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Darren New wrote:
> That's what always killed me about mathematical proofs. They always
> start with all the details, and finally tell you why you care. :-)
Ooo... you know, I never thought of it like that.
I started reading a book on "Special Functions". Chapter 1 is about the
Euler Gamma function. It goes into some pretty extreme calculus straight
away, but I still haven't figured out what the hell the Gamma function
is actually "for"...
> That's what is killing me about reading the Erlang documentation: there
> are all sorts of cross-references, and no obvious place to start
> reading. I wouldn't be surprised if there are circular references
> throughout, either.
The Oracle documentation is rather like that. There is no obvious place
to start reading from. No matter what you read, it's littered with terms
that haven't been defined yet.
This strikes me as bad documentation, frankly...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Quite amazingly, this seems to be so even in academic circles. Well,
>> at least here.
>
> Yah. And I've found most marketing people, many of whose jobs it is to
> write, have little or no grasp of simple things like sentence construction.
>
> It just takes lots of practice and correction. I was fortunate to go to
> a grade school (as in, first through 12th grade) where they actually
> hammered on you ever single week to get you to improve. You started with
> "here's a topic, take it home, and bring back a one-page essay about it
> next week." It ended with "take a seat, here's your topic, you have 20
> minutes for a 2-page-with-outline essay discussing the topic."
I think much of the problem is that people don't seem to re-read their
work much, so they never realise what rubbish they wrote the first time.
If you're doing university assignments or projects, there's no
requirement for iteration - you *should* hone your writing carefully,
but most people pull all-nighters and never read it all the way through.
> I think the Ph.D. stuff (at least in the USA) is much more about
> reading, writing, and presenting than it is about the actual field of
> research. Maybe places like MIT teach you more technical stuff in the
> PhD degree than the Masters degree, but that isn't the case in any of
> the places where I or my friends went.
This is where the honing comes in. When a PhD supervisor should be
making you start writing at least a year before you submit, then making
you revise your thesis almost continuously, you should bloody well end
up better at writing than when you started out.
Also, when you write academic papers in collaboration, the other authors
should be proofreading the whole document and giving complete feedback -
after all, their names are on it too, so any sloppy writing on the first
author's part reflects badly on them.
(IME at least, there's a good balance between writing and content here
in the UK.)
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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> I think much of the problem is that people don't seem to re-read their
> work much, so they never realise what rubbish they wrote the first time.
> If you're doing university assignments or projects, there's no
> requirement for iteration - you *should* hone your writing carefully,
> but most people pull all-nighters and never read it all the way through.
Heh. If I had a dollar for every report or user manual started 20
minutes before the final submission date... ;-)
> This is where the honing comes in. When a PhD supervisor should be
> making you start writing at least a year before you submit, then making
> you revise your thesis almost continuously, you should bloody well end
> up better at writing than when you started out.
>
> Also, when you write academic papers in collaboration, the other authors
> should be proofreading the whole document and giving complete feedback -
> after all, their names are on it too, so any sloppy writing on the first
> author's part reflects badly on them.
>
> (IME at least, there's a good balance between writing and content here
> in the UK.)
My mum seriously wanted me to do a PhD. Because, I mean, 6 years in
every year of my degree, my grades became lower and lower. Fortunately I
hit graduation before I started failing modules. Thus, a PhD is
obviously the correct next step - especially given my pathologically
weak writing skills.
What. The. Hell.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmail com> wrote:
> I think much of the problem is that people don't seem to re-read their
> work much, so they never realise what rubbish they wrote the first time.
I have learned to reread everything I write. I reread all my news posts
before I send them (well, at least if they are longer than a few lines).
Sometimes I spend more time re-editing and fine-tuning the text than
I spent writing it for the first time... :P
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> I have learned to reread everything I write. I reread all my news posts
> before I send them (well, at least if they are longer than a few lines).
> Sometimes I spend more time re-editing and fine-tuning the text than
> I spent writing it for the first time... :P
I find that when I reread something I just wrote, I'm not "really"
rereading it - because I still remember what I think I typed. If that
makes sense...
If it's anything important, I have to wait long enough that I don't
remember it properly, so I have to actually *read* it.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Warp wrote:
>> I have learned to reread everything I write. I reread all my news posts
>> before I send them (well, at least if they are longer than a few lines).
>> Sometimes I spend more time re-editing and fine-tuning the text than
>> I spent writing it for the first time... :P
And it shows, your posts are without exception fluent and well reasoned.
Invisible wrote:
> I find that when I reread something I just wrote, I'm not "really"
> rereading it - because I still remember what I think I typed. If that
> makes sense...
Yup, I know what you mean. Especially if it's technical.
> If it's anything important, I have to wait long enough that I don't
> remember it properly, so I have to actually *read* it.
If I'm writing a paper, I tend to write a draft, leave it alone for a
few days, then go back to it. Luckily it's convenient to work on
different sections independently, or the whole thing takes me ages! When
trying to get a reasoned point right I sometimes spend hours on less
than a hundred words. :)
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Invisible wrote:
>
>> You might try to go for 'interesting'. I think that is much safer. And
>> you do have some unique features.
>
> Ah. Is *that* the polite term for "you're freakin' weird, dude"?
>
No, you're not weirder than some of the others here (possibly including
myself).
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Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Look at it as if it is a program. The conclusions are the main routine.
>
> That's what always killed me about mathematical proofs. They always
> start with all the details, and finally tell you why you care. :-)
Indeed. Most mathematical proofs are like badly documented code. No
useful comments. Only documenting *what* the final version does (if at
all), never tell the reader *why* or *how*.
Actually, a possible reason I came up with the analogy in the first
place is that it is the inverse of Donald Knuth's 'literate programming'
quest. Don's concept is that code should be as readable as literature.
To give examples to the community he published much of his source code
as books.
>
> I would clarify by saying the document should also *start* with the
> conclusion, because people are going to be trying to recreate the
> structure in their head as they read.
The abstract should serve that purpose. There is at least one
presentation where I deliberately do not do that. I like to see the
aha-erlebnis in the audience. If I tell them upfront they probably
switch of falsely assuming that they won't understand it anyway.
>
> That's what is killing me about reading the Erlang documentation: there
> are all sorts of cross-references, and no obvious place to start
> reading. I wouldn't be surprised if there are circular references
> throughout, either.
>
Note to self: the official Erlang need not be included in the wish list,
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47f9d99a@news.povray.org...
> Gail Shaw wrote:
>
> > What bugs me no end is that some people don't want to learn. They're not
> > interested in understanding what the code does. They just want to get
> > something 'working' (for certain definitions of working) as fast as
> > possible.
>
> Well, some people have a "real job" to do, and a computer is just a tool
> to them.
I'm not talking about office workers. I'm talking about IT people for whom a
computer is their real job.
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Invisible wrote:
> My mum seriously wanted me to do a PhD. Because, I mean, 6 years in
Most people here get paid to do a PhD, I can not imagine that it is much
different in the UK. And your mum may be right a PhD would fit you
better than your current job.
> And besides,
> every year of my degree, my grades became lower and lower. Fortunately I
> hit graduation before I started failing modules. Thus, a PhD is
> obviously the correct next step - especially given my pathologically
> weak writing skills.
>
One major problem is that you don't want to move. Your current home town
is not exactly a hot spot of computer science research.
Another problem is your pathological lack of self esteem (or at least
the constant public display of it). Any sane person would not have
referred to 'my pathologically weak writing skills' after all that has
been said over the last few days.
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