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An Intuitive Guide to Linear Algebra (2012)
Despite two linear algebra classes, my knowledge consisted of "Matrices, determinants, eigen something something". Why? Well, let's try this course format:
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,391 posts.
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Rolling Shutters
I remember seeing once the following photo from Flickr, and having my brain melt slightly from trying to figure out what went wrong: The issue was the propeller was rotating as the camera detector 'read out', i.e. there was some motion during the exposure of the camera. This is an interesting thing to think about…
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Math breakdown: Anime homing missiles
Tech Notes on Cubic Bezier Curves, Perlin Noise, and Minimal Rotation Frames
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4-bit calculator made from cardboard and marbles
Might not be the most reliable or useful contraption but it's definitely a fun one.
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Oh My Gosh, It’s Covered in Rule 30s
New British train station design identified as cellular automata rule 30. Generating rule-based patterns. And a website that lets you try it yourself.
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Turns are better than radians
Switching away from radians makes code simpler, faster, and more precise.
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Functorio
You might have heard people say that functional programming is more academic, and real engineering is done in imperative style. I’m going to show you that real engineering is functional, and …
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A visual introduction to big O notation
A visual introduction to big O notation.
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The hunt for the missing data type
A (directed) graph is a set of nodes, connected by arrows (edges). The nodes and edges may contain data. Here are some graphs: All graphs made with graphviz (source) Graphs are ubiquitous in software engineering: Package dependencies form directed graphs, as do module imports. The internet is a graph of links between…
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93% of Paint Splatters Are Valid Perl Programs
TLDR: read the paper and view the gallery of pretty Perl programs. In this paper, we aim to answer a long-standing open problem in the programming languages community: is it possible to smear paint on the wall without creating valid Perl?
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Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers
A continuous version of Conway's Life, using floating point values instead of integers: supports many interesting phenomena such as gliders that can travel in any direction, rotating pairs of gliders, wickstretchers and the appearance of elastic tension in the 'cords' that join the blobs. Slides showing how the rule…
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Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
We have public schools for a reason.
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Many hard LeetCode problems are easy constraint problems
Use the right tool for the job.
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You could have invented transformers from memory
Every layer is a memory store
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How to Read Mathematics
Ranked a top 100 research university, VCU is a place where discovery and creativity go hand in hand. Located in downtown Richmond, Virginia, its more than 200 programs emphasize hands-on learning, creativity and engaging in the world around us.
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Animals Made from 13 Circles (2016)
Dori | Art Director, Designer, Artist
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How to Study Mathematics (2017)
This essay describes a number of strategies for studying college level mathematics. It has sections entitled
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A non-mathematical introduction to Kalman filters for programmers
Read my manifesto on Code as an alternative to Mathematics. Code for this article can be found on this Colab Notebook should you choose to follow along. Why Kalman Filters? Kalman filters are ingenius. If you have never heard of them, then a very intuitive (and arguably reductive) way to think about them is to
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MathBox 2
Notes will appear here. Please view in Chrome or Firefox. Chrome is glitchy, Firefox is stuttery. Work in progress. :/
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The fastest GIF does not exist
Some games on a website
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Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day
This article is now available in Japanese: 紙と鉛筆でビットコインをマイニング：1日に0.67ハッシュ and Russian: Майним Bitcoin с помощью бумаги и ручки . I decided...
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1/0 = 0
Disclaimer 2024-12-02 Since this rant is going viral again (again (again)), some disclaimers: I wrote this six years ago to “”“win”“” an ugly Twitter fight. I’m glad I anonymized the inciting tweet and hope I’m the only person still getting grief over this. The core interesting bit— why it’s mathematically valid to…
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Suspicious Discontinuities
If you read any personal finance forums late last year, there's a decent chance you ran across a question from someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year. There are a number of ways someone could do this; one commonly suggested scheme was to buy put options that were expected to expire…
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The scientific “unit” we call the decibel
Celebrating a rare dumpster fire in the kingdom of science.
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Compressing and enhancing hand-written notes (2016)
I wrote a program to clean up scans of handwritten notes while simultaneously reducing file size.