I started a computer science major approximately 2 years ago (I'm also double majoring in neuroscience as well). I'm going to be honest, I struggle with the programming stuff at times (and math). I thought it was going to be all flowers and puppies, because hey, I like this whole technology thing.
Whoopsie, It sucks really bad.
I'm no slouch when it comes to school. I'm not saying it comes with no effort, because I work really hard, but man my eyes glaze over while learning about this stuff. What I've come to realize is that while I don't mind working on my own stuff, I'm literally dying inside while going over different data structures and algorithms.
The good news: most people don't need the level of info I'm getting fed in my collegiate journey.
The bad news: some of this stuff is absolutely critical to learning programming.
Let's talk about Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winning physicist. As much as I love hearing about the world of physics in watered-down form, high-level physics are mind melting when being orated by top-level physicists. Feynman is definitely in the top 3 of any "top physicist" list. He revolutionized quantum mechanics, possibly from the strip club.
An excerpt from Richard Sherman, a doctoral student of Feynman:
“Sometimes Richard would suddenly say, ‘Let’s knock off and go somewhere and fool around!’ The usual place we went was a topless bar in Pasadena, called Gianone’s. There was always something happening at Gianone’s in the afternoon, every day of the week. We’d walk in, grab a table. Feynman knew everybody there—all the ladies; Gianone, the owner; and anybody who was a regular. He would go behind the bar and pick up an orange juice, because he never drank anything alcoholic. He would also grab a half-inch stack of those paper doilies, or place mats that they put down on tables in restaurants, and come back to the table. We might continue doing physics, or we might watch the ladies dancing on the stage. Frequently people would come by and chat, and this was the sort of entertainment that he liked. But it was kind of deceptive because, believe it or not, although this particular environment might not seem conducive to doing something like theoretical physics, over the years, Feynman actually did an enormous number of calculations in that place.”
This place was seemingly integral to Feynman, but was this because of the famed "Feynman Technique"? I think so. Besides being a strip club aficionado and physics genius, Feynman also developed a method for learning and teaching that is used by many people. I've especially heard of its use by medical school students.
To do the Feynman Technique:
- Pick something you want to learn and study about it.
- Teach it to someone. The teaching of the subject shows the gaps in your knowledge.
- Study the material again to fill in the gaps.
- Refine, revise and simplify the material.
I think that Feynman was practicing his technique. Could you imagine luring in dancers to refine quantum mechanics? I would assume before he had the material polished, he'd need a big stack of dollars in order to find someone to listen.
Right now I'm flirting with the idea of starting a series of programming tutorials related to Web3 stuff here on Hive. It would obviously start with some more rudimentary knowledge. As much as I'd enjoy it if someone learned something, I'd also be learning myself by utilizing the Feynman Technique.
I have a whole lot on my plate but this summer I need to accomplish some Web3 development, data science with Python, and machine learning. Do any of these interest you all?
Looking at you @thatkidsblack.
Well hopefully you don't have to take discrete math for the computer science major. A lot of the course work I'm sure is challenging.
If it is motivating you vs burning you out I think that is a good sign. I was always exhausted from it and unless I had a project I had to do for school or work I really didn't want to program. That has always been the problem in the blockchain space. If I didn't feel like I was going to be compensated for building anything it would be tough to work on.
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I had a similar experience. Was out for a friend's birthday. A girl came and sat on my lap. Asked what I did: "Data Analysis I replied".
"What's that?"
"I work with spreadsheets and information to extract business inisghts and make things more efficient?"
"Oh, what's a spreadsheet?"
"You know, like a times table, but with other information instead of the multiplied output of two numbers."
blank look
"What's a table?"
...
While Fenyman's efforts surely worked, My sample size of 1, on a whim; seems as though it didn't seem to be particularly efficient.
Was she an exotic dancer though?
We don't use such "woke" terms in Australia. They're called strippers here.
My man.
And also, man, I need to pick your brain for some data analysis stuff. I really need to learn some for the fall. Start a tutorial series on Python and I'll lovingly upvote you every post.
Or just let me ask you a million questions.
Oh, this is pretty much all I know about how to use python.
I don't have any formal data qualifications. I learned everything I do now on the job.
I thought I was pretty good at excel, with formulas, pivot tables, and vlookups and all that junk.
Then, during the start of the pandemic, I started using "KNIME" to automate the crap I'd do in spreadsheets all day. It's basically a visual coding tool that lets you string together different operations on data sets and do things you wouldn't believe.
I learned by basically saying "right, I how do I do {thing} in excel?" let me try and reproduce it in Knime. As a result, the only time I typically use excel now is for my household budget, and to track upcoming personal tax liabilities (though, I'd rather be throwing up in the street).
Then, I was introduced (by necessity) to PowerBI and Power Query as I moved into a temporary role at my org as a Reporting and Insights specialist.
Now all I do is extract data, transform it (and clean it up) and try to get it be represented in a way in which business stakeholders can easily see "green number good, red number bad, we blame filthy {blame recipient}"
The thing about data is the same thing about programming, I've found (and I've only done python stuff for less than a year) - is you are literally this guy:
Get a whole bunch of things which don't seem to have an obvious link, or connection to one another, and make them work together.
That's awesome man. I'm hardly a programmer. I think I'm honestly a hack. I'm just out here winging it. I admire your way of breaking into your industry. I didn't realize how far actions could take someone. I got accepted into academic publication for some blockchain stuff and it was mostly because I just did some foot work. No one ever accused me of being the smartest guy ever. Maybe you can still help me though, I'd have to give you some background info on DNA though.
Oh, KNIME can do chemistry and molecule analysis-y stuff in there too.
Lots of stuff in there that I can't remotely begin to understand. I reccomend checking it out. I wrote a different tutorial showing off some knime function in concert with some splinterlands stuff that is probably horribly outdated by this point, but it's useful, I guess.
https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@holoz0r/tutorial-using-the-splinterlands-api-and-knime-to-determine-what-cards-you-require-to-complete-your-untamed-collection
I'll have to take a look. Some of the stuff I'm doing would be modifying an existing machine learning paradigm. I don't have the slightest idea of how ML works other than number go in, number come out. We'll see. I'll do some digging and see if I can find some tangentially related shit between what you've said and what I need to work on.
What about the "pretty" data visualization stuff? (heat maps, {insert fancy graphs here}, etc)
Yeah, that's a part of Power BI.
Great thing about Knime is that it lets you build your own machine learning models, with blackjack, and hookers.
But in all seriousness, it has full support for python, custom nodes, and a whole bunch of other community plug ins. I'm surprised it is open source, and free.
If you want to automate stuff on a commercial / corproate level, the enterprise licencing makes sense (just to automate dataflows, and such, but its still an absolute steal compared to what other vendors would charge for software half as useful)
(I almost signed that off like a work email, it's fucking Sunday, and I don't want to go back to work tomorrow)
All the best with the course. I'm still into Python programming but the world has changed a lot since ChatGPT. still a lot to catch up.
I heard Stephen Wolfram say something super interesting about ChatGPT recently. It is a language model that focuses on using probabilism to find the most likely next word or best fit. Because of this, it builds language well but that doesn't necessarily focus on accuracy. It only makes logically plausible statements. In that sense, it has a really long way to go. I really need to brush up on Python, but my immediate projects require JS and Solidity. (Maybe ReactJS)
Yes, it is a super major autocompletion system