It would be more readable if there were a blank line between paragraphs. Right now, I find it hard to tell when a new subject begins.
On the subject of grad students having tuition reimbursed versus no tuition at all, the new tax bill may force this issue since the reimbursed tuition is nondeductible and is taxed.
It would be more readable if there were a blank line between paragraphs. Right now, I find it hard to tell when a new subject begins.
I agree that this effect is somewhat troubling. I’ll experiment with alternatives.
Andrew Dalkesays:
I think Yan LeCun’s comment is a bit disingenuous. Optics theory predates the telescope by over 1,000 years, counting from Euclid’s “Optics”, and Cayley worked on theories of flight aerodynamics a century before the Wright brothers – who built upon Cayley’s work for their own successes. They might not be as good as modern theories, but they existed.
Concerning radio, it may have been before Shannon’s information theory, but it was well after Maxwell’s 1865 “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”. Wikipedia helpfully points out that “The effects of electromagnetic waves .. were actually observed before and after Maxwell’s work by many inventors and experimenters …but none could identify what caused the phenomenon and it was usually written off as electromagnetic induction.” It then took Hertz to show that these known effects were what Maxwell predicted, which then lead many others to work to develop radio.
While the early telegraph developers didn’t have the modern, more sophisticated understanding of information theory, how does one create something like Morse code, which uses shorter sequences for more frequent letters, without at least some model of information theory?
Similarly, when do you date the start of “computers” and “computer science”? The algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers using the Babbage Analytical Engine is computer science, yes? Doesn’t that mean that CS came first? Or do we say that CS didn’t exist until Church and Turing?
I think I understand LeCun’s point, but I don’t think these historic examples are really good parallels. I also don’t think “alchemy” vs. “chemistry” is a good example – people use it more as a common cultural shorthand for “magic vs. science” than for historical underpinnings.
Perhaps “magnetic compass” is a better one? Highly useful for centuries even without much of a theory for how it worked.
Two comments:
It would be more readable if there were a blank line between paragraphs. Right now, I find it hard to tell when a new subject begins.
On the subject of grad students having tuition reimbursed versus no tuition at all, the new tax bill may force this issue since the reimbursed tuition is nondeductible and is taxed.
I enjoy your blog – thanks.
It would be more readable if there were a blank line between paragraphs. Right now, I find it hard to tell when a new subject begins.
I agree that this effect is somewhat troubling. I’ll experiment with alternatives.
I think Yan LeCun’s comment is a bit disingenuous. Optics theory predates the telescope by over 1,000 years, counting from Euclid’s “Optics”, and Cayley worked on theories of flight aerodynamics a century before the Wright brothers – who built upon Cayley’s work for their own successes. They might not be as good as modern theories, but they existed.
Concerning radio, it may have been before Shannon’s information theory, but it was well after Maxwell’s 1865 “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”. Wikipedia helpfully points out that “The effects of electromagnetic waves .. were actually observed before and after Maxwell’s work by many inventors and experimenters …but none could identify what caused the phenomenon and it was usually written off as electromagnetic induction.” It then took Hertz to show that these known effects were what Maxwell predicted, which then lead many others to work to develop radio.
While the early telegraph developers didn’t have the modern, more sophisticated understanding of information theory, how does one create something like Morse code, which uses shorter sequences for more frequent letters, without at least some model of information theory?
Similarly, when do you date the start of “computers” and “computer science”? The algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers using the Babbage Analytical Engine is computer science, yes? Doesn’t that mean that CS came first? Or do we say that CS didn’t exist until Church and Turing?
I think I understand LeCun’s point, but I don’t think these historic examples are really good parallels. I also don’t think “alchemy” vs. “chemistry” is a good example – people use it more as a common cultural shorthand for “magic vs. science” than for historical underpinnings.
Perhaps “magnetic compass” is a better one? Highly useful for centuries even without much of a theory for how it worked.
Amazing! Like allways!
Tx!