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.

PS. I think it really needs some diagrams... Some day I hope to find a 
way to do that!

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Attachments:
Download 'layman-sortsearch.pdf' (101 KB)

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> 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.

  The spelling mistakes don't help either. You should fix at least those.

  (Seriously, what did they teach you at school?)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

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.)

Obviously, no spell-checker is going to find every mistake, but given 
the huge number of works that I actually don't know how to spell at all, 
it should help.

>   (Seriously, what did they teach you at school?)

Perhaps you're fogetting that at age 9 I couldn't read or write AT ALL. 
(And consequently I was moved to another school.) It's a miracle I can 
read or write anything...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> 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.)

  How about googling "latex spell checker"?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   How about googling "latex spell checker"?

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that giving Google search terms 
that contain the word "latex" can be a very, very bad idea. ;-)

Gotta be careful to throw in a few other keywords as well. In the case 
above, I get nothing useful. (There's a program that's Mac-only, another 
that works online, one that's a Vim script, a few others that are 
Unix-specific... and so on.)

Post a reply to this message

>>   How about googling "latex spell checker"?
> 
> If there's one thing I've learned, it's that giving Google search terms 
> that contain the word "latex" can be a very, very bad idea. ;-)

Just copy&paste from the pdf into Word and do the spell check from there.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Just copy&paste from the pdf into Word and do the spell check from there.

Doesn't work. The ligatures get all screwed up.

Besides, it's fairly labour-intensive. I'd have to copy each page, check 
it, get the correction, find the corresponding position in the TeX file, 
correct it, rebuild the PDF, and repeat to check I fixed it. For every 
page in the document! o_O

Post a reply to this message

> 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.

Yes I liked it, I learnt a few new things and it prompted me to think about 
things I never really bothered to think about before.  Well done!

> PS. I think it really needs some diagrams... Some day I hope to find a
> way to do that!

Yes, could certainly do with some of those, IIRC for my 4th year project 
write-up at University I just did the diagrams in powerpoint and then 
exported them as something that my latex compiler could understand (wmf or 
something maybe).  If not then I'm sure something like inkscape can export 
into a format that you can include.

Post a reply to this message

>> Just copy&paste from the pdf into Word and do the spell check from there.
>
> Doesn't work. The ligatures get all screwed up.
>
> Besides, it's fairly labour-intensive. I'd have to copy each page, check 
> it, get the correction, find the corresponding position in the TeX file, 
> correct it, rebuild the PDF, and repeat to check I fixed it. For every 
> page in the document! o_O

Umm, I just pressed Ctrl-A Ctrl-C in adobe reader, then Ctrl-V in a blank 
word document and it copied the lot for me.  Then ran the spell check and 
got this list:

renouned
amoung
assey
convinient
seperate
eleminate
severly
eleminate
clusted
seperate
amoung
constrast
quadriples
negligable

OK so it messes up the ligatures and hyphens, but the above is a start!

But for the long term solution, definitely find a spell checker that works 
in Latex, are there not any IDEs specifically for Latex that will flag up 
spelling errors in-place?

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Yes I liked it, I learnt a few new things and it prompted me to think 
> about things I never really bothered to think about before.  Well done!

Heh. I posted something in a forum that only contains super-experts, and 
somebody *learned something* from it! If that isn't an accolade, I'm not 
sure what is... ;-)

Sorting and searching is something that just sorta happens, and you 
don't really think about it. As I kind of tried to say in the 
introduction, most average bods probably just thing "computers are fast; 
they can process information quickly" and don't stop to realise that it 
even takes any cleverness to make the process happen *fast enough*.

I think some of the facts did get kinda just inserted haphazardly with 
no real flow, especially towards the end. Oh well!

>> PS. I think it really needs some diagrams... Some day I hope to find a
>> way to do that!
> 
> Yes, could certainly do with some of those.

I'm thinking specifically the stuff about tree traversals. Computer 
nerds are very familiar with binary trees, but your average Random Dude 
has never heard of 'em.

Also the stuff about arrays and why you have to move stuff around, etc.

It wouldn't need to be anything flashy...

> IIRC for my 4th year project 
> write-up at University I just did the diagrams in powerpoint and then 
> exported them as something that my latex compiler could understand (wmf 
> or something maybe).  If not then I'm sure something like inkscape can 
> export into a format that you can include.

Hmm... Inkscape would seem the "obvious" choice, but I hadn't thought of 
PowerPoint. I'm only after a few boxes with some lines and a little 
text. Indeed, even if PowerPoint won't export it, I could take a 
screenshot. IrfanView can save it as PNG or EPS or just about any format 
I desire! :-D

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> Just copy&paste from the pdf into Word and do the spell check from 
>>> there.
>>
>> Doesn't work. The ligatures get all screwed up.
>>
>> Besides, it's fairly labour-intensive.
> 
> OK so it messes up the ligatures and hyphens, but the above is a start!

True. But it could only be for a final, labour-intensive pass.

> But for the long term solution, definitely find a spell checker that 
> works in Latex.

Heh. Maybe I should *write* one? ;-)

> 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

Actually, it appears that Aspell can do it, and is easily installable on 
Windows. But I'll have to do that at home; anything I install at work 
has to be recorded, and it already looks suspecious as hell that I've 
installed stuff like IrfanView, MiKTeX, Firefox, Thunderbird, Ghostscript...

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A fine sorting algorithms summary. :)

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> A fine sorting algorithms summary. :)

And searching! Don't forget the searching... ;-)

Damn, I'm so hot at searching algorithms, it's a wonder I haven't found, 
say, a girlfriend or a better job yet... hmm... O_O

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> 
> If there's one thing I've learned, it's that giving Google search terms
> that contain the word "latex" can be a very, very bad idea. ;-)
> 

You mean like in Three dead trolls in a baggies song Keep your parents
off the Internet?

-Hello son, I'm thinking of painting the garage and I'll do a search for
"Latex bondage"

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Sorting and searching is something that just sorta happens, and you
> don't really think about it. As I kind of tried to say in the
> introduction, most average bods probably just thing "computers are fast;
> they can process information quickly" and don't stop to realise that it
> even takes any cleverness to make the process happen *fast enough*.

"The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was."

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> 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/

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

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!

Post a reply to this message

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...

Post a reply to this message

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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