The Nineteenth Byte

Is terribleness the point

Rushabh Mehta

Kanye is

idk

Kanye

It's hilarious

Scrooble

12:46 AM

Wait

Explorer dark theme

Bro

1:02 AM

:O I'm starting to hear back regarding med school applications and my inbox-notification-sound anxiety has skyrocketed

Already? At the start of October?

Yeah this is normal timing for applications

Everywhere I'm applying has a deadline in like January

Quintec

November 15 early app deadline here

I should clarify that I'm in the US and applying to a lot of big-name schools with october deadlines... only the smaller schools on my list have december deadlines.

Something like August 15th is what I've seen for the normal early decision deadline.

Quintec

1:08 AM

I'm also in the US, November 1st/15th is the norm from what I've seen

MIT, for example

Anyway, good luck, and may the notifications be in your favor ;)

Okay then we must be talking about totally different kinds of applications... MIT isn't a med school.

Quintec

Yeah I know, it's just that you seemed to imply all big-name schools have october deadlines

For big-name med schools, it's a pretty accurate statement.

Zacharý

MIT's Early Application is Nov. 1st, Regular is Dec 1st, I might be misremembering

Scrooble

I like the Windows dark theme.

1:16 AM

@Pavel are you applying to med school too?

Scrooble

Bases loaded. Let's go.

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

1:58 AM

0

Q: Same number letters

Letters of the words want fairness they decided to appear same number of times in a sentence equally Example Priorities will become Ppprrioooritttieeesss each letter show 3 times as letter mostly used was i and it showed 3 times it does not matter where you put the repeated letters as l...

word-puzzle

New Sandboxed Posts

2:56 AM

0

Challenge Max Sum String Given an input string, return the max word based on the sum of each word's unicode characters. Rules The input should be seperated by whitespace The value of each word is based on the sum of each character in the word's UTF-16 code The output should be the word Ex...

4:07 AM

@Poke I'm actually ok with the current status of popcon. It's nuanced, but it makes sense to me

We require objective requirements, but allow for subjective voting (unlike other challenges that have objective winning criterion)

We also require that voting criterion (which answers you should vote on) naturally align with voting tendencies. (This is subjective, but that's ok as well: All of our close reasons are also subjective)

Q: faded palindrome using python

10:27 AM

0

Given a string S having characters from English alphabets ['a' - 'z'] and '.' as the special character (without quotes). Write a program to construct the lexicographically smallest palindrome by filling each of the faded character ('.') with a lower case alphabet.For example "aaabbb" is smaller ...

code-golf

New Meta Posts

12:16 PM

1

Q: Can we expect out arguments to be allocated?

According to this consensus in the default allowed inputs thread, functions may output by writing to an out argument. When outputting an array in languages like C/C++, where arrays are pointers to locations in memory, can we assume the memory at the output location to have been allocated and to...

discussion output

1:46 PM

@NathanMerrill but the requirements can't be objective in a popcon... unless you subscribe to the theory that every challenge is just a popcon since voting is always subjective

"which picture looks most like this other picture" is not objective unless you have an algorithm to run it through

2:09 PM

@Pavel seems to be titled poorly? there's a lot more stuff in there. definitely funny, though

2:24 PM

@Poke We distinguish winning criterion and requirements pretty heavily on this site

it's entirely possible that the winning criterion (voting criterion) is subjective, while the requirements are objective

Using your example, "Which picture looks most like this other picture" is the subjective voting criterion, but you would also have objective requirements like "Code must be under 1024 bytes"

@NathanMerrill but challenges don't have that second part... if they did then you may as well make it codegolf at that point.

yes they do

I didn't say objective scoring

objective requirements, which is a different thing

code-golf has objective requirements and objective scoring

pop-con has objective requirements, but subjective scoring

well I don't really have the patience to argue this anymore because that goes against many of the popcons that i have seen closed

I mean...that's entirely possible. I do think that popcons have a high tendency to be closed, even if they follow our guidelines

people inspect them very closely (due to their dislike of them), and find any flaw

personally i like many of the popcons on this site and some of them are the reason i joined this community

2:31 PM

which leads to a high rate of closure

@Poke oh, I have no disagreement with popcons. I've voted to keep them on the site. They are simply hard to regulate

s/hard/impossible/

ftfy

wait sorry that's not objective

/s

@Poke we have had 2 unclosed pop-cons this year

@NathanMerrill I'm not sure if cops and robbers challenges should really be classified as popcons. they're similar in the voting, though

and this one doesn't have objective winning criterion

right, I agree.

12 mins ago, by Nathan Merrill

pop-con has objective requirements, but subjective scoring

subjective winning criterion

i think current site consensus is that every challenge must have objective winning criterion

2:43 PM

Right, it's "technically" objective, which is why we allow that, but I agree, it's subjective. That's why pop-cons are debated

your explanation seems pretty clear cut

everyone just needs to get on the same page

either they're all ok

or none of them are ok

(with a few outliers i suppose)

like I said before: I think what happens is that people find other flaws in pop-con challenges and blow them up to large proportions and close due to that

because the tag wiki is pretty clear on what makes an on-topic popcon

which is a hard problem to solve: humans naturally find faults with stuff they don't like

ATaco

Popcon should be used as an Objective Winning Condition where you need a Subjective clarification. For example, it's not possible to ask Objectively what language is more Impractical, or which of two Content-Aware Fills did a better job, but Popcon allows you to substitute votes as a measure of this.

@ATaco I agree, but I'm not sure what you mean by "should"?

Isn't that the current state of the tag?

ATaco

...When writing new popcon challenges.

AdmBorkBork

3:47 PM

I hate it when I find a script on the Internet that supposedly solves whatever problem I'm currently facing (i.e., so I'm not reinventing the wheel), but the script doesn't even run due to mismatched braces or undefined variable names or the like.

oooh, that gives me an interesting cops-n-robbers idea

Cops make a piece of code with a syntax error, and robbers put code around it to make it not error

hmmm...defining syntax error is hard

maybe not

AdmBorkBork

I'm glad my misery was able to bring joy to others ;-)

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

hi.. I have a math-ey question, if anyone is in the mood

how can you make a function to let you make several samples from the same geometric distribution?

New Sandboxed Posts

4:11 PM

0

Permutations to the nines This question is based on an unresolved inquiry which began at Permutations without recursive function call and was followed up at How to improve efficiency of algorithm which generates next lexicographic permutation? (TL;DR), after finding help removing duplicate numbe...

Can a mod delete that link above? Security.SE indicates that there are some serious doubts about the post: security.stackexchange.com/questions/195059/…

Sure

thanks :)

4:44 PM

If /dev/sda is a physical drive and /devsda1 is a partition on that drive, what's a partition called if it's striped over /dev/sda and /dev/sdb?

AdmBorkBork

/dev/sad

/s

Q: How to make question clear to users who voted to close without providing feedback as to what is not clear to them?

*/dev/sda1

New Meta Posts

0

This question Permutations to the nines is "on hold" listing the reason as "unclear what you're asking". Asked the first two users listed as voting to close what part of the question is not clear to them, to which no reply has been posted. Am considering re-asking the question, though before do...

discussion vote-to-close

4:57 PM

Here is something puzzling me. Imagine I toss n coins. If I ask "How many coins do I need to look at starting at coin t before I get a head" I can simulate that random variable easily. It's the geometric distribution.

but say I want ask at coins t1 and t2, I need the two answers to be consistent
how can you do that?

I suppose I could just simulate tossing n coins and put them in an array :)

I'm not sure I understand

I'm sure I don't understand

In scenario 1, you are asking "What's the likelihood to get N tails in a row", right?

Not quite.. I want to sample from the random distribution. So the output should be a number between 1 and n

you can sample from the geometric distribution e.g docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.10.1/reference/generated/…

I know what a random distribution is, but I don't understand the original question you are trying to ask

5:02 PM

that's fine

ok so.. let's imagine I tossed n coins

n coins? Or a coin n times?

just making sure we are on the same page

n identical coins :)

ok, go on

you get H, T, H, T, T, H etc.

You are looking for a distribution of streaks of Tails?

5:04 PM

now I could point at count 4 and ask how many coins do I need to look at from there to get an H

in this case 3

if I had never never seen the coin outcomes, the distribution for the number of coins I need to look at from there to get an H is geometric (except for the problem of stopping at n, let's ignore that)

is that clear so far?

and, so in your example, I could convert it into the array:
[1,2,1,3,2,1]?

yes!

I have to go.. back in 30 mins

and thank you for listening!

5:55 PM

@NathanMerrill back

so... I can sample from this distribution we just discussed once without having to create the array [1,2,1,3,2,1] by just sampling from the geometric distribution

are you still about?

Oliver

@Mego How would I represent a number larger than 9 in Seriously? Here I am trying to create a range [1...100].

@Oliver You could use :

Sorry for ping spam

Oliver

Just found it, thanks!

> 3A (:): numeric literal delimiter: pushes the longest string of characters in '0123456789+-.ij' as a numeric

I have used (serious|actual)ly literally once before

6:12 PM

@Anush back :)

I am following

Anonymous

@Oliver 2╤ would be shorter than :100

Oliver

Thanks!

6:29 PM

uh oh

SE is down?

BMO

@Poke I was just wondering the same, seems to be the case :(

well i guess it's time to go home

@NathanMerrill OK so...

@NathanMerrill How do I sample twice from this same distribution?

that is the one that should reflect one fixed sequence of coin tosses

I'm so glad we can still use chat when SE is down

@NathanMerrill so I want to sample from coin 2 and coin 4

@DJMcMayhem twitter.com/stackstatus?lang=en seems to say nothing about this downtime

6:32 PM

@Anush check again

Arnauld

Database overload.

aha! :)

@Anush coin 2 and coin 4 have the same chance?

BMO

If this turns into an extended outage, we will tweet updates from. - Guess it just turned into an extended outage.

like, the distribution of Tail-streaks at coin 2 is the same as the distribution at coin 4

6:34 PM

@NathanMerrill let's look [1,2,1,3,2,1]

I would like the answers 2, 3

That's not a distribution

Well [1,2,1,3,2,1] is the outcome of the coin tosses

that's simply a single instance of flipping a set of coins

right.. so I would like two numbers with the right probability distribution :)

I just meant had the outcome been [1,2,1,3,2,1] I should output 2, 3

the point is that the joint distribution seems tricky

The probability distribution at coin 2 is geometric

it's not "2"

6:36 PM

yes

and also of coin 4

but what is the joint distribution?

Geometric

they are not independent

if coin 4 is a head then we know that the outcome at coin 2 can't be more than 3

pause real fast: When you say "joint" you mean min(x,y)? max(x,y) average(x,y)?

like, how are you combining the two variables?

I mean (x,y)

I want to output two variables x and y

so you want a 3d graph

6:38 PM

but I can't sample them independently

I really just want code to give me those two numbers with the correct probability

BMO

SE is back!

yes :)

You can't sample the two variables independently

right, so, lets say you generate (x) first from a geometric distribution

then, all you need to do is detect if x overlaps Y, and if it does, then you don't sample at all

you already have y

otherwise, it's a standard geometric distribution

I will have to think about this :)

I will come back once I have a version that makes more sense

thanks

are you looking for an equation that generates both x and y?

6:45 PM

really just a way to write the code

you sample from the geometric distribution using the inverse transform method that I am happy with

def gen(a,b):
    x = rand_geometric()
    y = rand_geometric()
    if x > (b-a):
        y = x-(b-a)
    return (x,y)

there may be an off-by-one error there

Q: Making a Mountain out of a Molehill

7:35 PM

1

You are given a string of terrain, with molehills and mountains: /\ / \ _/\__ / \ ___/ \_/ \_ ____/\___/ \___ Your job is to replace every molehill in the string with an equivalent mountain...

code-golf ascii-art

New Meta Posts

9:25 PM

0

Q: Isolating the last character from a string variable in C#?

I am inputting a four character string variable into C#, but desire to retain only the last character of the string. How do I isolate it most effectively? This is a simple issue for a seasoned programmer, I a just starting out with this program. Thanks for help.

discussion c#

10:30 PM

0

Q: BUY 2 GET 1 FREE problem

THE QUESTION USING C LANGUAGE all ways are allow but make it as simple as you can because its more challenging this way.https://i.stack.imgur.com/c3jAy.png

decision-problem

11:01 PM

@NewMainPosts Soooo... ceil(2/3*input())?

Q: Modified Boggle-able Code and Output: CnR Edition (Cops)

11:34 PM

whoa, déjà vu

0

This is the Cops' thread. Robbers' thread is (not posted yet). Background Boggle is a board game where the players have to find English words on a 4-by-4 board of random alphabets. Words can be constructed by selecting sequentially adjacent cells on the board. ("adjacent" means horizontally...

cops-and-robbers boggle