Ben Reyes

Ruby Programming: A good breakdown of Ruby Mixins

Given full access to tools, some create, others don’t

JJ Abrams (Director & Producer - Super 8, Star Trek, Cloverfield) talks about the freedom and accessibility to high end tools that technology brings.

Canvas and brushes and paint have been available for a long time to a lot of people. Ultimately, some people create artwork that is of note, that has emotion and meaning, and that is full of ideas, while some people don’t. [Quora]

(Unrelated Photo by Zach Klein)

Human Behaviour: Social Cues and Anonymity

“Typically when social context cues are strong behaviour tends to be relatively other-focused, differentiated, and controlled.

When social context cues are weak, people’s feelings of anonymity tend to produce relatively self-centered and unregulated behavior.”

Sproull and Kiesler (1986, p.1495)

My family’s association to secretive groups

My mother just recently asked me a question in all seriousness, in the same tone a voice as if she was asking me what I had for breakfast or how my day was.

She asked me if I had affiliation to the freemasonry or something similar… Now here’s where my interesting family history begins.

My grandfather and grandmother was fairly well off in the Republic of the Philippines. They owned a big house and had several servants. Fairly influential within the local economy. Until of course, my grandfather died of a mysterious death.

Apparently according to my mother and my grandmother my grandfather had been an influential member of he freemasons within the Philippines dealing with the accounting of the group. He died under suspicious circumstance. Apparently having accidentally shot himself whilst cleaning he’s own gun. With this there was suspicion of foul play. A framing of suicide perhaps.

I will never know the truth to this story. Nor will I most likely ever. Though to this day the masonry and other secretive groups still exist and influence society as we all know it.

 

Get Used To It: Technology Changes Social Norms

“It’s appalling,” said an elderly aunt, “to see how they use 

telephones nowadays. Last night Mary, who was dressing, 

answered the telephone in her room. And it was a man 

calling her up. The two of them stood talking to one 

another just as if they were entirely dressed and had 

stopped for a little chat on the street! I tell you this 

generation is too much for me.”

Telephony magazine (1903)

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“Writing is inhuman, artificial and destroys the mind”

Plato (“Phaedrus”, 360 BCE)

Probabilistic methods of revising for exams

First off I’m an academic failure (what I like to believe, was part by choice). I didn’t submit my final year dissertation for my Computer Science degree at Queen Mary, University. Nor did I sit my exams.

I later learn that obtaining a US visa for a Highly Skilled Worker is not contingent on your academic performance, but the fact that you obtained a certificate. Definitely the way in if you want to startup in the US, it’s a real bitch to deal with visas otherwise. So I’m sitting my exams which counts as ‘re-takes’ even though I didn’t physically sit them. Which means they are capped at 40% pass rate, no higher.

So there’s absolutely no point in learning the whole course material for the 2 exams that I pass in order to graduate. So here’s my method of revision which is designed for a reduction of effort.

Probabilistic calculation of exams questions

• Gather past papers
• Summarise the topic category of each question
• List each topic category
• Calculate the frequency of each topic category
  Mark weighting: If marks are not evenly distributed across each question apply a multiplier on mark weighting to give mark heavy topics more prominence.
• Order list based on frequency
   

And there you have your revision list. It’s not the same as memorising past exam questions (another revision technique but can fail) because the key here is to prioritise topic revision.

Here is an example of one of my list:

Where can Probabilistic calculation of exams questions fail?

• Lecturer writing the exam changes
• Exam formart is altered
• Exam lecturer varies questions each time
  (Although you can often tell by previous exams the lecturer has written, if there is large amounts of variation between each exams, perhaps you should cover the wider topic. Some examiners re-use questions more or less than others) 

To be honest if someone memorises every single bit of course content for an exam from start to finish without prioritisation they’re probably not making effective use of their time.

The Revision Lecture

The one other thing I must recommend is definitely attending the revision lectures. Often lecturers often highlight what areas you should study. Even certain nuances in speech and body language that will draw attention to certain areas.

One lecturer provided us with a question by question breakdown of the topics covered. Even going as far as mentioning one of the code answers is covered as an example in the lecture slides.

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The key is to gather data on patterns that tend to occur for the course and exams based on the lecturer’s structure and style. Thus prioritising your revision strategy around statistical probability.

So is this an effective way to study for exams? Perhaps, we’ll see if it works out for me.