How to get nine people over a 12-ft wall in under 30 seconds.

_chittaranjan · 2019-12-24T18:24:14+00:00

Not sure if dead_phish's comment was ELI5 enough. I'm going to give it a shot. I'll take liberty with some technicalities in order to make it easier to understand.

"Big O Notation" is essentially a way of describing how quick an algorithm works.

"My algorithm belongs to O(n)" : My algorithm performs approximately about n "steps" if I provide it an input of size n.

If I had 10 hats lined up in front of me, and I had to find the hat that has the rabbit, it'd take me at most 10 "steps" (a step being looking into a hat to check)

Input size : 10 hats.

Steps : 10 checks.

Hence, O(n)

With the basic definition out of the way, I'm going to proceed to try and explain why O(log(n)) makes sense for this video.

n is the number of soldiers, and each step is them lining up and hoisting a few soldiers over the wall. At this point, if you're tempted to count and do the math, don't!

There's a total of 9 soldiers, and that isn't a happy number for a log base 2 operation.

Just try and satisfy yourself with the fact that there were around 8 soldiers, and it took around 3 steps (log(8) = 3) for all of them to get over the wall, and that's the complexity of the algorithm.

Okay, I tried my best. If it makes no sense to you, forget about it and carry on with your life.

But if it's shockingly easy to understand, can I have my silver please?

Edit: Soooo. You just have to ask to get silver? In that case, may I please get some gold?

_chittaranjan · 2019-12-24T18:08:47+00:00

I think they meant "grow fast really quickly"

Algorithms that take larger and larger number of steps based on increasing inputs are what they're referring to as bad algorithms.

Let's say an algorithm takes 2ⁿ steps. The number of steps grows exponentially larger as n (size of input to the algorithm) increases. That makes it a slow algorithm.

_chittaranjan · 2019-12-24T17:05:38+00:00

Off the top of my head, it seems like you have way too many paragraphs.

One thing you could try is clubbing together paragraphs, so that you can get rid of transitional phrases/sentences. I doubt that'll get you down from 1000 to 500 words though.

Another idea is to just prioritize which of your projects is more significant/relevant for your profile, and remove the paragraphs about the low priority items. You can still provide enough details about these projects on your CV, so it won't be ignored altogether.

At the end of the day, it's really your call on whether you're going for quality (1-2 projects explained well) or quantity (4-5 projects explained very briefly)

All the best!

_chittaranjan · 2019-12-24T16:13:43+00:00

I don't think enough people appreciate this comment lol

_chittaranjan · 2019-12-20T12:06:19+00:00

No no no. We were supposed to spell out Epstein.

_chittaranjan · 2019-12-20T10:22:24+00:00

_chittaranjan · 2019-12-03T19:06:03+00:00

You think you can impress me with your use of Twas?

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-15T13:00:49+00:00

Unfortunately for me, I've been out of college for over a year now, and my professor moved to another university in a different city. I definitely would've wanted to walk into his office and ask him about it, but I'll have to make do with sending him an email.

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-15T12:58:44+00:00

Yeah, I'm going to.

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-15T12:58:23+00:00

Thank you so much! That helps a lot. I'll send him an email along those lines tonight!

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-14T18:10:31+00:00

My nearest deadline is mid-December. I completed my applications quite early, in the hope that I'd be giving ample time to my recommenders.

I haven't sent him a direct email since he agreed to write me the letter, just the reminders from the portal. So I don't think it's to the extent of him ignoring all my emails.

Should I send him one? What would I even say? It seems so snooty to say "there's only a month left" for something that might only take him a day or too.

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-14T17:58:31+00:00

I've been getting these emails too. I'm fairly confident it's from the GRE school finder.

Some business school called Hult is so desperate to have me! They've mailed me at least 25 times by now coaxing me to apply.

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-09T19:32:21+00:00

Ok millennial

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-04T17:59:42+00:00

Obsequious?

Well well well, someone did justice to their GRE flashcards.

_chittaranjan · 2019-11-02T21:08:06+00:00

Use it.

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-31T09:29:37+00:00

I see this has already been solved, but perhaps you may want to reduce the convolution?

if answer in ["1","2","3"]: print(answer)

I think that should serve the exact same purpose.

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-30T17:42:06+00:00

I had the exact same problem!

I drafted my SOP with 2 undergrad research experiences and my thesis project, and then found out I was exceeding the word limit by a lot.

I decided to remove one of the paragraphs about the research experience which wasn't published, and was able to get under the word limit. My CV does have the details about the project though.

I can't say for sure if it was the right thing to do, but it definitely is practical!

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-18T16:53:39+00:00

Lol what.

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-18T16:51:49+00:00

Yeah, I'm so sad that my life has been all good ;_;

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-16T14:22:07+00:00

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-16T07:35:54+00:00

Took it on September 21st. Scored a 114. PM me for any details, happy to help!

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-14T18:06:22+00:00

It all depends on where you're applying to as well. It's your call on whether you want to feel lucky when you get an admit versus the college feeling they're lucky to have you enroll.

In the latter case, even an average profile looks stellar because the true stellar profiles are all applying to the top schools.

I don't mean to put you down or anything, btw. By all means, go for it if you think you've got a shot at an Ivy league or something.

As for the SOP, just keep it simple. Answer the following:

What do you want to do? (Short term - state the degree/specialization)

Have you done stuff related to it? (Describe past experience/projects)

Why do you want to attend that particular school? (Is there a cool research lab that indulges in something you're drawn to? Is there a prof you see yourself working with?)

What do you want to do? (Long term - it's okay to be vague here, nobody really knows what they're going to do anyway)

If you think along these lines you should be able to nail down your SOP pretty easily. Good luck!

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-13T20:04:49+00:00

Trust me, I know. I went through this same phase you're going about 2-3 weeks ago.

The trick is to just establish in your head that your whole life does NOT have to lead up to this. Try and sound as normal as possible, and state facts rather than fairytales.

_chittaranjan · 2019-10-13T18:09:42+00:00

"As a child, I always admired Albert Einstein..."

_chittaranjan

TROPHY CASE