652 karma · joined December 8, 2011
Also, when I submitted a simple integer sequence[1] to OEIS on Thanksgiving Day a few years ago, he took the time that day to respond and educate me about some delightful related math.
A while ago I briefly mulled over a loosely related question (e.g., "Could sentiment analysis of social data discover trends in experiences with various substances?") about whether user reports of drug experience on social media could be useful or illuminating:
I guess we'd not know without asking him, but having waded through much of TAOCP, Concrete Mathematics (a book filled to the brim with the kind of delightful discovery of pattern that Lockhart describes as optimal in learning math), Knuth's marvelously playful book "Selected Papers on Fun and Games"[2], and the novel he wrote about Conway's astonishing "Surreal Numbers"[3]...listening to him lecture on "importunate permutation" at the last local (SF) Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Association, hearing about Knuth's thoughts on the mathematics of pipe organs, and even seeing the play/pattern-making that went into the entrance mosaic in his home [1]....I think you're way off base about what you think Knuth thinks about math education.
Lockhart: "...if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soulcrushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education."
Knuth [Preface to Concrete Mathematics]: "Some people think that mathematics is serious business that must always be cold and dry; but we think mathematics is fun, and we aren't ashamed to admit the fact. Why should a strict boundary line be drawn between work and play? Concrete mathematics is full of appealing patterns; the manipulations are not always easy, but the answers can be astonishingly attractive."
I make an annual pilgrimage to Palo Alto for Knuth's Christmas Tree lecture[4], which content continuously emphasizes exactly the kind of joy in experimenting, discovering, and learning real math that Lockhart is talking about in his paper.
Everything I know about Don Knuth speaks to his amazing playfulness and joy in pattern finding and making - a delight in the music of math...and a denial of the value of making sure everyone's labeled their axes and memorized their circle of fifths.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v678Em6qyzk
[2]: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/fg.html
The preface states "I've never been able to see any boundary between scientific research and game-playing. ... The topics treated here were often inspired by patterns that are visually compelling, or by paradoxical truths that are logically compelling, or by combinations of numbers and/or symbols that fit together just right. These were papers that I couldn't not write.
I believe that the creation of a great puzzle or a great pattern is a scholarly achievement of great merit, an important contribution to world culture, even though the author of such a breakthrough is often an amateur who has no academic credentials. Therefore I'm proud to follow in the footsteps of the pioneers who have come up with significant new “mind-benders” as civilization developed.
Many years ago I wrote an essay that asked “Are toy problems useful?” [reprinted as Chapter 10 in Selected Papers on Computer Science] in which I discussed at some length my view that students are best served by teachers who present them with well-chosen recreational problems. And I've carried on in the same vein ever since, most recently on pages 7--9 of The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4A, in a section entitled “Puzzles versus the real world.”
[3]: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/sn.html
Surreal Numbers: "How two ex-students turned on to pure mathematics and found total happiness" - In 1973 during a week of relaxation in Oslo, Knuth wrote an introduction to Conway's method in the form of a novelette. ... I believe it is the only time a major mathematical discovery has been published first in a work of fiction. ... The book's primary aim, Knuth explains in a postscript, is not so much to teach Conway's theory as ``to teach how one might go about developing such a theory.'' He continues: ``Therefore, as the two characters in this book gradually explore and build up Conway's number system, I have recorded their false starts and frustrations as well as their good ideas. I wanted to give a reasonably faithful portrayal of the important principles, techniques, joys, passions, and philosophy of mathematics, so I wrote the story as I was actually doing the research myself.'' ... It is an astonishing feat of legerdemain. An empty hat rests on a table made of a few axioms of standard set theory. Conway waves two simple rules in the air, then reaches into almost nothing and pulls out an infinitely rich tapestry of numbers that form a real and closed field. Every real number is surrounded by a host of new numbers that lie closer to it than any other ``real'' value does. The system is truly ``surreal.''
They did comment on the issue in their discussion: "We examined whether age was an important factor in producing the baseline differences we observed by comparing the three youngest practitioners with the controls and found that the mean age difference between groups is unlikely the sole factor responsible for this baseline difference. Moreover, hours of practice but not age significantly predicted relative gamma activity during the initial baseline period."
http://kanren.sourceforge.net/
I give a simple example of a toy use of Kanren and made a few observations about logic programming systems, here:
http://apps.keithflower.org/?p=238
Those interested will probably want to read "The Reasoned Schemer":
-- Ed Abbey, Desert Solitaire
http://www.hkhinc.com/arizona/havasu/articles/havasuabbey.ht...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes#Walking.2Fst...
It is not a component of the Apgar.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
Hacker Koans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan
Some conditions are overdiagnosed, and there is a too-cozy relationship between medicine and pharma that is disturbing to many of us.
However, to make a diagnosis based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) criteria almost without exception (one exception is for bipolar II disorder) require that symptoms (and several symptoms are required usually for any given disorder) must cause significant impact on one's lives, eg,
"...sufficiently severe to cause marked impairment in social or occupational functioning or to necessitate hospitalization to prevent harm to self or others, or there are psychotic features."
or
"...symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning."
EDIT: (based on your own edit) - reserving diagnosis and treatment just to those at risk for self- or other-harm is going to harm many suffering people. I don't think you understand what depression really is. It's not caffeine withdrawal or the flu. Even when no suicidal ideation is present, it's a serious disease with real costs to the individual and to society, just as real as cancer.
Beyond depression, I think you'd agree that even in the absence of harmful behavior or ideation, people who experience auditory hallucinations in the course of depression, or OCD sufferers who are unable to work because they must wash their hands hundreds of times a day, or who have PTSD triggered simply by backfiring engines, or who have dozens of other DSM diagnoses, all have legitimate illnesses that deserve much more than the terrible, stigmatizing suggestion that their illnesses somehow are not real.
Taking an antibiotic does not kill ALL bacteria in a host, which is what you said before you edited your post. Nor can it be accurately said that antibiotics kill "nonselectively", whatever that means.
As a physician, when I've prescribed an antibiotic for your streptococcal infection or your pneumonia or whatever, you haven't been at any particular risk for "bacterial overgrowth" (whatever that means), "acne", or even "odor". But please feel free to link to some package inserts that list the relative risks and data for "bacterial overgrowth", "acne", and "odor" from popularly prescribed antibiotics.
And no, you're not at risk for "bacterial overgrowth" from washing with soap and water, of all things.
Antibiotics ARE overused. Antibiotic soaps are silly. Both help create antibiotic-resistant strains.
But scaring people who might benefit from antibiotics with misinformation about risks from "bacterial overgrowth" and simply washing with soap and water, while pushing "probiotics" puts people in about the same camp as the anti-vaccine anti-science crowd.
This entire N=1 post is laughable psuedo-science, which appears to have brought out the rest of the "reason from anecdote" crowd.
Antibiotics do not and never have destroyed "all bacteria".
"Accurate estimates of the lifetime history (prevalence) of traumatic brain injury within the general population are scarce, which makes it difficult to compare rates of injury among homeless people with rates among those in the community. Two community cohort studies suggested prevalence rates of 3.8% (for experiencing at least 1 admission to hospital for traumatic brain injury by age 35; northern Finland birth cohort) and 31.6% (for experiencing a traumatic brain injury for which the person received medical care; Christchurch, New Zealand, birth cohort). Together, these data suggest that rates may be higher among people who are homeless than within the general community. A recent study estimated that homeless men had rates of head injury 14 times higher than rates for the general population of Canada, with a rate 400 times higher among those who were chronically homeless and had drinking problems."
And not oranges and oranges comparison, but[2]:
"Separately, a recent study by Dr. Stephen Hwang of the hospital's Centre for Research on Inner City Health, found the number of people who are homeless or vulnerably housed and who have also suffered a TBI may be as high as 61 per cent -- seven times higher than the general population."
Historical attempts at decision support include Mycin for diagnosing infectious blood diseases, which contained assertions and rules in the form if IF-THEN clauses:
IF
the site of the culture is blood, AND the organism gram +, AND
the original infectious site was the GI tract, AND
the abdomen is the locus of infection, OR
the pelvis is the locus of infection
THEN
therapy should cover Enterobacteriaceae
http://books.google.com/books?id=j42RD66g72oC&pg=PT384&lpg=P...
I've never regretted taking less money to live in places I love and work on things that interested me.
Good on you.
...wink...
'Emergent' is well-established in medicine to mean exactly how it was used in the linked article. There is nothing 'trendy' about that usage (see link to 1914 Stedman's Medical Dictionary definition below).
emergent 1. Arising suddenly and unexpectedly and calling for quick judgment and prompt action.
http://books.google.com/books?id=OG0XAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA290&dq=st...
2) Agreed OT, but "emergent" to roughly mean "urgent" is pretty established in medicine. Here's a more thorough discussion:
http://blog.amamanualofstyle.com/2013/01/23/emergency-emerge...
"Much if not all of the current talk around clinical software unfortunately stops at electronic health records (EHR) – the paper chart (with all its limitations) mirrored in various incarnations of ‘the cloud’ (with the additional disadvantage of confidentiality rot). For all the endless effort put into EHR, it was a problem solved long ago with nothing more than punched-card-fed mainframes. All we are seeing now is the iterative pursuit of competing data interchange platforms."
"Physicians and researchers need software that advances the goal of making routine things routine beyond just the level of data storage and retrieval…to decision support, data discovery and visualization, unsupervised ontology construction, and scripting of reasoning agents."
2) Tell him to pay no attention to "chances of survival."
3) Ask him to work closely with physician(s). Have him write down his questions before he goes in for his visits. Get answers to his questions. Don't be afraid to get second and third opinions.
4) Don't worry alone.
5) Ask about enrollment in clinical trials. His current treatment can often continue and he may be eligible for new treatments. The field is moving very quickly at this time.
Alcoholism is very much a disease.
Do you hesitate to take advice from people with cardiovascular disease?
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gambit-repl/id434534076?mt=8
and on the Android platform (updating it with the latest version of Gambit is on my todo list):
http://apps.keithflower.org/?page_id=152
http://apps.keithflower.org/?p=223
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.keithflowe...
Note that this is just the interpreter itself - not a very good way of writing games for Android.
Why don't you tell us more about the "open questions" of how safe dirty needles and dirty nicotine delivery systems are.
Now if you'll excuse me, you seem like someone uninterested in reason or in supporting your silly, shifting claims, and who is much more interested in rationalizing your own bad health habits.
Have a nice day.
Thalidomide is a good anti-nausea drug. Women who take thalidomide during pregnancy are at lower risk for nausea. Now, do you want to argue whether or not "light thalidomide" exposure during pregnancy is bad is an "open question"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Birth_defects_crisi...
Because that's what you're arguing with nicotine, along with cherry picking questionable studies, moving the goal posts, and even linking to organizations associated with tobacco manufacturing.
Opioids have beneficial uses. So do you want us to think that it's an "open question" about whether "light intravenous use of heroin" as practiced is a good thing?
Did you actually READ any of the articles you linked? In almost every case you cite, mention is made of the overall risks of smoking ANY amount. In some cases, the articles aren't even talking about smoking - they are merely talking about nicotine in a variety of forms.
“Any smoking, even social smoking, is dangerous,” says David Wetter, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Health Disparities Research at M. D. Anderson. “Cigarettes and cigars are the only legal products whose advertised and intended use -- smoking -- will cause cancer and kill the consumer.”
http://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/iss...
But let's play citation. Is second-hand smoke "light" enough exposure for you? Here are the health risks, which are not "open questions":
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+scholar+second+hand+s...
And c'mon, really? Really? You cite a damned mouse study on carbon monoxide as that you think might be evidence that smoking might somehow, some way, be helpful...for...wait for it....heart attack and stroke? You cite a cell study that shows elevated levels of glutathione in smokers lungs and you want us to therefore magically jump to the laughable belief that smoking is therefore somehow good for your lungs? You cite a study that claims that rare thyroid cancer is reduced among smokers, when the likeliest explanation is that thyroid cancer is so rare that smokers die of other more common cancers and little things like strokes and heart attacks long before they can ever develop thyroid cancer.
Many of the other bullshit claims you cite above have been thoroughly debunked:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3637838/
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/long-term-smoking-increase...