Comments for ladamic's blog

Comment on Rear Window by Mamadou

Mamadou — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 03:39:50 +0000

I heard an Audi designer that a car with side windows and rear windows that does not exceed a third of the surface looks more like sport cars. See A3…A8 designs for example…

Comment on Reading to distraction by Francy

Francy — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 22:05:58 +0000

Cause the brain is largely inhibiting all excitements seems to be just a way for enduring conditions. It is a blessing to be able to have a neutral stance and seeing the whole like for instance in nature. Never looked at this this way, I think your point is pretty realistic.

Comment on Girls who like boys they want to be like by peter honeyman

peter honeyman — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:20:34 +0000

lada, you neglected to mention that the guy you married has a PhD in computer science.

just sayin’ …

Comment on Girls who like boys they want to be like by Mason

Mason — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:54:15 +0000

Oh, certainly most of the people with the top grades are doing just fine and often brilliantly now—just not in any manner that (without actual calculation) seems to me to be on average better at all than the people who just got reasonable but not necessarily stellar grades.

Amazing research seems to be more about creativity than brute-force technical mastery anyway, and I think that most exams (at Tech and elsewhere) just don’t test that kind of creativity. There is some creativity that can come into play, but it’s more of a technical kind that entails no involvement of the “right” problem to study or the “right” way to attack something longer-term like research.

And how many people’s best papers (let alone their most influential ones!) are the same as their papers that show the most technical mastery?

(This could lead me into a whole rant about education, but for now I really need to read a draft of a student’s paper that’s tightly coupled to her PhD thesis, which she is trying to submit in <=6 days, so I really better stop goofing off.)

Comment on Girls who like boys they want to be like by ladamic

ladamic — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:48:07 +0000

I also perceive little correlation between academic success at Tech and “where they are now”. Except that those pulling stunts such as graduating in 3 years tend to have continued along that route, and those who beat their chests back then are not doing poorly either. Mostly, what surprised me is how many people who didn’t stand out especially back then (to my unperceptive eye) are doing amazing research now.

Comment on Girls who like boys they want to be like by Mason

Mason — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 15:26:21 +0000

It’s perhaps worth mentioning that I don’t think the people who had the highest GPAs at Tech are necessarily the most “successful” ones now. [Obviously, this is also true of other places, but it's easiest to phrase this in the context of a place where I spent time.] Granted, some of the people there were scary smart…

Comment on revisiting MIT by QP

QP — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:46:35 +0000

Very funny.
re-post and cite it ^_^

Comment on revisiting MIT by Mason

Mason — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:23:36 +0000

Many people seem to find me intimidating for some reason. I never really understood that.

I also chose not to go to MIT for grad school, but I didn’t feel intimidated when I visited—I just felt the applied math program wasn’t very flexible in many ways and it also didn’t have that many people doing things that interested me. (I wasn’t good at realizing that before submitting my application. I needed to visit the place to see that.) Also, mathematics culture is very different from physics lab culture, and I can certainly see MIT physics having a more intimidating ambiance than MIT mathematics, which exuded an ambiance of dead weight.

Comment on Recipe recommendation using ingredient networks by J. Nathan Matias

J. Nathan Matias — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:49:56 +0000

4) The hypothesis presented in Catching Fire, that humans have evolved to prefer cooking methods that extract more energy value from food, is consistent with recipe ratings. Recipes that call for heating (baking, boiling, grilling), are rated on average more highly than those that only call for mechanical preparation methods (chopping, mixing). Chemical methods (marinating & brining) give a slight additional boost.

Fantastic! May I also suggest the book “Feast: Why Humans Share Food” by Martin Jones? It’s an excellent exploration of these broader issues.

Comment on Office space by Fariba

Fariba — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:06:00 +0000

True and nice illustration