27 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
History of the Concept of Art
Nowadays when someone speaks of "art" you probably think first of "fine arts" such as painting and sculpture, but before the twentieth century the word was generally used in quite a different sense. Since this older meaning of "art" still survives in many idioms, especially when we are contrasting art with science, I would like to spend the next few minutes talking about art in its classical sense.
In medieval times, the first universities were established to teach the seven so-called "liber... 1 
notes
notes08 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Professors Come from a Select Few Universities
The evidence is not only anecdotal. A recent study by Aaron Clauset, Samuel Arbesman, and Daniel B. Larremore shows that “a quarter of all universities account for 71 to 86 percent of all tenure-track faculty in the U.S. and Canada in these three fields. Just 18 elite universities produce half of all computer science professors, 16 schools produce half of all business professors, and eight schools account for half of all history professors.” This study follows the discovery by political scien...
1 06 NOV 2014 by ideonexus
Matrioshka Brains
Matrioshka Brains (MB)1 are megascale computers constructed out of microelectronic and/or nanoscale components. MB may be constructed as shells around a star (internally powered Matrioshka Brains: IPMB) or may be constructed independently of a star if large amounts of power are harvested from stars in other locations and beamed to the MB (externally powered Matrioshka Brains: EPMB). A third variant, (self-powered Matrioshka Brains: SPMB) which generates power via controlled n...
1 13 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
Donald Knuth Doesn't Use Email
I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest th...Folksonomies: productivity email
Folksonomies: productivity email
1 notes
notesIt's for people who need to keep on top of things. He needs deep-immersion.
31 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
COBOL as a Programming Language
I worked with COBOL near the end of my last contract and found aspects of it fascinating compared to today's languages. Everything is about structures that map directly to the bits on disk, with fine grain control on precision and data types. But then the language reads as a series of macros where you don't have to remember the low level details: do this to this, put this here, if this do that.
It's also a terribly difficult language to parse because it was designed for ease of use by humans...Folksonomies: history computer science
Folksonomies: history computer science
1 notes
notesComment captures what's interesting about it historically, how early programmers needed algorithms to handle all the bit-switching.
09 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Fun Computer Science Tasks
C is a big language with a lot of features, and it’s easy to get lost in how fun it is. But you can’t really appreciate a feature without knowing what it’s like to do without. So do things with limited resources. Make a binary adder using falling dominoes. Make a functional digital clock with neon bulbs, resistors, capacitors, diodes, wires, and a wall plug. Make a Turing machine with LEGO blocks. (Use a crank to run it.) If you’re really ambitious, make some logic using fluidics with a rou...Folksonomies: education computer science
Folksonomies: education computer science
Projects to learn CS and appreciate its underlying structures.
28 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Bilingual Advantage in Computer Programmers
Like bilinguals, expert computer programmers successfully manage two or more separate lexicons, grammars and divergent concepts, avoiding inadvertent transfer between the two. Numerous studies of novice programmers indicate that they struggle to do achieve this division; transfer from natural language creates bugs (e.g. Soloway and Spohrer, 1989; Witschital, 1995). The present study therefore considers whether the “bilingual advantage” in executive control is found in computer programmers.
[... 1 notes
notesManifests in tasks involving executive function, but not in other bilingual tasks. More research needed.
13 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Creative Space
A Cornell experiment in the 1960s polled a group of computer science students and divded them into those who liked to work with music in the background and those who didn't. They put 1/2 of each group together in a silent room, and the other 1/2 in a different room equipped with headphones and a musical selection. To no one's surprise, they performed about the same in speed and accuracy of completing a Fortran programming task. The part of the brain required for arithmetic and related logic i... 1 notes
notesExperiment shows that listening to music while you program can prevent deep logical insights.
29 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Simple Explanation of Big O Part II
So if you want to find a name in a phone book of a million names you can actually find any name by doing this at most 20 times. In comparing search algorithms we decide that this comparison is our 'n'.
For a phone book of 3 names it takes 2 comparisons (at most).For 7 it takes at most 3.For 15 it takes 4....For 1,000,000 it takes 20.
That is staggeringly good isn't it?
In Big-O terms this is O(log n) or logarithmic complexity. Now the logarithm in question could be ln (base e), log10, log2...Folksonomies: computer science algorithms
Folksonomies: computer science algorithms
Second part of the explanation.
23 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Intelligence as a Response to Entropy
Recent advances in ?elds ranging from cosmology
to computer science have hinted at a possible deep connection between intelligence and entropy maximization.
In cosmology, the causal entropic principle for anthropic
selection has used the maximization of entropy production
in causally connected space-time regions as a thermodynamic proxy for intelligent observer concentrations in the
prediction of cosmological parameters [1]. In geoscience,
entropy production maximization has been proposed as ...Researchers create an AI that seeks to maximize its potential future histories and therefore tackles goals like playing the stockmarket and balancing balls on sticks because to let the money run out or the ball drop would reduce its potential future histories. Intelligence seeks to maximize entropy.
