toddler :)

I'll take your points to heart and fix the post tomorrow morning, it's getting late here.

I'd have missed the 'heart's'.

What bugs me about all this is that many years ago I came to terms with working with people from many different backgrounds. Immigrants from all over the globe, in a single company that I ran in Toronto. We learned to look past the mistakes in grammar or pronunciation to the essence of what someone was trying to pass on.

Of course it helps if all written communication is perfect and if everybody would speak perfect English. The fact of the matter however is that language is a vehicle for expressing ideas and thoughts, and to pass those thoughts from one head to another, mostly intact.

Here on HN there is a tendency to ignore the message but to focus on the delivery. This is just a subtle way of attacking the person rather than the subject matter and I always wonder how we would have fared in that office if every mis-spelled word or wrongly pronounced word would have been pounced upon like that.

I think I'm doing ok in English, not perfect but it will do for most everyday conversation. A while ago there was a vocabulary test that floated around here and it tested the most uncommon words to get an idea of how big your vocabulary is.

Such tests miss the point entirely, as does the nitpicking about grammar and spelling. What matters is the idea behind the message and those that manage to look past the errors will sometimes find that that dyslexic or first generation immigrant over in the third cubicle has a very valid point, poorly expressed.

We'd do well to remember that and to always try to digest the message rather than the wrapper that it came in.

So, I really will take your advice , and I hope that it will stick (it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks). Over the last couple of years I think my writing has gotten a little bit better but it is very hard for me to measure my progress due to a serious lack of objectivity.

Thank you once again.

Honestly, the intent of my original comment was specifically to legitimize the non-grammar-related part of grot's comment. Looking back, I failed miserably at that, and the conversation centered even more on grammar. I distinctly remember having written something else that I apparently deleted before commenting. Let me go back and make a comment that's actually valuable.

> Of course you can read Plato or Homer or Augustine by yourself, but unless you're in a collegiate environment, it's very very easy to be lazy.

Personally, I can strongly relate to this. I'm very interested in literature, for example, but I'm not very well read. There are plenty of libraries around me and plenty of resources available on the internet to help me self-study, but I just don't do it. I can self-study node.js just fine, but I need some coercion to get into Shakespeare. This is something a formal education in liberal arts can provide. Whether or not it's affordable depends on a variety of factors, so it's hard to make a sweeping statement in support of or in opposition to such a degree. But I think people are very prone to looking at educational choices as business decisions, where a negative ROI is obviously bad. I think this is a limited perspective, but unfortunately, it's a reality a lot of people have to deal with.

I wonder how common the reverse is? As in [choose: English, Art, History, etc] majors taking Calculus or Physics..

See the trend in the late 70s, 80s and early 90s for "freedom" and "creativity" without "stiffling" grammar and spelling rules.

1. Is a term sexist when the speaker intends to be sexist?

2. Or is the term sexist when others interpret to be?

3. Or is a term sexist in some other more subtle way?

Some answers:

1. No idea

2. This varies. I know people here are saying brogrammer is an internet meme, but I've met plenty of start-up people that seem to enjoy various components of the meme -- polo shirts, bad sunglasses, incoherent misogyny.

3. This one is hard, and there are several conflicting possibilities.

a) Usage of the word "brogrammer" (whether in jest, or not) could be good (for gender relations), if it is successfully used ironically, or if it somehow signifies the irrelevance of gender.

I don't think either of these are true. Popping your collar is not irony. It might be a good halloween gimmick, but it's not irony.

And as for brogramming signifying a post-gender binary world, uh, no, come on?

b) The alternative is what I believe to be true, posts like this, regardless of intent reveal a serious cultural insensitivity. Whoever wrote it doesn't care if they offend you. They don't care if it sounds sexist, and they probably don't care if they _are_ sexist.

This is very antisocial behavior, and it deserves disapprobation just for that.

SPOILER

p = probability of heads

1 - p = probability of tails.

flip the coin twice:

head head = p^2

head tail/tail head = 2p(1-p)

tail tail = (1 - p)^2

Notice the two in the middle there. We can just say head tail = Heads and Tail Heads = Tails. If we get HH or PP, just do it again.

Ok, now call the above procedure, our "randomization algorithm"

we can calculate the expected running time -- our algorithm succeeds with probability 2p(1-p). The number of trials we need to run our algorithm for is a geometric random variable. Thus, the expected running time is 1/(2p(1-p)).

i'm not sure how the author's formula was derived, but i get the same result calculating the series for a slightly different (but wrong) algorithm: just keep flipping until HT or TH appears (not flipping by pairs). this series is sum(n=1 to inf, (n+1)(qp^n + pq^n)), i.e. sum(n=0 to inf, (n+1)(qp^n + pq^n)) - (p+q). the series works out to 1/(p(1-p)), but that last term would account for the one-off difference.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~libcs124/CS/coinflip3.pdf

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_... (subscription required, unfortunately =/. use your uni account or something)

The tone there is much more neutral, because Michael Clear in fact qualifies his statement.

quote from the new yorker article -----------------------

Clear responded that his work for Allied Irish Banks was brief and of "no importance". He admitted that he was a good programmer, understood cryptography, and appreciated the bitcoin design. But, he said, economics had never been a particular interest of his. "I am not Satoshi," Clear said. "But even if I was I wouldn't tell you."

The point, Cler continued, is that Nakamoto's identity shouldn't matter. The system was built so we don't have to trust an individual, a company, or a government. Anybody can review the code, and the network isn't controlled by any one entity. That's what inspires confidence in the system. Bitcoin, in other words, survives because of what you can see and what you can't. Users are hidden, but transactions are exposed. The code is visible to all, but its origins are mysterious. The currency is both real and elusive -- just like its founder.

"You can't kill it," Clear said, with a touch of bravado. "Bitcoin would survive a nuclear attack."

Going to Harvard doesn't make you uber anyway, it just makes you "best slave". A real ubermensch would likely see that it's not in her interest to spend 100% of her time pleasing others.

How anyone feels about that is up to them. He mostly just wanted to point it out.

real unbermensch would have so little interests to and so little in common with the normal people what you'd be happy if s/he would spent a second of his time on the interacting with normal people (even being asshole toward them)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludens_%28Noon_Universe%29

The speciation inside the human species continues. We've had several successive species of humans so far and there is no reason for the process to stop. Human evolution has been speeding up, and i hope to see signs of new humans in my lifetime (statistically i have about 40 years left). Ivy Leaguers mating to Ivy Leaguers only is a one way to go, though i'd bet more on the changes coming from human-machine integration and biomedical advancements as brain related changes seems to be the primary driver of human evolution.

The field of psychology can't even agree on a definition of intelligence anymore, and certainly IQ is not genetically determined. The environment is the biggest influence on IQ.

Harvard kids fucking Harvard kids doesn't create genetic supermen. It just creates an inbred aristocracy like has always been the case. Hemophilia is the true achievement of eugenics.

The wise know, and always have known, that it is education and drive that makes a person. Genes play little role in success.

just a statement of fashion.

>The field of psychology can't even agree on a definition of intelligence anymore, and certainly IQ is not genetically determined. The environment is the biggest influence on IQ.

The fallacy of nurture vs. nature as if one can be a substitute for another. Their respective roles are well known and each of them is a factor and not any of them is "the biggest influence" vs. the other. And about importance of the biological factors - i'd recommend reading on Einstein's brain, which was smaller, yet more densely packed and with higher ratio of energy supplying cells.

>Harvard kids fucking Harvard kids doesn't create genetic supermen. It just creates an inbred aristocracy like has always been the case. Hemophilia is the true achievement of eugenics.

Tell that to those several thousands who took over the world from other human species without much interbreeding with them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...