Messages

46

Academic / School / Re: The Puzzle Thread!

« on: March 18, 2011, 03:34:38 pm »

You have 100 pennies.  Exactly 50 of them a heads-up, but you don't know which ones.  If you're blindfolded, how would you divide the pennies up into two groups with an equal number of heads?  Repeat the same exercise when exactly 10 of them are heads-up.

By feeling the pennies. I probably couldn't do it, but my blind friend Kevin probably could easily.

Where is DD's solution? It's early but I don't see it in the thread.

2. PM answers, add posts to ask questions.

Whats the point of it if we can already see solutions?

And I agree with rabbit and object to nslay's thing being a puzzle, it is just a pure math problem you have to work backwards to get the solution from, given the conditions. Sidoh's original puzzles don't require any complex math, just simple reasoning and deduction to get a solution. In order to solve the math problem you would have to know some advanced math to understand the notations used to describe the problem, not to mention a knowledge of linear algebra to understand matrices and their transpose and properties of them. O yea and integration also, not to mention it just isn't even interesting to solve! Therefore I demand it to be removed thanks

On the contrary, it is very interesting in the sense of optimization. If you had a Hessian of that form (which I did), positive definiteness would imply strict convexity and therefore a unique global optimum.

The reasoning probably isn't as simple as you think it is. There's a twist and you probably didn't realize it.

EDIT: Oh, I misread. You were talking about Sidoh's puzzle. Nah, this really does boil down to really simple math. You're just intimidated by linear algebra and integration (which really are basic math). But as I said, there is a twist.

Since it contains real values wouldn't f(x)f(x)^T be positive-semidefinite? and in order to be positive-definite f(x) needs to be linearly independent. Probably not correct but thats all I can remember from linear algebra.

I'm not intimidated by math, just that I don't find pure math interesting. Now if you put that into a problem (optimization) that's a different story. And if linear algebra and calculus are considered basic math, then what is addition, subtraction, algebra? Dumbass math?

47

Academic / School / Re: The Puzzle Thread!

« on: March 18, 2011, 12:21:45 pm »

You have 100 pennies.  Exactly 50 of them a heads-up, but you don't know which ones.  If you're blindfolded, how would you divide the pennies up into two groups with an equal number of heads?  Repeat the same exercise when exactly 10 of them are heads-up.

By feeling the pennies. I probably couldn't do it, but my blind friend Kevin probably could easily.

Where is DD's solution? It's early but I don't see it in the thread.

2. PM answers, add posts to ask questions.

Whats the point of it if we can already see solutions?

And I agree with rabbit and object to nslay's thing being a puzzle, it is just a pure math problem you have to work backwards to get the solution from, given the conditions. Sidoh's original puzzles don't require any complex math, just simple reasoning and deduction to get a solution. In order to solve the math problem you would have to know some advanced math to understand the notations used to describe the problem, not to mention a knowledge of linear algebra to understand matrices and their transpose and properties of them. O yea and integration also, not to mention it just isn't even interesting to solve! Therefore I demand it to be removed thanks

48

General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: March 13, 2011, 05:12:06 am »

Dear National Instruments,

Go fuck yourselves.

Sincerely yours,

dark_drake

why?

49

General Discussion / Re: Hackerspace!

« on: January 25, 2011, 10:18:45 pm »

They're typically a working space where people can get together and work on stuff. Typically a big open room is used, but you can call anything a hackerspace in theory

iago's butt is a hackerspace!  Hah!

Sure, let's say that! Who wants to buy a membership? First one's free!

Oh dear god rofl

50

General Discussion / Re: Serial comma or no serial comma?

« on: January 24, 2011, 12:48:14 am »

You grammar nazis are ridiculous. Period.

51

General Discussion / Re: One space or two spaces after a period?

« on: January 20, 2011, 03:26:08 pm »

I've always been taught and and used one.

52

General Discussion / Re: College Education

« on: January 18, 2011, 10:04:40 pm »

Here's an interesting question:  Hypothetically, if you were guaranteed that you would make the same amount of money regardless, would you have gone to university?  And if so, would you have studied something different?

I would still have went to college, but I definitely would've picked another major, something that doesn't require me to study my ass off all the time and still barely pass. I would go to college to have fun and meet people, taking less intense courses.

53

General Discussion / Re: College Education

« on: January 17, 2011, 08:46:29 pm »

Ender I agree that I should be glad I got that job. I actually applied to at least 20+ companies for that summer and they were the only one that got back to me, so I guess I got lucky that someone picked out my resume from the rest. I still keep in touch with some of my co-workers so hopefully I can get a job once I graduate.

And Sidoh yea thats true but the problem is that the companies that are hiring actual CEs are so selective, they either require masters degree or 5-10 years experience in the field. So the chances for someone like me with just a bachelors and no prior real work experience to get hired are pretty slim. I'd rather be doing something related to my field but a job is a job and you have to make money somehow.

54

General Discussion / Re: College Education

« on: January 16, 2011, 09:50:07 pm »

I'm in my 3rd year of undergrad in Computer Engineering at UT Dallas and so far I think the college experience has been more valuable than the actual courses I've taken. Living away from home taught me how to talk to and meet new people, how to manage my money, and also how to manage my time (I work part time along with taking classes full time). I've definitely grown up a lot more in college than I did during high school, but maybe that's due to me living away from my parents? I don't know.

But as far as how relevant my courses have been, I would say hardly at all. Here's why: I did a technical internship with Fidelity Investments at their Dallas data center last summer, for which I was to help implement and manage tools for their storage division. Everything was completely new to me, I had no clue what a SAN or NAS was or how to work with them because those terms never showed up in any of my courses. I literally had to sit in my cube and read books for a week straight to learn this stuff, all my co-workers there also had similar degrees such as CS or EE and they all told me they had to start from scratch when they first got there as well.

Maybe I'm just in the wrong place, maybe If I landed at Intel or AMD I would actually get to use the stuff I learned about crystalline structure and energy band gaps of semi-conductors. But so far my courses have not been very useful to me.

55

General Discussion / Re: Epic License Plate (Ergot's?)

« on: January 12, 2011, 12:41:23 pm »

lol wtf 

56

General Discussion / Re: !

« on: October 25, 2010, 07:09:29 pm »

3 upcoming exams next week: probability and stats monday, electrical network analysis and data structures and algorithms on tuesday. No halloween for me

57

General Discussion / Re: !

« on: October 22, 2010, 10:18:29 pm »

Trying to survive school.

58

General Discussion / Re: What does Newby love?!?

« on: August 17, 2010, 09:54:22 am »

Sweet!

HAHAHA 

59

General Discussion / Re: Google Blog on Algorithms

« on: July 17, 2010, 06:43:13 pm »

A lot of their speed is garnered by some very specifically tailored hardware architecture modifications.  I wrote a paper / presentation on it when I was still an undergrad and could dig it up if anyone is interested.

I'm interested.

60

General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: July 16, 2010, 10:11:11 pm »

We're already in the process of migrating to XIV, too bad that's going to take a few years.