Top all-time · #18177
Geoff Canyon
Personal blog · gcanyon.wordpress.commathprogramminggames
Geoff Canyon's personal blog at gcanyon.wordpress.com covers math, programming and games. Since 2009, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “Bing, Google Squared, Wolfram Alpha, and Google Wave reviewed”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
One HN comment links this blog to argue that average life expectancy is misleading because age at death is spread out, not clustered at the mean. The linked posts appear to cover life expectancy statistics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Bing, Google Squared, Wolfram Alpha, and Google Wave reviewed2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-06-24
What Hacker News says?
The problem WA is attempting to address is nearly impossible: to trust WA as a reliable source of information, you have to be confident it will be able to answer the question you're asking. If you work in a specific problem space, you can probably know that, but even if WA does know your particular area, you likely know even better ways to answer your questions. Putting it another way, it's too hard to know what WA…
Comment linking /2009/06/07/bing-wolfram-alpha-google-squared-and-google-wave-reviewed/
on “Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?”Submitted Two related puzzles, one not so hard, one hard as a story · 4 points
HN discussionaverage life expectancy is a trap -- the distribution is binomial. People tended to either die early, as infants, or live to an average 60.[0] Specifically, if you were age 0, you have an expected lifespan of 40, but by age 10, you have an expected lifespan of 60. Today expected lifespan after reaching age 10 is better, but not as extreme as the average tells you: you'd expect to hit to live to 77. [1] So most peopl…
Comment linking /2009/06/25/life-expectancy-in-the-1800s-not-as-bad-as-reported/
on “Otokichi”Submitted No, really: stop me if you’ve heard this one before (2009) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere are certainly languages that test whether this is possible. J comes to mind: https://www.jsoftware.com/#/README Here's something like the tenth or fifteenth chunk of code I wrote in J. It solves a programming puzzle. I doubt people who have mastered J would call it well-written, but it solves the problem. list=:_9]\33 30 10 _6 18 _7 _11 23 _6 16 _19 9 _26 _8 _19 _8 _21 _14 17 12 _14 31 _30 13 _13 19 16 _6 _11…
Comment linking /2009/10/30/a-solution-to-einavs-programming-puzzle/
on “In defense of complicated programming languages”Submitted The iPad: trying to do for 2010 what the Mac did for 1984 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI did a write-up of (what I think is) a more straightforward way to do this here: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-cal...
Comment linking /2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-calculate-the-day-of-the-week/
on “Lewis Carroll – computing the day of the week for any given date (1887)”Submitted I have a Google Wave invite to hand out... as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMiniZinc is a fairly simple-to-understand and open source constraint language: https://www.minizinc.org I learned about it when a friend gave me a programming challenge: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/a-programming-puzzl... She was going to work in PHP, I wrote a solution in J, and a commenter solved it in MiniZinc. Here is their solution in MiniZinc: http://www.hakank.org/minizinc/einav_puzzle.mzn
Comment linking /2009/10/28/a-programming-puzzle-from-einav/
on “Constraint Programming”Submitted Bing, Google Squared, Wolfram Alpha, and Google Wave reviewed as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCalculating 23rd roots is a different story, but finding the day of the week for any date isn't actually that hard. John Conway came up with a manageable method, which was improved a few years back. I think I've simplified it a bit further: http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-calc...
Comment linking /2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-calculate-the-day-of-the-week/
on “‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died”Submitted Gerrymandering Probability (answers to the two puzzles I submitted) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI think Google has done a less-than-excellent job of describing/pitching Wave. Describing it as email if email was invented today sells it short, and although realtime wiki is accurate, what they do with that realtime wiki is much more important. My elevator pitch (sort of) is included in my review at: http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/bing-wolfram-alpha-g...
Comment linking /2009/06/07/bing-wolfram-alpha-google-squared-and-google-wave-reviewed/
on “PyGo Wave Server is here - play with the Waves now”Whenever MiniZinc, or constraint programming, comes up, I post this link to a programming challenge a friend gave me...14 years ago. I was learning J, and the challenge was me in J, her in javascript or php (she never completed the solution). Here's the link: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/a-programming-puzzl... And a person I didn't know posted a solution using MiniZinc. That person happens to also be on…
Comment linking /2009/10/28/a-programming-puzzle-from-einav/
on “MiniZinc”I wrote an AppleScript and cron-ish schedule to automatically archive anything on my desktop or downloads folder. It checks once an hour, and if there is anything there that is over a day old, and not tagged, it creates a folder in an archives folder, named for the date and time, and moves the items there. So I always have a clean desktop and downloads folder (and later I modified it to organize my documents folder)…
Comment linking /2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-desktop-and-downloads-folder/
on “Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?”Some years ago I tried to simplify the Doomsday algorithm here: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-cal... I don't think that's simpler than the algorithm at weekle, but in case anyone is curious.
Comment linking /2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-calculate-the-day-of-the-week/
on “Show HN: Weekle – a web app to learn how to calculate the day of the week”I wrote it up here a long time ago: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-des... I've made changes since then and I haven't documented them :-/ I'll try to find the time to write it up.
Comment linking /2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-desktop-and-downloads-folder/
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite iOS/macOS automations?”I wrote it up here a long time ago: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-des... I've made changes since then and I haven't documented them :-/ I'll try to find the time to write it up.
Comment linking /2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-desktop-and-downloads-folder/
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite iOS/macOS automations?”I posted a programming puzzle years back, and someone named Hakan Kjellerstrand pointed out that the problem leant itself to constraint programming and posted a solution in Minizinc. Here's the puzzle page: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/a-programming-puzzl... And the solution in Minizinc: http://www.hakank.org/minizinc/einav_puzzle.mzn And my solution in J: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/a-solut…
Comment linking /2009/10/30/a-solution-to-einavs-programming-puzzle/
on “Constraint Programming (2020)”