, 2 min read
Most strings in software today are represented using the unicode standard. The unicode standard can represent most human readable strings. Unicode works by representing each ‘character’ as a numerical value (called a code point) between 0 and 1 114 112. Thus the character é is typically…
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In most systems, integers are stored using a fixed binary representation. It is common to store integers using 32-bit or 64-bit words. You sometimes need to convert it to a string. For example, the integer 12345 might need to be converted to the five characters ‘12345’. In an earlier blog post,…
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Programmers often need to write data structures to disk or to networks. The data structure then needs to be interpreted as a sequence of bytes. Regarding integer values, most computer systems adopt “little endian” encoding whereas an 8-byte integer is written out using the least significant…
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At my university, one of our internal software systems allows a professor to submit a revision to a course. The professor might change the content or the objectives of the course. In a university, professors have extensive freedom regarding course content. As long as you reasonably meet the course…
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Most Canadian academics have to write their resumes using a government online tool called the Common CV. When it was first introduced, it was described as a time-saving tool: instead of writing your resume multiple times for different grant agencies, you would write it just once and be done with…
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We often represent integers with digits. E.g., the integer 1234 has 4 digits. By extension, we use ‘binary’ digits, called bits, within computers. Thus the integer 7 requires three bits: 0b111. If I have two integers that use 3 digits, say, how many digits will their product…
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Except maybe in totalitarian states, you cannot have a single publisher. Most large cities had multiple independent newspapers. In recent years, we saw a surge of concentration in newspaper and television ownership. However, this was accompanied by a surge of online journalism. The total number of…
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It is common to want to parse long strings of digits into integer values. Because it is a common task, we want to optimize it as much as possible. In the blog post, Quickly parsing eight digits, I presented a very quick way to parse eight ASCII characters representing an integers (e.g., 12345678)…
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In programming, we often represent numbers using types that have specific ranges. For example, 64-bit signed integer types can represent all integers between -9223372036854775808 and 9223372036854775807, inclusively. All integers inside this range are valid, all integers outside are “out of…
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Our most important goal in writing software is that it be correct. The software must do what the programmer wants it to do. It must meet the needs of the user. In the business world, double-entry bookkeeping is the idea that transactions are recorded in at least two accounts (debit and credit). One…
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Science and Technology links (December 19th 2021)
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Becoming a physician increases the use of antidepressants, opioids, anxiolytics, and sedatives, especially for female physicians. When trying to reproduce results in cancer researchers, independent researchers find that the benefits are typically grossly exaggerated. A large planet has been found…
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It used to be that all the exciting new processors came from Intel and AMD, and they were meant for your PC. The mobile revolution changed that: it lead to the production of fantastic processors that used little energy. We are now moving back into laptops and servers. The leading supplier of…
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In C as well as many other programming languages, we have 32-bit and 64-bit floating-point numbers. They are often referred to as float and double. Most of systems today follow the IEEE 754 standard which means that you can get consistent results across programming languages and operating systems.…
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Government-funded research is getting more political and less diverse: The frequency of documents containing highly politicized terms has been increasing consistently over the last three decades. The most politicized field is Education & Human Resources. The least are Mathematical &…
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University professors often have robust job security after a time: they receive tenure. It means that they usually do not have to worry about applying for a new job after a few years. Tenure is not available in all countries. Countries like Australia reassess positions every few years. So why does…
, 5 min read
It is tricky to convert integers into strings because the number of characters can vary according to the amplitude of the integer. The integer ‘1’ requires a single character whereas the integer ‘100’ requires three characters. So a solution might possible need a hard-to-predict branch. Let…
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Pacific rougheye rockfish can live hundreds of years while other rockfish barely live past ten years. Female condors can reproduce without males. The phenomenon is known as parthenogenesis and it occurs in birds such as chickens. It does not happen in mammals naturally as far as we…
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When programming, you sometimes need to make sure that a given formula is correct. Of course, you can rely on your mastery of high-school mathematics, but human beings, in general, are terrible at formal mathematics. Thankfully, you can outsource simple problems to a software library. If you are a…
, 5 min read
As a kid, my parents would open the television set, and we would get to watch whatever the state television decided we would watch. It was a push model. Some experts pick the content you need and they deliver it to you. You have little say in the matter. There was one newspaper in my town. We had…