This one is from the Wolfram Alpha statistics blogging site. I think it's a great app for learning and playing with introductory statistics on your ipads and iphones. Good job by Wolfram alpha.
Quotes:
Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Wolfram Statistics Course Assistant App Comes to iOS
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In high school and college I would write long assignments using a series of outlines. I'd start with a single sheet where I'd write down the key phrases, connect them with lines, and then write more and more phrases until the page was filled up. Then I'd write a series of outlines, culminating in a sentence-level outline that was roughly one line per sentence of the paper. Then I'd write. It worked pretty well. Or horribly, depending on how you look at it. I was able to produce 10-page papers etc. on time. But I think it crippled my writing style for years. It's taken me a long time to learn how to write directly--to explain clearly what I've done and why. And I'm still working on the "why" part. There's a thin line between verbosity and terseness.
I went to MIT and my roommate was a computer science major. He wrote me a word processor on his Atari 800, which did the job pretty well. For my senior thesis I broke down and used the computers in campus. I formatted it in troff which worked out just fine. I'd
In grad school I moved toward the Latex approach of starting with the template and an outline (starting with the Introduction and ending with Discussion and References),ne th then putting in paragraphs here and there until the paper was done. I followed the same approach for my first few books.
Blogging was different. When I blog I tend to start at the beginning and just keep writing until I'm done. I've learned that it's best to write an entry all at once--it's hard to come back a day or a week later to fill in any gaps. I think this has helped my writing style and my writing efficiency. The only trouble is that my entries tend to be story-like rather than article-like. In a story you begin with the motivation and then gradually reveal what's happening. When I'm blogging I commonly start at one place but then, once I'm halfway through, I realize I want to go somewhere else. In contrast, in a proper article you jump right in and say the key point right away, and everything gets structured from there. I've tried to improve my blog-writing by contracting introductory paragraphs into introductory sentences.
I've been blogging for over six years, and it's affected my writing. More and more I write articles from beginning to end. It's worked for me to use Word rather than Latex. Somehow in Word, as in the blogging window, it's easy for me to just get started and write, whereas in Latex everything's just too structured. Really what's relevant here, though, is the style not the software.
Sometimes, though, I have a complicated argument to make and it helps to outline it first. In that case I'll write the outline and then use it as the basis for an article.
But recently I came up with a new strategy--the best of both worlds, perhaps. I write the outline but then set it aside and write the article from scratch, from the beginning, not worrying about the outline. The purpose of the outline is to get everything down so I don't forget any key ideas. Having the outline gives me the freedom to write the article without worrying that I might be missing something--I can always check the outline at the end.
Thanks to Jesse Thomas of interactive design agency JESS3, we now have an updated look at the structure of the geosocial universe as it exists in anno domini 2011. It wasn’t so long ago that the International Astronomical Union booted Pluto out of the solar system or that MySpace was overtaking Yahoo! and Google as the most-visited site in the U.S. Well, a few rotations around the sun later, and the overall shape of the geosocial universe has changed dramatically. New stars have been born and others have been scattered out across the cold recesses of Internet space. Today, Myspace is sputtering, Skype is part of the Microsoft solar system, and LinkedIn is being traded publicly. The whacky flux continues.
As you’ll see, Thomas’ infographic shows the current size of major social networks as well as the other well-known online services we use on a daily basis relative to their peers. It also overlays the present size of each company’s mobile user base. You’ll see Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more. You can also check out the agency’s infographic from last year to see the relative changes. Notable differences include: The rise of Chinese Qzone and Twitter, the fall of Myspace, and the stasis of Friendster.
Some other notable trends in the geosocial universe, courtesy of JESS3:
Five years ago, if you’d told a fellow book lover that eBooks were poised to surge in popularity and overtake traditional books, you probably would have been met with a scoff and a dismissal about reading too much sci-fi. And yet here we are: Amazon has just announced that it is now selling more eBooks than it is selling print editions, a mere four years after launching the Kindle. Obviously Amazon doesn’t account for all print or eBook sales, but it’s a very impressive milestone.
Then again, the news doesn’t come as a huge surprise if you’ve been following the Kindle’s growth. Kindle eBook sales surpassed Amazon’s hardcover sales back in July 2010, and they surpassed paperback sales in January of this year. But now it’s bested both of them combined. Note that this does not include the free books that many Kindle users take advantage of — these are all paid books.
The quick rise of the Kindle can be attributed, at least in part, to the steep price cuts Amazon has been making. A year ago the device cost $259. Amazon slashed it to $189 in June 2010, then began offering a Wi-fi only version last summer for $139. And now it’s gone even lower with an ad-supported version for only $114. Amazon says that this new model, which is called ‘Kindle with Special Offers’, is already selling more than the other Kindle devices.
Amazon also says that 2011 has had the fastest year over year growth rate for its U.S. books sales in over a decade, including both eBooks and print — and that Kindle eBook sales are up 3x in 2011 from what they were this time last year.
Hey, remember when the iPad was going to kill the Kindle?
| Report - Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity - May 2011 |  |
Derek K. Miller:
Here it is. I’m dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote — the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive.
If you knew me at all in real life, you probably heard the news already from another source, but however you found out, consider this a confirmation: I was born on June 30, 1969 in Vancouver, Canada, and I died in Burnaby on May 3, 2011, age 41, of complications from stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. We all knew this was coming.
He went down swinging, and with astounding class, dignity, bravery, and openness.
Update: Fireballed, cached here if you can’t reach his site.
