Top all-time · #2304
Mike Izbicki's blog posts
Personal blog · izbicki.me · on HN as jackpirateaiprogrammingmath
Mike Izbicki's blog posts is a personal blog at izbicki.me about ai, programming and math. Since 2011, 35 different Hacker News readers have linked it 66 times, most often “How to create an unfair coin and prove it with math (2011)”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- How to create an unfair coin and prove it with math (2011)10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2015-07-23
- Turning an AK-47 into a serving ladle3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-07-23
- Using loaded dice to cheat at Settlers of Catan, and p-values to avoid suspicion2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-12-14
- Different scribal traditions in ancient hebrew torah scrolls2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-08-19
- Gaussian distributions form a monoid2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-01
- Haskell's HLearn 400x faster than Weka at cross-validation due to monoids2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-03
- Fast Nearest Neighbor Queries in Haskell2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-22
- Markov Networks, Monoids, and Futurama (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-10
- Teaching open-source software in North Korea2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-24
- HLearn cross-validates 400x faster than Weka2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-07-24
What Hacker News says?
To add to your point: I ran some experiments a while back with curved coins. The coins have to be absurdly shaped before the shape affects the outcomes: https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-pro...
Comment linking /blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-prove-it-with-math.html
on “No person who was born blind has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia”Submitted Using loaded dice to cheat at Settlers of Catan, and p-values to avoid suspicion as a story · 266 points
HN discussionYou don't get to pick and choose what your taxes fund; in large part, that's the whole point of taxation. Sort of. I illegally decided to refuse to pay my taxes to the federal government, and instead payed extra taxes to my state government. http://izbicki.me/blog/why-and-how-im-refusing-to-pay-war-ta...
Comment linking /blog/why-and-how-im-refusing-to-pay-war-taxes
on “Feds, We Need Some Time Apart”Submitted Teaching open-source software in North Korea as a story · 171 points
HN discussionYour ucsb link describes an unfair coin flipping protocol, and not the fair protocol commonly used in practice. In particular, it provides a "strategy" at the end to generate an unfair toss (which requires, e.g., that you be both the flipper and the chooser). Other studies, such as the famous You can load a die, bit you can't bias a coin investigate fair flipping protocols and argue that you cannot, in fact, bias a…
Comment linking /blog/how-to-cheat-at-settlers-of-catan-by-loading-the-dice-and-prove-it-with-p-values.html
on “Seeing Theory: A visual introduction to probability and statistics (2017)”Submitted How to cheat at settlers by loading the dice (2017) as a story · 149 points
HN discussionthey realize what they have to do in their jobs contradicts the high idealized patriotic beliefs of what this country is about This is extremely uncommon. For example, I used to be a submarine officer in the Navy, and I left as a conscientious objector because of this realization. In an average year, less than 100 active duty service members will apply for conscientious objector status (there are over 1 million acti…
Comment linking /blog/most-conscientious-objectors-are-not-reservists
on “Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list”Submitted Gaussian distributions are monoids and why machine learning experts should care as a story · 99 points
HN discussionIf haskell is that much harder, it should benefit from better tooling that much more. I think there really is a big difference in the priorities. I've never played around with GHC, so I have no idea how hard tooling is, but I know some good old humans are at least able to contribute ( https://izbicki.me/blog/error-messages-in-ghc-vs-g%2B%2B.htm... ). edit: It looks like the error message changes may have been revert…
Comment linking /blog/error-messages-in-ghc-vs-g%2B%2B.html
on “Introducing Rust Language Server”Submitted Markov Networks, Monoids, and Futurama (2013) as a story · 95 points
HN discussionYou're going to have a lot of fans amongst con men. ;-) Unfair coins very much do exist: https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-pro...
Comment linking /blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-prove-it-with-math.html
on “Fair coins tend to land on the side they started (2023)”Submitted Fast Nearest Neighbor Queries in Haskell as a story · 82 points
HN discussionHow to create an unfair coin and prove it with math: https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-pro...
Comment linking /blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-prove-it-with-math.html
on “Academics Make Theoretical Breakthrough in Random Number Generation”Submitted HLearn: A Machine Learning Library for Haskell (2013) [pdf] as a story · 80 points
HN discussionCoins can be biased, they just need to be bent so far out of shape that it's obvious. Here's a fun example: https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-pro...
Comment linking /blog/how-to-create-an-unfair-coin-and-prove-it-with-math.html
on “Statistics for Hackers”Submitted Nuclear weapon statistics using monoids, groups, and vector spaces in Haskell as a story · 66 points
HN discussionAnother shameless plug: http://izbicki.me I have both technical AI type posts and also a bit of religion.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What unknown technical blogs or sites do you read?”Submitted How to create a biased coin and prove it with math as a story · 66 points
HN discussionWould you mind sharing your experience? I like collecting other people's CO stories, and I've never heard of another computer nerd doing it. If you prefer privacy, my email is mike@izbicki.me. The NY Times did a write up on my court case: ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/nyregion/23objector.html?p... ), and I've written up some of the testimony from my hearing on my own blog ( http://izbicki.me/blog/category/reli…
Comment linking /blog/category/religion/my-co-discharge
on “Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life”Submitted How to create an unfair coin and prove it with math (2011) as a story · 48 points
HN discussionIf I'm playing with someone that is making AK47's into utensils, I would think twice about raising my concerns regarding the loaded dice. Hmm the dice are behaving funny, but that's fine, everything is just fine... https://izbicki.me/blog/turning-an-ak-47-into-a-serving-ladl...
Comment linking /blog/turning-an-ak-47-into-a-serving-ladle.html
on “Using loaded dice to cheat at Settlers of Catan, and p-values to avoid suspicion”Submitted Gaussian distributions form a monoid as a story · 45 points
HN discussionThe author addresses the potential benefits of immutability and laziness in a note on cover trees[0]. Last time I checked, this is still the world's fastest NN algorithm. Haskell could shine in numerical computing. I think the key is polymorphism: a vector is a matrix is a tensor is a number, and they can all be multiplied in the same way, once you define what multiply is. Poor support is more about the lack of hask…
Comment linking /blog/fast-nearest-neighbor-queries-in-haskell.html
on “Grenade: Deep Learning in Haskell”Submitted How we serve 150 free meals every week for less than $30 as a story · 36 points
HN discussion* Significant improvements in error message readability and content, including facilities for libraries to provide custom error messages, more aggressive warnings for fragile rewrite rules, and more helpful errors for missing imports. I'm really excited about this. Any push towards more decipherable error messages should be huge in increasing adoption (which leads to more awesome libraries and opportunities to use i…
Comment linking /blog/error-messages-in-ghc-vs-g%2B%2B.html
on “GHC 8.0.1 is available”Submitted Comparing AVL Trees in C++ and Haskell as a story · 14 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in an HMM library for Haskell that I just finished the first version of. I wrote a tutorial using it for finding genes in strings of DNA: http://izbicki.me/blog/using-hmms-in-haskell-for-bioinformat...
Comment linking /blog/using-hmms-in-haskell-for-bioinformatics
on “How to Learn Haskell”Submitted Functors and monads for analyzing data (2013) as a story · 11 points
HN discussionYour AK-47 to serving spoon project is interesting too: https://izbicki.me/blog/turning-an-ak-47-into-a-serving-ladl...
Comment linking /blog/turning-an-ak-47-into-a-serving-ladle.html
on “Argentina says signals detected, likely from missing submarine”Submitted Show HN: My weekend project was forging an AK47 into a soup ladle as a story · 11 points
HN discussion
