Joke on Proof by Induction

Douglas was having the last math class of the semester, and it was almost over.

“Ok people,” said the professor, “let’s do one last proof for this semester.” And he began to write down the proposition while people were cheering and laughing.

Douglas began to write down the proposition as usual. But he felt weird: “Proof that all positive integers are interesting.” He turned to his neighbor to look over his notes, and found the exactly same thing. And his neighbor had the exactly same confused face.

“Ok let’s prove it,” said the professor, “any ideas?”

Silence.

“I’ll do it for you then.” Looked like the professor saw the silence coming. “It can be done by induction. First, base case, namely integer 1, is definitely interesting because it is the first positive integer.”

“Then onto the inductive hypothesis, we suppose all positive integers up to k are interesting. Strong induction, questions?”

Silence.

“Okay finally the inductive step. Let’s try something new and do that by contradiction. Suppose k+1 is not interesting, okay? Then, it is the first positive integer that is not interesting and therefore it is interesting; actually it is very interesting. Proof.”

After seconds of silence everyone started to laugh and clap for this final “proof” of the semester.

November 2011 Resource Stack

This is the first “resource stack” of the site. I came up with this idea a few days earlier, to “recap”, if you will, the useful and interesting stuff I came across during the previous month.

There are some sites left for sure, and pics, posters and PDFs that I don’t have a record of urls. Sorry about those missing kids.

On Tools:

BUSHIDO [link]: get your project going! Now in beta version.

recurse [link]: good tool for showing clients your design.

QRstuff [link]: generate your customized QR.

On LISP:

Function Currying in Scheme [link]: Currying is actually one of my assignment questions this term. It’s very interesting and can be connected to the history of functional programming languages. This article discusses this in more details.

History of LISP [link]

On Programming:

Google Code University [link]: well it’s not really a “university”. But nevertheless very good guides provided by Google people.

Classic Computer Science Puzzle [link]

Ruby On Rails “Bible in Motion” [link]: a book on Ruby on Rails written in Chinese by a Taiwan writer.

Ruby Quiz [link]

why_’s estate [link]: the code, articles and comics of why (or _why / why the lucky stiff).

Theocacao [link]: weblog of runner of Cocoa Dev Central [link].

On Design:

Felix Corke – How I redesigned VisitMix.com with CSS[link]: incredible design with details. Explains “expertise” of web design.

Design Seeds[link]: a very good site for color lovers.

Miscellaneous:

Wolfram Broadcasts [link]: didn’t know they have that.

Computer History Museum [link]: my prof showed us the Babbage Engine in class. Awesome museum.

Help Promote JS!

Choose Your Customers

I don’t understand why some companies want to build a Web 2.0 site and count on it for all the fame and fortune. Apparently they want to suffer, from their cheap customers, from the inconceivable and bizarre psychological patterns they have to dig, and from their inability to leave the already-done work all behind some day in the future.

So choose your customers, like a speaker chooses his audience. A speaker will always feel frustrated to speak to monkeys or people staring at their laptops, cell phones or iPads. A company that tries to sell things to this group will very likely to fail, either.

Most people do not spend a penny on Internet stuff. Some of them have faith in their ability to always successfully find a free version; others can just walk away the page with a Paypal link in a I-do-not-have-to-buy-any-shit look. Not surprisingly, the co-founders of many Web 2.0 companies are also members of this “Give Me Free Internet Stuff” group. Then how can they be so stupid that they expect people to pay for their not-so-well-done apps, while they are not willing to pay for some of the most well-done apps and search for cracked free copies instead?

As long as your company is not a charity, it has to earn money, as much as possible. To reach people’s wallets, make sure you know exactly what they want and are able to get their attention. Most online businesses fail in both. People on the Internet are ghosts, and your products meet them in a random manner. Unlike a food firm knows its cup noodles will meet the potential customers in grocery stores or similar places, Web 2.0 companies do not know at all. Imagine their CEOs talk to each other.

“Hey bro, our customers meet our products when they’re out to buy groceries. What do you think is the likelihood that they’ll really pick up and pay for our cup noodles?”
“I’m not sure… Maybe 5%?”
“I think the possibility is around that too. What about your products?”
“Well our customers meet our products when they are idling with no purpose trying to have some fun… Wait. Shit.”

Funny, huh? Sadly many who laugh still believe that they’re the chosen ones and can work out a way. But that way is always the hard way. I guess some people just love challenges.

Again I love how nice some Web 2.0 sites are. But using them must not cost any money, that’s Rule 1. While thousands of awesome and free sites are out there, why pay for it? Running one of the sites can be done in your spare time, but it should not be your career, or your career is on a gambling table.

Imagine, again, that we modify the conversation a little bit.
“…… What about your products?”
“Well our customers are freaking rich and they meet our products when desperate to make more profit.”

Yes, it’s just that easy. Choose your customers.

Dumb As Smartie

Well if you understand the clueless joke in the title, you have one second to laugh.

Not to be absolute but this is a matter of fact that sometimes being smart is the same as being dumb. Or even worse.

So you’re doing a thing. Suddenly you think of another thing, maybe a few more, because you’re smart. Dumb people can only do one thing at a time. But when they finish it and go to the next thing, smart people are still jumping between brilliant ideas about what to do.

Steve Jobs says “stay hungry, stay foolish”, he did not say “stay smart”. Smart people  are just a bit smarter than average, they are not even close to geniuses. Pitifully they are not evolved highly enough to understand the necessity of actually completing tasks. Well thinking makes no difference to the world if the thinker does not even bother to write a book for his awesome thoughts.

Smart people surely understand the importance of making the best use of their smartness. They read books on time management techniques and do as instructed. The reason they do so is that they don’t want to waste any second of their lives. They say to themselves, “the rest is for continuing the work, but I can continue right now. So forget about the rest, what a waste of time.” Not treating one’s body well bring low efficiency and negative emotions; this is on time management books but they may just turn a blind eye on it. They even try to squeeze time out of an already incredibly full schedule. When inspirations come along, they will just stand outside the future receiver’s door facing a note says “Do Not Disturb”.

Really smart people never mind if people call they dumb as that simply doesn’t matter. If you’re smart and intends to do at least something for this planet, please just stop being so “smart”. You’ll appreciate your decision to ask for a “I’m Dumb” label on your head some day soon enough.

Hey I’m Interactive!

“Learn by doing” is what Code School says. In its course store, courses for HTML5 & CSS3 and jQuery can sell for $50 upwards; but the free ones for Ruby and Ruby on Rails can give you a pretty good idea.

These courses are simple and friendly. You talk to the machine and it talks back to you and you learn something. Unlike coding handbooks, they give feedbacks in real time. You may lose track or interest at any point of time with a book, but the interactive environment leads you through each step along the way. In this way, the user learned the stuff and he did the work. Too often reading through books gives readers a false sense of security that they have mastered the language for sure, even they have not coded even a line.

Code School isn’t the only one. These interactive tutorials mainly cover programming or similar skills, since you are not likely to learn cooking (not ritual) with an interactive guide, not even close. Open Vim provides a tutorial to use Vim, Codecademy has a tutorial for JavaScript, SQL Zoo has a SQL tutorial, and you can even find an interactive Google guide.

Interactive lessons are essentially better. These skills are all computer skills, including Internet skills, programming skills, etc. The thing in common is that they all come from computers; if there were no computers, no one would ever want to learn these skills. No one wants to master something they cannot use! The problems is, traditionally we read from a book, and practice what we learned from the book on a computer. But in this process, the book is just redundant. We can practice right away, with the interactive tutorials of course, which makes printing out codebooks a waste of paper.

As a matter of fact, now most interactive tutorials are designed for people who have not written a line of codes in his life. Intermediate level tutorials are needed as well; however those courses can hardly be free when put into much more effort.

How many people would pay for online interactive courses? Very few.
Are they worth it? Probably yes.
Can you convince the users to pay a service online for your time spent in designing the courses? That’s the risk you are going to take.