Math Misery?
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This blog is not about how miserable math is. Math is not misery! Math is fun, beautiful, practical, useful, and true. Instead, the title "Math Misery" aims to convey the general feeling that the majority of people have when it comes to working with mathematics.
Math Misery?
1M ago
I see we are continuing the “but why do i gotta learn this if i’m never going to use it?” drivel and once again the quadratic formula is the punching bag. For reference here’s a post on BlueSky. Listen folks, if you have a crystal ball like that, go ahead and laser focus on zero-waste ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
Converting from free to a paying subscriber is one of many challenges in SaaS product design. The idea behind the free tier in subscription-based products is to, among other things, create a large user base in a low-friction manner so that the product itself has life. Think: LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. Another reason is to allow ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
What’s the equation for love? It’s probably very complicated, very simple, or does not exist, depending on who you ask. But there are a plethora of math equations for the universally recognized symbol for love ❤️ In the word salad that is #datascience, #machinelearning, #ai one of the things that we try to do is ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
We’ve heard many inspirational quotes to get us to take that first action: Whether it’s a New Year’s Resolution or a new quarter resolution or just a new thing you want to do unrelated to a calendar prompt, going from that inspired moment of wanting to be better to actually being better is a challenge ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
There are two internal adversaries in every organization that if not managed will grind progress to a halt. These are Mismanaging time is first an operational problem that gives rise to cultural problems in organizations. Other people’s assumptions, managed or not, is first a cultural problem that gives rise to operational problems. Or put another ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
I’ve kept a mental index of presentation advice I’ve consumed ever since I started putting together slide decks via Hypercard. What remains in my mental log is a mix of good, bad, confusing, and contradicting advice. Here is a tiny glimpse of the stuff I’ve heard over the last 30 years. The overall conclusion is ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
If you already know how to solve \(ax^{2} + bx + c = 0\) then this article is for you! Otherwise, it might be too confusing. Ok, we know that the solution set to our quadratic can be found by the quadratic equation: $$x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^{2}-4ac}}{2a}$$ You can essentially derive this through a ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
Consider this example: a player has a 33% chance of winning a collectible in your game. If they miss, they can try again. Each try costs some amount in your game’s currency (usually “coins” or “tickets”). We know that, on average, it will take 3 tries before the player wins. But that’s on average. It ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
What happens when the immovable object (median) meets the unstoppable force (user behavior)? Our product fails! Before we get into the math, let’s keep this quote from Eliyahu Goldratt in mind “Tell me how you will measure me and I will tell you how I will behave.” Setting a north star metric for a product ..read more
Math Misery?
1y ago
In most high school or undergraduate statistics courses we encounter the “bell curve” or the more technical phrase “normal distribution” with the standard (no pun intended) markings at 1 and 2 standard deviations from the mean. Perhaps you’ve encountered something similar to the image below. A few “facts”, terms, and subscripts are usually beaten into ..read more