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Shanthanu Bhardwaj
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Shanthanu's posts
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More interestingly however, -2 is the only finite integer for which this process can be carried out indefinitely. Otherwise, the series always terminates, because it can go at most n times if the number of fish is (3/2)^n · (k+2) - 2 is an integer, and k%3 is not 1. #Maths #theoreticalphysicist
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"My name is Aaron Hughes. I served in the Illinois Army National Guard from 2000 and 2006. This medal right here is for Anthony Wagner. He died last year. This medal right here is for the one-third of the women in the military that are sexually assaulted by their peers. We talk about standing up for our sisters—we talk about standing up for our sisters in Afghanistan, and we can’t even take care of our sisters here. And this medal right here is because I’m sorry. I’m sorry to all of you. I’m sorry."
In a deeply moving ceremony, U.S. war veterans return their medals after stating their reasons for doing so. I wanted to quote some of them, but couldn't choose...
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The whole claim that Pirahã doesn't have recursion always seemed fishy to me, especially when Everett claimed they use multiple simple sentences instead of one sentence with relative clauses. It seemed like just a difference of nomenclature, though probably we need more data from multiple sources before concluding anything.
Update on the debate over the language of Pirahã
Question: Given an arbitrary, planar, 4-valent graph. Is it possible to embed it in R^3 (or some general R^n) so that each face is planar and on this quadrangulated 2-d surface the area associated with each vertex (in a Voronoi cell kind of way) is the same?
Or any idea on where to look for anything related to this problem in Maths or CS literature would be helpful too.
#math #question
Or any idea on where to look for anything related to this problem in Maths or CS literature would be helpful too.
#math #question
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How to solve all the world’s problems (6 photos)
6 Photos - View album
To celebrate that my last one has more than 10 million results on Google, and has been seen by more people than The Avengers, I made a new edumacational comic just for you!
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A while ago I reacted to this video by saying that it seemed that the author of Why Nations Fail learned the history of colonization by playing Age of Empires III:
Daron Acemoglu on Why Nations Fail
The point of this critique was the following: even while recognizing that North American settlers had "behaved improperly" in the face of Native Americans, they were presented as true entrepreneurs, that created productive and not exploitative economies (based on industry and not in the enslavement of the Natives, as allegedly did the Spanish and Portuguese in South America).
The thing is, well, they did create exploitative economies. You can only miss it if you completely ignore the history of African slavery, as the author of the video seems to do, both in South and North America. How come you can completely ignore the "Atlantic" trade and still present a vision of american history that resonates with the general public?
Well, the general public is, unfortunately, presented with American colonization history mostly through games, and "slaves" are considered a bad game mechanic... This obviously has deep cultural implications (the gamification of education will make matters worse), so the question of how to present a "realistic" instead of a "beautiful" colonization in video games is an important one:
Tigranes’ accusation that “The Authentic Colonization” is, in fact, a “beautiful colonization” since it does not include plagues or the slave trade is fascinating. Beautiful colonization—what a disturbing turn of phrase! When we stack up the various mods of the game and design decisions for including slavery, we aren’t really sure what it all means. Should we be excited by the fact that there is a community of individuals out there trying to make more offensive and more accurate versions of the game, versions that potentially force players to confront the dark past that is colonization? Clearly these mods show us alternate visions of what the game could have looked like, but they also tell us something about what parts of the player community want to see in the game. Beyond this, what do these mods tell us about the game itself? The game was designed in such a way to invite and encourage this kind of modification, but what does that mean for interpretation of the original game? Does this make the original game’s shortcomings forgivable? Does it remove the game development team’s responsibility in representing an “authentic colonization”? These are questions that we pose to readers and ourselves, and that we will continue to consider in further posts.
Daron Acemoglu on Why Nations Fail
The point of this critique was the following: even while recognizing that North American settlers had "behaved improperly" in the face of Native Americans, they were presented as true entrepreneurs, that created productive and not exploitative economies (based on industry and not in the enslavement of the Natives, as allegedly did the Spanish and Portuguese in South America).
The thing is, well, they did create exploitative economies. You can only miss it if you completely ignore the history of African slavery, as the author of the video seems to do, both in South and North America. How come you can completely ignore the "Atlantic" trade and still present a vision of american history that resonates with the general public?
Well, the general public is, unfortunately, presented with American colonization history mostly through games, and "slaves" are considered a bad game mechanic... This obviously has deep cultural implications (the gamification of education will make matters worse), so the question of how to present a "realistic" instead of a "beautiful" colonization in video games is an important one:
Tigranes’ accusation that “The Authentic Colonization” is, in fact, a “beautiful colonization” since it does not include plagues or the slave trade is fascinating. Beautiful colonization—what a disturbing turn of phrase! When we stack up the various mods of the game and design decisions for including slavery, we aren’t really sure what it all means. Should we be excited by the fact that there is a community of individuals out there trying to make more offensive and more accurate versions of the game, versions that potentially force players to confront the dark past that is colonization? Clearly these mods show us alternate visions of what the game could have looked like, but they also tell us something about what parts of the player community want to see in the game. Beyond this, what do these mods tell us about the game itself? The game was designed in such a way to invite and encourage this kind of modification, but what does that mean for interpretation of the original game? Does this make the original game’s shortcomings forgivable? Does it remove the game development team’s responsibility in representing an “authentic colonization”? These are questions that we pose to readers and ourselves, and that we will continue to consider in further posts.
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+João Figueiredo says:
``This is so wrong. Oh, where to start ranting...
OK, so connectivism begins to sound more and more like an open attack to our school system, you know, the one that is terribly underfunded [wherever you live] and that Sir Ken Robinson thinks belongs in the Victorian Age...
First: correlation does not equal causation. This fact wasn't something I had deeply embedded inside me, just waiting for the right time to emerge, it was something that sounded terribly counter intuitive when I learned it. So Einstein walking out of school and being a genius is no proof that if you do the same you end up one. If you don't believe me, just try.
Second: culture, to at least half of the cultural anthropologists (the objectivists) is something objective that is transmitted along generations in a non-biological fashion. So if you want to learn how to build a space shuttle, you have to actually stand still and learn it - it is not something that is "engraved" inside your brain because your ancestors built one (even subjectivists believe that the things you actually have "engraved" inside your brain are a bit simpler: the incest taboo, for instance).
Third: thank God the cavemen fled Africa on time not to freeze to death during the last Ice Age!
Lastly: I do believe that technology can play a role in making our schools better, but lousy epistemology cannot be excused. It is not surprising that Google and other net companies love connectivism because it is a chance to be taken has the knight is shining armor that will save our schools. But, I wonder if their interest lies in creating consumers for their products, and not free individuals instead...''
``This is so wrong. Oh, where to start ranting...
OK, so connectivism begins to sound more and more like an open attack to our school system, you know, the one that is terribly underfunded [wherever you live] and that Sir Ken Robinson thinks belongs in the Victorian Age...
First: correlation does not equal causation. This fact wasn't something I had deeply embedded inside me, just waiting for the right time to emerge, it was something that sounded terribly counter intuitive when I learned it. So Einstein walking out of school and being a genius is no proof that if you do the same you end up one. If you don't believe me, just try.
Second: culture, to at least half of the cultural anthropologists (the objectivists) is something objective that is transmitted along generations in a non-biological fashion. So if you want to learn how to build a space shuttle, you have to actually stand still and learn it - it is not something that is "engraved" inside your brain because your ancestors built one (even subjectivists believe that the things you actually have "engraved" inside your brain are a bit simpler: the incest taboo, for instance).
Third: thank God the cavemen fled Africa on time not to freeze to death during the last Ice Age!
Lastly: I do believe that technology can play a role in making our schools better, but lousy epistemology cannot be excused. It is not surprising that Google and other net companies love connectivism because it is a chance to be taken has the knight is shining armor that will save our schools. But, I wonder if their interest lies in creating consumers for their products, and not free individuals instead...''
How do humans learn?
Born to Learn is the first animation in a fascinating series aimed to provide easy-access to the exciting new discoveries constantly being made about how humans learn. It is part of +YouTube Edu. #youtubeedu
Born to Learn
Born to Learn is the first animation in a fascinating series aimed to provide easy-access to the exciting new discoveries constantly being made about how humans learn. It is part of +YouTube Edu. #youtubeedu
Born to Learn
Here's a fun puzzle for those following +John Baez's #4d series. If we arrange N points on the surface of a unit sphere, and call the smallest angle (from the center) between two points φ. What is the largest possible value of φ for different N's? Clearly for N=2,3,4,6 we get φ=180°,120°,109.47...°,90° with the particles diametrically opposite, in an equilateral triangle circumscribed in a geodesic, a tetrahedron and an octahedron. What about N=8? And N=12?
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