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Invisible wrote:
> Here's a little something a wrote. I'm sure you'll enjoy pointing out
> all the simplifications, factual inaccuracies and incorrect use of
> terminology.
It's very nice. There's nothing wrong with simplifications for explaining
this stuff to people who don't already know it.
As Warp said, there are a few misspellings, but you know that. (I spelled
poorly for many years, until I started looking up every word I wasn't sure
of every time, and the hard ones started to sink in. :-) There are also a
few correctly-spelled words that are just the wrong choice of word. (E.g.,
Insert sort: "One of the lowest sorts.")
In the "linked list", I'd not use the term pointer. I'd say "each slot
stores the number of the next slot to check" or something. "Pointer" isn't
something everyday people are comfortable with. (You could say "Computer
programmers call these numbers 'pointers', so we'll use that term below.)
But you probably want another paragraph explaining what pointers are, in
terms of "numbers that tell you where to look next inside the memory" or
some such.
And it's not a trail of breadcrumbs, but a "string leading to the next
invoice" or something. Breadcrumbs only take you backwards to where you came
from.
Typo: "We'll see what that might be useful later." (You mean "We'll see how...")
Under "Deletions", it's not quite true that moving all the elements of an
unsorted list is as bad as moving the elements of a sorted list. You can
take the last element off the end of the unsorted list and stick it in where
you deleted the other element. Quite the inverse of adding an element.
For bucket sort, you might want to give an example like sorting playing
cards, where you might split the deck into four suits and sort each suit
separately before putting them back together. Just a thought...
You need a conclusion section. A couple of paragraphs that summarizes what
you just spoke about. Otherwise it's like ending a murder mystery with the
detective revealing who dun it.
Your margins are somewhat wider than they really need to be, unless you're
publishing for a particular journal or something.
Overall, highly impressive for a layman's introduction. Seriously, you write
very well: Entertaining plus informative. Very well done. Out of curiosity,
how long did it take you to put this together? I mean, once you decided to
write it, how long did it take in terms of your hours spent?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] dev null> wrote in message
news:49426036$1@news.povray.org...
> Warp wrote:
>
>> The spelling mistakes don't help either. You should fix at least those.
>
> For sure.
>
> Hmm, you might know the answer to this one... Is there any tool that can
> spell-check LaTeX source files? (Without constantly complaining that,
> e.g., "\maketitle" isn't a valid word.)
On Windows, try LEd (LaTeXEditor). It's what I've used for all of my
university work, and it's good (and free)
It does spell checking as you type (highlighting misspelt works with the red
squiggle, same as Word) or you can run spellchecker separatly.
http://www.latexeditor.org/
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Gail wrote:
> On Windows, try LEd (LaTeXEditor). It's what I've used for all of my
> university work, and it's good (and free)
>
> It does spell checking as you type (highlighting misspelt works with the
> red squiggle, same as Word) or you can run spellchecker separatly.
>
> http://www.latexeditor.org/
Thanks Gail!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> It's very nice.
Why thank you. :-)
> There's nothing wrong with simplifications for
> explaining this stuff to people who don't already know it.
Heh. Some people are all like "hey, strictly speaking a 'byte' isn't
always 8 bits!" I mean, LIKE IT MATTERS HERE! Think of your audience,
people. It's not like anybody reading this thing is going to design and
build their own computed based soley on my writings. Sheesh...
> As Warp said, there are a few misspellings, but you know that. (I
> spelled poorly for many years, until I started looking up every word I
> wasn't sure of every time, and the hard ones started to sink in. :-)
If I had a way to check these [easily] it would probably help a lot...
> There are also a few correctly-spelled words that are just the wrong
> choice of word. (E.g., Insert sort: "One of the lowest sorts.")
That's not even a spelling mistake; I merely didn't hit the S-key hard
enough. ;-)
> In the "linked list", I'd not use the term pointer.
The term seems fairly natural to me. But then, I've been using it for
well over a decade. Maybe I'll just expand on it a little. (Diagrams
would *really* help here!)
> Typo: "We'll see what that might be useful later." (You mean "We'll see
> how...")
Yeah. When you type lots of stuff, it's surprisingly easy to substitute
high-frequency words such as "how", "what", "when", "that", etc.
Sometimes it results in sentences that clearly don't make sense...
> Under "Deletions", it's not quite true that moving all the elements of
> an unsorted list is as bad as moving the elements of a sorted list. You
> can take the last element off the end of the unsorted list and stick it
> in where you deleted the other element. Quite the inverse of adding an
> element.
Ooo... I never actually thought of that!
> For bucket sort, you might want to give an example like sorting playing
> cards, where you might split the deck into four suits and sort each suit
> separately before putting them back together. Just a thought...
Yes, probably.
> You need a conclusion section. A couple of paragraphs that summarizes
> what you just spoke about. Otherwise it's like ending a murder mystery
> with the detective revealing who dun it.
Yeah, it does feel like it says a whole crapload of stuff, and then
just... ends. I'm not really sure what a sensible ending would be though.
> Your margins are somewhat wider than they really need to be, unless
> you're publishing for a particular journal or something.
Those are LaTeX defaults. If you print it out on paper and bind one edge
together, it looks about right. (Most of the margin ends up in the
fold.) It's also tuned so that the lines of text are narrow enough that
you can easily scan from the end of one line to the beginning of the
next; the wider the lines, the harder this is. (Go find some random
website with lots of text, taking up the full width of your monitor. It
can actually be quite difficult to figure out which line you've just
read because of the visual distance.)
But yeah, I suppose it does look a little strange. I don't plan on
fiddling with TeX's defaults to change it though.
> Overall, highly impressive for a layman's introduction. Seriously, you
> write very well: Entertaining plus informative. Very well done.
Thank you. If more people said stuff like this to me, I'd probably write
a lot more often. But typically, I spend ages writing stuff and nobody
ever even reads it, and I just feel like "meh, why am I bothering?"
I consider myself to be very *good* at explaining stuff in simple terms.
As I've said, the key is figuring out what's important and what isn't.
My whole document doesn't say *anything* about cache coherancy. I just
said "quicksort should theoretically be as fast as mergesort, but ON A
COMPUTER it actually tends to be slightly faster". No need to go into
technical details about why.
When I'm bored, I often sit by myself and have imaginary conversations
with nonexistant people, tellin them all about... any stuff I know
about, really. Maybe I'll summon up a caveman and try to explain to him
how supply and demand affects the price of goods. Or perhaps I'll find a
1960s electrical engineer and tell him about the superior noise
rejection characteristics of digital electronics. Or maybe I'll chatter
with some long-dead mathematician about chaos theory and fractal
geometry... It depends on my mood.
Come to think of it, as long as I can remember, ever since I was a very
small child, I've *always* talked to imaginary people.
...shit, I should probably have had *FREINDS* instead! o_O
Oh...kay...well leaving that aside, I wonder if maybe a good way of
structuring a book would be to just record myself nattering out loud,
and write a transcript afterwards? :-D
> Out of
> curiosity, how long did it take you to put this together? I mean, once
> you decided to write it, how long did it take in terms of your hours spent?
I spent about 3 hours writing it on Wednesday. Today I corrected a
handful of typos, and added the final few paragraphs. I can't have spent
more than an hour doing that.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Heh. Some people are all like "hey, strictly speaking a 'byte' isn't
> always 8 bits!" I mean, LIKE IT MATTERS HERE! Think of your audience,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children
> If I had a way to check these [easily] it would probably help a lot...
Google:
define:plover
>> There are also a few correctly-spelled words that are just the wrong
>> choice of word. (E.g., Insert sort: "One of the lowest sorts.")
>
> That's not even a spelling mistake; I merely didn't hit the S-key hard
> enough. ;-)
Yes. But the spell checker wouldn't catch it, is my point.
>> In the "linked list", I'd not use the term pointer.
>
> The term seems fairly natural to me. But then, I've been using it for
> well over a decade. Maybe I'll just expand on it a little. (Diagrams
> would *really* help here!)
Yeah. Explain what a pointer is, like an address on the side of a mailbox
being referenced by the address on an envelope or something.
>> Typo: "We'll see what that might be useful later." (You mean "We'll
>> see how...")
>
> Yeah. When you type lots of stuff, it's surprisingly easy to substitute
> high-frequency words such as "how", "what", "when", "that", etc.
> Sometimes it results in sentences that clearly don't make sense...
Yes. I'm just helping you fix them, you see. :-)
> Ooo... I never actually thought of that!
It's surprisingly non-obvious, for some reason. Probably because you'd never
do this with physical objects.
> Yeah, it does feel like it says a whole crapload of stuff, and then
> just... ends. I'm not really sure what a sensible ending would be though.
"""
So, as you can see, even though computers are very fast, the quantities of
information they deal with are also vast. To access information in memory or
on a disk sometimes requires special techniques in order to be fast enough.
This paper has introduced you to some of those techniques.
"""
Just something like that. The abstract, written backwards.
> But yeah, I suppose it does look a little strange. I don't plan on
> fiddling with TeX's defaults to change it though.
Your call, of course. It's just bothersome to read on screen that way,
without zooming into the middle third of the paper.
> I consider myself to be very *good* at explaining stuff in simple terms.
> As I've said, the key is figuring out what's important and what isn't.
It shows, yes.
> When I'm bored, I often sit by myself and have imaginary conversations
> with nonexistant people, tellin them all about... any stuff I know
> about, really.
Heh. You too? I usually don't get to cavemen, but other ideas.
> Come to think of it, as long as I can remember, ever since I was a very
> small child, I've *always* talked to imaginary people.
>
> ...shit, I should probably have had *FREINDS* instead! o_O
Go to church. Then you can talk to imaginary people *and* meet friends.
> I spent about 3 hours writing it on Wednesday. Today I corrected a
> handful of typos, and added the final few paragraphs. I can't have spent
> more than an hour doing that.
That's very impressive. Understand that 95% of the population couldn't write
something this good about something they know well, let alone doing it in
one or two sittings.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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Darren New wrote:
>> If I had a way to check these [easily] it would probably help a lot...
>
> Google:
> define:plover
Still doesn't help unless you *recognise* which words need correcting. ;-)
>> That's not even a spelling mistake; I merely didn't hit the S-key hard
>> enough. ;-)
>
> Yes. But the spell checker wouldn't catch it, is my point.
Oh, sure, there are all mannar of spelling and grammatical errors which
no machine will ever pick up on. This is why we have proof-reading. ;-)
But given how hopeless I am at spelling, and automated spell-checker
would be rather useful.
>> Ooo... I never actually thought of that!
>
> It's surprisingly non-obvious, for some reason. Probably because you'd
> never do this with physical objects.
Yeah, I geuss so. Or because, you know, in reality you'd use a BST. ;-)
>> Yeah, it does feel like it says a whole crapload of stuff, and then
>> just... ends. I'm not really sure what a sensible ending would be though.
>
> """
> So, as you can see, even though computers are very fast, the quantities
> of information they deal with are also vast. To access information in
> memory or on a disk sometimes requires special techniques in order to be
> fast enough. This paper has introduced you to some of those techniques.
> """
>
> Just something like that. The abstract, written backwards.
Mmm, OK.
>> But yeah, I suppose it does look a little strange. I don't plan on
>> fiddling with TeX's defaults to change it though.
>
> Your call, of course. It's just bothersome to read on screen that way,
> without zooming into the middle third of the paper.
Yeah, it really *is* designed for paper, not screen...
(This is why I use Indoculate. It will generate LaTeX or HTML without
much effort.)
>> I consider myself to be very *good* at explaining stuff in simple
>> terms. As I've said, the key is figuring out what's important and what
>> isn't.
>
> It shows, yes.
Yay! Encouragement! :-D
>> When I'm bored, I often sit by myself and have imaginary conversations
>> with nonexistant people, tellin them all about... any stuff I know
>> about, really.
>
> Heh. You too? I usually don't get to cavemen, but other ideas.
There's a story behind the three cavemen... which... I probably
shouldn't go into... o_O
> Go to church. Then you can talk to imaginary people *and* meet friends.
Hahahahaha!
Religion, you have been PWN3D.
>> I spent about 3 hours writing it on Wednesday. Today I corrected a
>> handful of typos, and added the final few paragraphs. I can't have
>> spent more than an hour doing that.
>
> That's very impressive. Understand that 95% of the population couldn't
> write something this good about something they know well, let alone
> doing it in one or two sittings.
You're seriously telling me I'm in the 95th percentile of the entire
population in writing skills?
Even though I manifestly can't spell?
I didn't think I was *that* good... but then I guess I don't have
anything to objectively compare to.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Still doesn't help unless you *recognise* which words need correcting. ;-)
That's what I said. Anything you're not 100% sure is right, you look up
until you are.
> Yeah, I geuss so. Or because, you know, in reality you'd use a BST. ;-)
That too. I can't remember the last time I implemented my own hash table or
sort.
> You're seriously telling me I'm in the 95th percentile of the entire
> population in writing skills?
I suspect that's correct, yes.
> Even though I manifestly can't spell?
Spelling is technique. It's like leaving the semicolon off the end of a
statement in a programming language.
> I didn't think I was *that* good... but then I guess I don't have
> anything to objectively compare to.
Trust me. Unless you have actual scientists there (i.e., folks who try to
publish papers in journals rather than filling out forms that are the
results of lab tests), you're probably the best writer in your company,
would be my guess.
Go to one of the marketing people and ask them to spend 20 minutes to write
a one-page document on exactly what your company does for a living. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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Am Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:11:10 +0000 schrieb Invisible:
>> Are there not any IDEs specifically for Latex that will flag up
>> spelling errors in-place?
>
> Yes: Vim, Ecams, LyX, and any mannar of other Unix-based tools. :-P
>
Have a look at TeXnicCenter, I'm strongly recommending it! Go for it now!
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> "The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
> appreciates how difficult it was."
I'll have to remember that one...
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Gail wrote:
> On Windows, try LEd (LaTeXEditor). It's what I've used for all of my
> university work, and it's good (and free)
>
> It does spell checking as you type (highlighting misspelt works with the
> red squiggle, same as Word) or you can run spellchecker separatly.
>
> http://www.latexeditor.org/
I tried this yesterday. Seems to work just fine, and no need to
"install" anything; just unzip and go. (Just the way I like it...)
Great shout. Thanks Gail!
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