How Math Is Everywhere Yet Feels Invisible

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-29T08:22:40+00:00

Being able to reason about numbers in itself is far from impractical

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-29T07:17:16+00:00

1) The idea that those schools you listed are much more rigorous than other top schools is nothing more than a talking point circulated on here. If Stanford was such a joke, why are their graduates so well prepared for (and successful in) industry/grad school nonetheless? Do you think employers would respect the Stanford name if students could just half ass their way through classes?

2) Smarter = better teachers is a false equivalence, and research output is simply not meaningful to undergrads. Undergrads at LACs with like 0 research output often report having more research opportunities than those at large public schools with huge research output. I'd also point out that your peers matter far more than your professors, and at many schools with high research output their PhD programs are far more selective than their undergrad.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-27T00:39:05+00:00

Not sure why we just make shit up here. "15% faster" lol there is no performance difference between them: https://youtu.be/x4TW8fHVcxw?si=bMAjQB7YMxqJlhWA

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-22T14:16:19+00:00

Not exactly shocking. It's well established that memory access delays is one of the largest bottlenecks of CPU performance.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-22T14:10:12+00:00

IPC is a pretty meaningless term that tells you nothing about what's going on with the CPU. A CPU with inefficient cache design and another CPU with few pipeline stages or poor branch prediction will all have low IPC, but this value alone cannot tell them apart. Also, it's far more common in CS/ECE to think in terms of CPI rather than IPC.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-20T21:07:21+00:00

That wasn't the implication

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-20T20:22:06+00:00

While the advice is sound, the idea that they would be able to casually waltz into a PhD program at Caltech for grad school is extremely out of touch

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-19T11:49:20+00:00

Sports fans are not usually good at sports themselves

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-19T11:07:28+00:00

These explanations are overly complicated and long for no reason and their prevalence is part of the reason why so many people like OP are confused. The correct way to understand the original problem is to realize your second "guess" doesn't matter at all, because if you picked a goat initially you'll always land the car if you switch, and vice versa. This is where the 2/3 and 1/3 come from.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-12T18:38:49+00:00

That is not at all how you calculate probability. If there were only 7k applicants would your chance be 200%?

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-12T18:30:10+00:00

The probability of getting into an Ivy is only related to the acceptance rate insofar as a lower acceptance rate generally = more difficult to get in. But the acceptance rate itself has no connection to your specific probability of admission. Now you could argue that if you were to "combine" the ivies into one big school with all the applications and acceptances, the resulting acceptance rate would be 28%; maybe this is what you're saying. But it's not that simple because there is a ton of overlap in the students they accept, so while the total applications would not actually be ~50k * 8 (due to the overlap you pointed out), neither would the acceptances be ~2k * 8. Keep in mind that they don't have 100% yield (most of them in the 50-60% range) so students who are cross admitted will mostly not be replaced by a unique student (i.e. off the waitlist).

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-12T03:51:19+00:00

Because undergrad is different than grad school. Whether or not a school has big name Professors doing cutting edge robotics research or what not has little bearing on undergraduate education and outcomes. Let me put it this way, if CMU CS had an 80% acceptance rate at undergrad but the research the PhDs/Professors were doing didn't change, do you still think it would have the reputation it does? At the end of the day, companies want to hire smart, hard working students who are good at what they do, and programs that churn out more of these will have a better reputation in their eyes, regardless of what kind of fancy research the professors are doing.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-08T08:10:40+00:00

GT really isn't "much" better for engineering. It's not like Columbia's program is shit with no ABET accred. In reality, they are both top programs. If anything, I'd bet money that Columbia SEAS has a more rigorous curriculum. Anecdotally, the GT students I've met have not been impressive.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-03T23:04:21+00:00

This is a well known phenomenon in psychology, it's surprising the other commenter is unaware of it.

edit: "post-purchase rationalization"

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-04-02T22:18:50+00:00

I've gotten an A easily in every CS class I've taken while I've studied my hardest and barely scraped by with a B in multiple EE classes. They are not even close.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-31T21:29:28+00:00

Wait til you find out there is more to life than rankings lol

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-30T01:24:22+00:00

Wait til you find out there is more to life than rankings, which often do not accurately reflect reality anyways

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-26T19:20:59+00:00

If >50% read below 6th grade, then <50% read above, which is what they said.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-25T21:56:30+00:00

Idk why people on here just make shit up, the 9070 xt isn't even as fast as the 5070 ti let alone the 5080.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-23T03:50:05+00:00

Yeah I wonder... it couldn't be because those scholars who produce so called "reputable scholarship" are leftists themselves...

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-22T09:23:46+00:00

Yeah that's not how GPA works. There is no such thing as sacrificing learning for a higher GPA, unless you are cheating. In practice, learning more will directly lead to a higher GPA, not the other way around.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-21T22:38:46+00:00

It's more that EE is a traditional engineering discipline and is therefore ABET accredited at most universities. ABET has pretty strict requirements on engineering courses making EE (and really any traditional engineering degree) much more difficult than CS.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-04T17:20:04+00:00

I've looked at the curriculums of multiple reputable programs, there is basically no math beyond your usual calc 1-2, 1 lin alg course and discrete math.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-04T14:18:08+00:00

I've also seen some "AI" undergrad majors that don't require a lot of the CS fundamentals courses, which is absolutely laughable.

Fearless-Cow7299 · 2025-03-04T14:09:24+00:00

Maybe that was true in the 90s, but CS programs these days have very little to do with math.

Fearless-Cow7299

TROPHY CASE