We have to assign a code to each letter. A code being a list of something, such as integers up to 10 (a parameter). There has to be no list that is a prefix of another. The length of the lists is arbitrary.
Joining the lists that make up the 2 phrases should give the same reversed
Shortest encoding wins, and if tied shortest mma code
I'm trying to find the lim n->inf of (n^2+1)/(n^3+1) * n/1
I know the answer is 1, but I cant remember how my professor found it so simply without using lhoptials theorem.
Could you please show me the shortcut?
this site is really uniquely awesome. sometimes i stop by just to admire the design and remember that this community created the logo on their own... and i think (i will have to confirm this) they might have set a network-wide record for fastest time from leaving area 51 to hitting graduation. so. good on you guys :)
It was amazing how fast we hit the various benchmarks: definition, commitment, and then beta. We went from definition to commitment over the weekend prior to Christmas last year, and then into beta in January. Now a full fledged site. Rather fast paced.
@rcollyer I think Ask Ubuntu was a bit of a special circumstance when it came to graduation. Either way though, you guys did pretty fantastic getting your site through beta :)
@rcollyer I posted an answer which is guaranteed to annoy Mr.W: no infix, imperative, doesn't work on older versions, no effort at conciseness, twice as fast as his. Would love to see his face when he sees it
I was just stopping in to post an annoyance: SetDirectory is global which is annoying when you are dealing with multiple notebooks at once that need to load stuff from different directories. :P
I've mentioned this to Jin already but wanted to drop a post onto Meta to make sure it doesn't get reported in duplicate.
Check out the screencap. We've got two different fonts in play on user pages:
@Mr.Wizard I don't agree with the closure of the DumpSave question. The question was not about how to DumpSave an interpolation, but how to dumpsave one instance of a memoized function (which in this case happens to be an Interpolation, but that's not the issue here). I was writing an answer but was stopped short by your closing the question.
@SjoerdC.deVries however, one of my recent papers is on interacting particles in a magnetic field (the butterfly is related to the energy spectrum of noninteracting particles)
I remember a paper (not by Hofstadter) from the early decades of the previous century. It had like 150 pages. That would have been 15 papers when published nowadays. AT that time only quality counted, not quantity.
I don't like the practice — they get users to review and do editorial tasks for no pay, yet they make you pay for publishing, make others pay for subscription/individual articles/membership, etc. However, it's not like it's coming out of my pocket...
@Mr.Wizard @andyross I feel that your answers to the plot question (in which the asker shows no effort whatsoever) might have been a bit less complete. Guiding the asker to solve her question herself might have been more appropriate here. See also the homework meta discussion:
As we have received two homework questions today, and likely will have more in the future, what should our homework policy be? Should we ban them entirely? If not, what degree of help should we give? Also, do we make a distinction between Mathematica being used to solve a homework problem, or the...
This is for a physics report that I have to hand in. I have a list of two-dimensional data points that approximately form a linear line.
I want to:
calculate the best linear fit.
put both data points and the linear fit line on a plot
put names and units on x and y axis
(if possible) put slop...
I have a soft mental quota for each user; I'll help in whatever way I can, to a point. Generally for a new user like Andrea I'll post complete code sections. For the next few questions from the same user I'll post snippets, suggestions, and help links. After that I may stop answering, or answe...
@mr.wizard See belisarius (+18) ...hate lazy people trying to pass exams (or meeting work deadlines) by using the personal effort of others, abusing their passion for doing... / ...teaching to fish ...
verbei (+12) ...I don't object to questions that come from people's homework, as long as they show their code and explain where they got stuck. Sometimes there is a useful general principle that can be illustrated in the answer. But we should refrain from giving them the whole answer...
My own (+7) If a homework question resembles a givemethecodez question it should be closed. If it focuses on a conceptual problem that is part of the solution we can help to fully solve that partial problem. Some effort of the asker should be apparent.
@SjoerdC.deVries I don't disagree with the sentiment. However, I remember being a newcomer to M. It is quite daunting at first and I feel a little hand holding early on is needed for a person to become comfortable enough to find their own answers. This leading is why I linked to LinearModelFit in the answer. Hopefully this helps them discover the documentation system so that they can work a little more on their own next time.
My take on this is that one can never police answers to HW questions. There will always be some good samaritans who have never been burned by freeloaders or continue to help despite that. And that's OK. We can try to point them to general habits on the site, but that's about as far I would go... One can even make a personal rule on how they would vote on answers to these questions, but that's up to each one to decide. I felt the comment under the post was sufficient preliminary help.
The meta post on the other hand was on HW questions and whether they need to be regulated. I think the question here was fine compared to others, but I would've just voted to close as TL, given the pointers in wxffle's comment. Both answers go beyond what I would've done, but I don't see that as overtly going against the community
I do think it's good to help these folks out (taking into account general tone of question, prior behaviour, etc.) — either in the answers or the comments, which ever they choose. However, they should also expect very basic and rtfm questions to eventually be closed and removed. Removal might be at a much slower pace now that we have only 4 non-mod 20k users, so there's chance for everyone to see and learn
@VitaliyKaurov Yeah, have seen it too. Very interesting oftentimes. Also one argument against initiatives to allow golf questions here (there's already a site for it).
Speaking of which... there's the recent code-golf question. My comment has been getting upvotes and because of the ambivalent nature of the comment, I have no clue what the votes imply... lol.
@AndyRoss @R.M fair enough. I just wanted to point out there has been a discussion on this and we might need to take this a bit further. I hope I haven't been too harsh (as @acl distills from my chat post). This was not my intention (and I had thrown in a couple of might haves to make that clear).
@SjoerdC.deVries you maybe right. it's a lot like Gold mining. You have dig through dirt a bit to find a gem ;-) it also flexes the mind towards power functional programming - in some cases at least ;-)
@SjoerdC.deVries I still don't think this first-time-poster's question fits that category. This person is not rude, has not made a pattern of such posts, and asks a simple question without baggage. The basic answer that I provided is scarcely any code, and probably took me less time than listing a series of functions with links would have. I'm just not seeing the problem. In fact, if such a first-time question were not welcome on this site I'd have a problem with that.
@Mr.Wizard While I agree with the sentiment, I want to point out that typing "mathematica linear regression" into either the documentation centre or google gives [this](mathematica linear regression) as the first hit, wherein questions 1. and 2. are directly answered in the second screenful. I don't want to be unpleasant to people, but really, someone who knows markdown and how to format code here should be able to find this out.
speaking of fits, can anybody suggest the best place to find out the differences and relations between FindFit, GeneralizedLinearModelFit, LinearModelFit and so on?
I've been sticking to FindFit but I should probably find out what the rest of them are
And thanks for your kind words. I think it would be good if the StackOverflow blog had a post on how we went from having our first Area 51 proposal closed to graduating in about 7 months. The answer being a core of dedicated users who wanted the site to succeed, promoted it, and recruited other new core users who had not been active in the mathematica on StackExchange.
Re the question - in this case, she is polite and clearly a beginner. Also, this is not Mathematica homework, it's physics homework and I get the impression that it wasn't necessarily expected that she use Mathematica to produce the output. She wants to know if it's possible in Mathematica, and the answers show that it is. I would expect more effort in her next question, but I think as a first question it's ok.
that said, I think it would be worth someone who has already posted a comment or answer to her question to post a welcome comment explaining a bit about our expectations.
I'm trying to find the lim n->inf of (n^2+1)/(n^3+1) * n/1
I know the answer is 1, but I cant remember how my professor found it so simply without using lhoptials theorem.
Could you please show me the shortcut?
I've mentioned this to Jin already but wanted to drop a post onto Meta to make sure it doesn't get reported in duplicate.
Check out the screencap. We've got two different fonts in play on user pages:
This is for a physics report that I have to hand in. I have a list of two-dimensional data points that approximately form a linear line.
I want to:
calculate the best linear fit.
put both data points and the linear fit line on a plot
put names and units on x and y axis
(if possible) put slop...
I have a soft mental quota for each user; I'll help in whatever way I can, to a point. Generally for a new user like Andrea I'll post complete code sections. For the next few questions from the same user I'll post snippets, suggestions, and help links. After that I may stop answering, or answe...
