The first sentence is perfectly comprehensible (factorization is decomposing an object into factors which, when multipled together, gives back the original). As for the most of the rest of the article... there's really no reason for the average Sara to care about polynomial factorization at all (unless it's just algebraic manipulation for doing homework).
To promote a scientifically literate society, improve the secondary school curriculum to teach statistics: How does conditional probability work? What do sensitivity and specificity mean? When a poll comes out, what does the margin of error mean? What are some common probability fallacies and how to recognize and avoid them?
Etc.
In addition to Khan Academy, also check out the OpenStax textbooks (https://openstax.org/subjects) over the likes of Wikipedia (which is more often a mix of technicalese or a bunch of trivia depending on the subject of the article).
I was with you until you said "there's no reason for the average sarah...unless...homework"
I was the average Sarah, a lot of the people I went to public school with were the below than average sarah and it's the elitist math attitude that's being talked about here that turns kids off from that.
It wasn't until years later, after a career in concept art, then vfx and now programming that I realize..."hey the Fibonacci sequence isn't just some parlor trick for 'math types', it's a thing we can look at to study recursion and integrate in our code to make actual products".
Products that the average sarah uses and maybe even loves and would be supremely interested in learning about but doesn't because she's not a "math person".
I also lament the fact I didn't get into maths and see the beauty of it until years later when it was really too late to get into it at any professional level just because I was always implicitly told I was never meant to be a "math person".
Maybe I'm not, but if we could get more kids into maths, even if they're not geniuses, I think society as a whole and they themselves would greatly benefit from that.
It's not elitist to dismiss polynomial factoring, though, just dismissive. I really can't think of any reason to care about the deeper points of polynomial factorization (anything other than repeated trial division), so maybe it's just ignorance on my part.
Stats? Now there's math you can use and is useful in understanding our world! And yet schools prefer to teach calculus in high school over however much stats you can teach without calculus. No one uses the integration bag of tricks in daily life, but everyone gets lied to with numbers.
Same thing happened to me. I picked up math at 25 after not having done a single math related thing in almost 10 years. I picked it up after realizing that a lot of the things that I do on daily basis are heavily related to concepts such as triangular numbers and other sequences. My life would have been completely different had my teachers communicated math in better ways than simply saying here is an equation, solve!
On Linux, it renders fonts the same way Chromium or Chrome do. If you're getting "crappy font rendering from Windows", you probably need to change your fonts.conf to change font hinting from full to slight (or none, if you like it more like Macs).
Edit: And also note that, for whatever reason, GNOME does its own thing where you also have to edit the GSettings in addition to the fonts.conf settings depending on what app you're running.
I learned about, and kind of use a variant of, the secure knot from this site starting from a number of years ago. I find that I'm lazy and it's easier for me to loop one bunny ear twice over (asymmetrically) rather than both ears once each (symmetrically). Old habits means that I'm used to using my left hand to loop the ear and then my right hand to pull it taut.
Whatever the default level SmartScreen is already has a ding and a warning pop up about unknown executables. But it's amber and not red, and most people just click through it (I know I do).
"Abdulaziz proposed an incremental approach in which the students build the compiler in stages; they start by implementing a complete compiler for a very small subset of the input language, then in each subsequent stage they add a feature to the input language and add or modify passes to handle the new feature [...] This is the textbook for the incremental version of the compiler course at Indiana University"
Thanks, this a terrific reference that I hadn't seen!
I see a few interesting contrasts with the my course off the bat:
- I skipped forcing students to implement uniquifying variables early on. I wanted to get from source to assembly as quickly as possible, but this may have been a worthwhile step to force, since it teaches some valuable lessons.
- I had them implement ANF (AKA flatten in those notes) in a different style, because I was used to it. The style in that textbook is better (Ranjit Jhala at UC San Diego also pointed this out when he taught a version of the course), where an expression is turned into a list of bindings and a final expression, rather than using a continuation-passing ANF algorithm as I did.
- The linked book has instruction selection with semi-abstract addresses followed by a "patching" phase, to avoid instructions that, say, move from stack location to stack location. This is cool, but is a few more steps than I wanted to get into for the simplest compilers. I didn't pursue as structured an approach, and instead gave a simple description to the first few "compile" functions we wrote:
Generate a list of instructions that gets the "answer"
for this expression into EAX
This avoided detailed discussion of instruction selection, abstract vs. concrete addresses, etc, in the beginning, and just made students generate some instructions that work. We quite quickly after that needed to start talking about issues of clobbering other expressions' state, and finding unique locations for variables, but then those just became constraints on "getting the answer into EAX" correctly. In fact, I found that repeating the mantra "get the answer into EAX" was a nicely actionable way to go about generating instructions, and letting students get started when we introduced a new feature (to compile it, we need to get the answer into EAX!)
After we'd done this a few times, we had the shared vocabulary to realize that answers don't _always_ have to go to EAX (the compiler can be parameterized over where the current answer should go), and not every constant's value needs to flow through EAX in order to get to its variable's home, etc. But these were refinements on top of our dead simple strategy.
Just some thoughts I had while perusing the first few chapters here. Thanks again for sharing!
In Canada, after you fill out your ballot in secret, you fold it up and hand it to the poll worker, who tears off a stub and then hands the ballot back to you, and then you insert it into the ballot box yourself in plain view.
I don't know if this is the current case (or perhaps your scenario is one of the reasons for the current procedure), but they can just put a serial number on the stub so that the poll worker can verify that the ballot that was handed out was the one just filled out.
I don't really get why trams are better than buses. Do they really carry a ton more people than buses? Why are people more likely to ride them?
Buses come in short/long/articulated/double-decker sizes and don't need to be on rails or require overhead electrical lines. The only argument I can think of is that you get a smoother ride and no need to burn fuel with a tram.
(I've only ridden the trams in one city, and they were pretty much slower buses on rails that happened to make a lot of dinging noises. Worked fine in the central district, I guess.)
It's separated from the traffic so it's fast, doesn't have associated tyre and asphalt maintenance costs, and each tram carries over 200 people maximum. The service is frequent - about every five to seven minutes - and much smoother and more comfortable than a bus.
My city don't have trams but there was a political push to build them. However, bus routes were upgraded instead. Result is better than trams IMO. Some key points we do:
- Popular buses run ever 5-ish minutes during peak times
- Some buses have extension and cary a crapload of people.
- Problematic spots have bus-only lanes.
What is better than tram:
- Buses that share only a bit of the route can use those lanes too
- Taxis can use bus lanes
- Some of the lanes allow cars with 4+ people to promote carpooling
- If there's an accident or emergency, cars can use the bus lane
- Bus lanes are frequently reused as designated right turn lanes
- Overall maintenance is cheaper when using a single mode of transport. Same backup vehicles can serve all routes - no need for separate backup trams and buses. Same for technicians, spare parts etc.
- No big upfront construction costs. Some bus lanes were snatched from regular traffic, some were built later on. Mostly by making other lanes narrower and widening the road just a little bit. Trams would require much more space and wouldn't even fit in some spaces without banning cars altogether. The'd still have to pave these bits to let emergency services use them.
- In tight spots, buses can easily merge with general traffic. Buses have defacto priority, so no delays during merge.
In my city, introducing trams would have been at least few years of city-wide construction works, lots of possibilities for wasting public money and/or corruption. Bus lanes were super cheap and are added incrementally wherever costs in that specific section can be justified by savings. They can be removed easily if they cause too much trouble or don't speed up buses much. Rails would be there forever.
Comfortwise, good tram and good bus ride equally well. Unmaintained, both trams and buses suck.
TL;DR Buses are much cheaper and more agile stepping stone into good public transit. Trams themselves ain't magic cure. Buses can be
Why should a taxi get to use a bus lane? That's essentially a single person car with a chauffeur. How is a taxi-driven car more worthy than someone else's car?
Not really. They do it many times a day, depending on how long the ride is. When people take busses and cabs, they aren't needing parking nor contributing to traffic. If 15 people take a cab instead of driving in a day, that is 14 less cars on the road. This is the main point in general. The traffic with cabs is a bit different - you know how many cabs work on any given day (on average).
I guess you'd be shocked to learn that here, not only can taxis use bus lanes, but so can electric vehicles to help encourage better choices.
I live in a city where taxis can use the bus lane.
Pros - similar to an express lane (HOV free, single-occupant vehicles pay a toll) it's handy when you're the one who's running late and REALLY need to get somewhere quick.
Cons - Buses deal with taxi congestion, cyclists deal with maniacal taxi drivers.
More people using taxis - less cars parked in busy parts of city? Lobbying from taxi tycoons may or may not have influenced this.
Bus lanes are relatively empty most of the time. There're not that many taxis to slow down buses. Maybe not win-win, but nobody looses either. To be honest, this is first time I hear somebody complain about this rule. Feels kinda natural over there.
Bus lanes are only as good as their enforcement. Which in my experience has typically been near zero. The de jure bus lane is the de facto parking lane.
You describe a political decision to make bus service suck. A police force that can't keep cars out of the bus lane when it is actually trying to do so is a police force that can't enforce any law.
Do you have to sit down on them like normal buses? One of the benefits of trams is the standing part so you can fit more people in. Last time I tried this on a bus the results weren't as good.
Well, I consider it a happy ride if I have a chance to sit down...
Yes, the buses have handles and everything for standing passengers. Wider aisles and stand-only areas instead of more seats too. The inside of the bus look like a tram/metro rather than long distance bus/train.
Yes, emergency stops are not comfortable. Some old lady falls and breaks her hand every few years. But trams have traffic lights and may have to do emergency stop too. Trams probably have less emergency stops per km travelled. But I never considered this a huge issue.
AFAIK, bus service regularly train drivers to drive "nice-to-passengers". Park close to curb, avoid emergency stops, start smoothly etc. I guess there's a risk for this problem, but it seems to be manageable.
Timetable rules may be a big factor too. I heard more bus drivers loose bonuses for driving faster than schedule than for being (unreasonably) late..
The interior of a bus doesn't need to be any different than the interior of a tram. Unless your city is repurposing coaches for public transport, the interiors of buses should have ample standing space.
Here in the UK, trams (at least for Croydon[1][2], Metrolink[3], Newcastle Metro[4]) seem to be standardised at 2650mm width whilst the New Routemaster[5] is 2520mm wide. Probably not a noticeable margin (130/2650 =~ 5%).
It's worth noting that buses often have space taken up by the wheel arches, engine and stairs which can make them feel a lot more cramped than a tram with a similar footprint, which have floors elevated to platform level.
Trams definitely carry more people than buses, even articulated ones. On top of that they produce no local pollution, as they run on power that is not produced locally (and which might actually come from clean sources of energy). As per for the "trams are slow" argument that doesn't really count. Most of the time cars are riding bumper to bumper during rush hour, while a tram has its own dedicated line which makes it get ahead of cars almost all the time.
Source: me, who's riding the tram to work and back most of the times.
One factor nobody has mentioned yet, social stigma. Busses in the US are often associated with poor people who can't afford a car or have lost their licenses. Trams do not have the same stigma.
> Busses in the US are often associated with poor people who can't afford a car
Also, to be blunt, black people. I live in a pretty white area. If I didn't ride the bus, I could probably not see a single black person for a week or two at a time. Riding the bus, it's every day. And I'm quite sure a lot more people prefer the former scenario than will admit it (not that they necessarily have any particular animosity, but a lot of people are "just not comfortable" inhabiting the same space as black people).
In part because the races are taught different norms about appropriate behavior in public. The black people sitting quietly aren't the ones everyone else is hesitant to be near.
The primary way they're actually being rolled out in the USA is conspicuous consumption. Yes a bus would do the job for a tenth the price, or a taxi for half the price, just like a $250/month apartment in the highest crime part of the inner city technically does the same job as this new $5000/month apartment on the tram line. The point of stainless steel appliance kitchens for people who can't cook is it prevents people who can't afford stainless steel kitchens from living there, like poor people, minorities and such.
Likewise the rails are convenient enough because most social media holiness spiral destinations are permanent. So you can brag about how you're going to the progressive art museum, or a book signing at the library, or the performing arts center, or the hyper trendy college hipster bars (although the tram service stops at sundown to avoid actual drunks), but you can't use the tram to do prole stuff like go to work or school or the food store or doctors office because there's no tracks there, proles go away keep out. Trams are only for special rich people doing special rich people things, the kind that pat themselves on their backs for their egalitarianism on a regular basis, if you have to ask you don't belong there on the tram. Ideally there would be no icky poor people anywhere along the tram rails, nothing but rich white faces as far as the eye can see. Maybe they could build a fence around the whole neighborhood, or just have the police keep the riff raff out of our special area for special people.
I would add that an advantage of tram is that they actually stop at each stop, so you can take an unfamiliar line without fear of getting lost after missing your stop.
They also usually run much more frequently than buses, and don't suffer from delays due to traffic or traffic lights (or not as much).
I want the appearance of the bracket matching to be specifiable as a preference, so I can make it as visible as I want to make it and not have to just live with what someone decides is best for me and hardcodes.
You might be interested in Programming Praxis https://programmingpraxis.com/, a blog that posts a few exercises per week, with solutions. Some of them are more interesting, some of them less so.
To promote a scientifically literate society, improve the secondary school curriculum to teach statistics: How does conditional probability work? What do sensitivity and specificity mean? When a poll comes out, what does the margin of error mean? What are some common probability fallacies and how to recognize and avoid them? Etc.
In addition to Khan Academy, also check out the OpenStax textbooks (https://openstax.org/subjects) over the likes of Wikipedia (which is more often a mix of technicalese or a bunch of trivia depending on the subject of the article).