Daily Archives: January 11, 2013

Professor 2

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lisper 4 days ago | link

I was never in academia, but I was a researcher (at NASA) so I played the publishing game. And if you look at my record, I was relatively good at it. Not only was my publications list fairly long, but my work was also pretty widely referenced. But since my career no longer depends on it, I am now free to say that I credit my success almost entirely to gaming the system. This is not to say that I didn’t do good work (I think I did), but there was virtually no correlation between what I thought was quality work and what I actually got rewarded for. The vast majority of my publications were minor tweaks on previous work that were specifically engineered to get past the program committees of key conferences. My best work (by my own quality metric) either went unnoticed, or could not get accepted for publication at all. When it got to the point where I was faced with a very stark choice between continuing to produce bullshit and get rewarded for it, or to do what I thought was good work and eventually get fired, I quit.

   
Evbn 4 days ago | link

Industry isn’t so different. My salary is determined by 2 days of interviews and negotiations, and only slightly perturbed by my performance over the next several years.

— Hacker News

2013.01.11 Friday ACHK

Paul Graham

Posted on by

zatara 59 days ago | link

I am almost afraid to ask you this, but here it goes.

On the last few weeks/months before starting Viaweb, did you consider yourself a failure for being almost 30, well-educated but out of the formal career track, “poor” and unmarried? If so, was that the fuel behind your many amazing achievements later on?

—–
   
   
pg 59 days ago | link

No, not really. I’d written the two Lisp books, and people liked those. Not a lot of people, but they were people whose opinions I cared about. Actually Viaweb felt like more of a compromise than the way I’d been living before, because it was something I was doing mostly for money.

—–
   
   
sayemm 58 days ago | link

So, you finally had your first taste of startup success at age 34. And you started Y Combinator at 41.

Think your story, along with many others in the Valley (e.g. Jim Clark), goes to show that this is a long-term game, and it only gets better with age and experience.

— Hacker News

2013.01.11 Friday ACHK

抽兩個數

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這段改編自 2010 年 6 月 15 日的對話。

假設有兩個袋。每個袋中都有十張卡紙，而每張卡紙上，都有一個由 1 到 10 的其中一個數字，沒有重複。現在，你要由每個袋中，隨機抽一張卡紙出來。換句話說，各個可能性的機會均等。問題是，你抽到兩個相同數字的機會率是多少？

P 方法：

總共要抽兩個數字：

（＿）（＿）

第一個數字，什麼也可以接受，所以機會率分是一。

（1）（＿）

第二個數字，則要同第一個數字吻合，而十個數字中，只有一個和第一個相同。所以，第二格的機會率是十分之一（1/10）。

（1）（1/10）

結論是，抽到兩個相同數字的機會率是 1/10。

（1）（1/10）= 1/10

S 方法：

我們先考慮所有可能結果的總數，放於分母；然後，再考慮可以接受的結果有多少，放於分子。

（＿）
（   ）

總共要抽兩個數字。每個數字各自有十個可能性。所以，整體有（10 x 10）個可能結果。

（＿＿＿）
（10）（10）

而眾多可能之中，只有十組是可以接受的，包括（1,1）、（2,2）……（10,10）。所以，分子是十（10）。

　（10）
＿＿＿＿
（10）（10）

結論是，抽到兩個相同數字的機會率是 1/10。

　（10）
＿＿＿＿
（10）（10）

= 1/10

— Me@2013.01.10

致讀者：如發現本文有思考漏洞，或者運算錯誤，請以電郵告知本人。謝謝！

— Me@2012.10.17

2013.01.11 Friday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK