I'm not talking about getting more in-depth explanations or clarifications about class material, I'm talking about: "If I were you, I would really focus on that exercise on page 47 (wink wink). Also, just skip chapter 4 (wink wink)". This creates a scenario where a student with genuine subject mastery can actually be outscored by someone who simply got the hints.
To answer your question, I don't recall ever going to "office hours", as I was generally a top student with minimal effort and an autodidact, but I learned about it through friends. Having parents who are both professors also gave me a front-row seat to how common this was.
I'm encouraging my folks to try it pretty hard because A) I've personally seen the productivity gains and B) using it is at first deeply weird/uncomfortable. Sometimes you've got to convince people to push through that kind of thing.
They measured 16 developers and called it a "study"? That is amusing. Not to mention it was conducted almost a year ago, the tools have already changed dramatically.
So just run a new study this year. I do think the tools have improved, but it should show up empirically. The only people for whom the urgency of "right now" is present is for the C-suite and investor class who are fighting to make sure they survive, but it might also be a crisis of their own making. Don't confuse your identity as a worker with the identity of the capitalist class.
I think my employer should buy me a laptop and possibly a monitor or two to help my productivity because I subjectively feel they'd be helpful, and I have the market power to insist on tools that I subjectively feel are helpful. If my CEO announced that monitors are super important and everyone will be tracked on monitor space usage going forwards, I would still want to see evidence that this is going to accomplish something.
Your CEO likewise subjectively feels all of their employees using AI will be helpful, and has the market power to insist that their employees use them.
When engineers demand evidence that AI is productive, but not that having laptops and monitors are productive, it screams confirmation bias. "I'm right, you're wrong" as a default prior.
I wouldn't call it confirmation bias, but you're right that is my prior. If an executive and a line worker disagree about whether a tool is useful, I assume unless presented with evidence to the contrary that the executive is wrong.
I would emphasize that I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the converse either. If an executive is just absolutely convinced that dual monitors are a scam and nobody needs more than their laptop screen, they can run their company that way, and I'm sure there are many successful companies with that philosophy.
> It's like "A study found that parachutes were no more effective than empty backpacks at protecting jumpers from aircraft."
Are you under the impression that we don't bother to empirically prove things that seem obvious, like the safety benefits of parachutes? You don't think parachute manufacturers test their designs and quantify their performance?
There are no randomized controlled trials that parachutes save lives.
This is repeatedly used as an example in the medical community about the limits of randomized controlled trials. This isn't some impression - your impression that such evidence exists is wrong.
There might be some parachute company tests about effective of velocity, etc., but there are no human trials.
> There are no randomized controlled trials that parachutes save lives.
It's a good thing "randomized controlled trials" aren't the only kind of empirical evidence, then.
We know the limits of how fast a human can safely land. Parachute manufactures have to prove that their designs meet the minimum performance specifications to achieve a safe speed. This proof is not invalidated by the fact that it doesn't include throwing some poor bastard with a placebo parachute out of an airplane to demonstrate that he dies on impact.
Also, the answer to your original question is yes. There are numerous studies showing that multiple monitors improve productivity.
I hear about meow wolf all the time and I seem to be the only person in the world who thought it was an underwhelming cash grab that is beaten by a half dozen events a year in nearly every major city in the US. Am I just missing some huge piece of it?
I quite enjoyed their Omega Mart in Vegas. Was there for work and gambling, shows, and gun ranges are really not my thing, glad there was something different. (I did wander round the strip but enjoyed the hike in Red Rock Canyon more)
When we went we got the priority tickets (can't remember the exact name of the deal) because there were no normal slots left that day; that does get you discounts on stuff but awkwardly the discount is at the gift shop _outside_ and it wasn't clear whether there were things at the fake supermarket checkout _inside_ that you couldn't get outside. It also gets you the card you boop for the scavenger hunt which makes you more involved in the whole thing. So yeah, they got us for some extra cash but it wasn't so bad as a one-off.
Not meaning to derail an interesting conversation, but I'm curious about your description of your work as "applied probability". Can you say any more about what that involves?
Pure probability focuses on developing fundamental tools to work with random elements. It's applied in the sense that it usually draws upon techniques found in other traditionally pure mathematical areas, but is less applied than "applied probability", which is the development and analysis of probabilistic models, typically for real-world phenomena. It's a bit like statistics, but with more focus on the consequences of modelling assumptions rather than relying on data (although allowing for data fitting is becoming important, so I'm not sure how useful this distinction is anymore).
At the moment, using probabilistic techniques to investigate the operation of stochastic optimisers and other random elements in the training and deployment of neural networks is pretty popular, and that gets funding. But business as usual is typically looking at ecological models involving the interaction of many species, epidemiological models investigating the spread of disease, social network models, climate models, telecommunication and financial models, etc. Branching processes, Markov models, stochastic differential equations, point processes, random matrices, random graph networks; these are all the common objects used. Actually figuring out their behaviour can require all kinds of assorted techniques though, you get to pull from just about anything in mathematics to "get the job done".
In my work in academia (which I’m considering leaving), I’m very familiar with the common mathematical objects you mentioned. Where could I look for a job similar to yours? It sounds very interesting
Sorry, I'm in academia too, but my ex-colleagues who left found themselves doing nearly identical work doing MFT research at hedge funds, climate modelling at our federal weather bureau, and SciML in big tech. I know of someone doing this kind of work in telecoms too, but I haven't spoken to them lately. Having said that, it's rough out there right now. A couple of people I know looking for another job right now (academia or otherwise) with this kind of training are not having much luck...
It isn't impossible that it's AI, but assuming writing and publishing happen at the same time would also lead you to conclude that Anne Frank wrote from the afterlife.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder how many tools I would have to remove from my garage to make it impossible to build a primitive gun in there. With enough ingenuity I'm really not sure there would be anything left.
> one particular design, outlined in his book Expedient Homemade Firearms, is the best known. This design makes extensive use of easily procured materials such as folded sheet metal, bar stock, washers, and hex screws. It is a simple blowback-operated sub-machine gun and entirely made from craft-produced components, including the magazine and pistol grip. The major drawback of such designs is the lack of rifling in the barrel, which results in poor accuracy and limited range
This book was openly sold on Amazon 10 years ago. I still have one on my shelf.
"[The second amendment] basically says in order to keep us free we need to be able to keep and bear arms. A lot of countries though aren't necessarily that lucky and through things we won't talk about that's starting to show its ugly head".
Wasn't the whole point of the Sten gun that it could be made out of readily-available materials (steel plumbing pipe mostly) with simple hand tools, and really only needed two of the 50 or so components to be machined?
So, unless your garage is down to a pair of rusty pliers and a dried-out Biro then you're probably still up there.
There are some Youtube videos about homemade weapons in African countries and it seems you'd have to remove peoples hands in addition to their tools. Some of the functional guns out there are mostly hand whittled wood with a piece of pipe and some bailing wire.
That's effectively a complete ban as a thrown potato would have considerably more energy than that. A quick web search suggests professional baseball pitchers achieve ~130J, and a potato is roughly comparable to a baseball in mass.
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