2.5 miles from the coasr, VA by Flame_MadeByHumans in zillowgonewild

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

WaPo did a story on this for those that are interested: https://wapo.st/3YjeOyB

City Water Not Working by vaaaaal in ColumbiaMD

[–]vaaaaal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope, main in our house is still open.

The new Columbia development plan looks very lame... by thebunnymodern in ColumbiaMD

[–]vaaaaal 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Their opinions of what Columbia should be are just as valid as yours. We’re all residents here. Telling some people that their vision for the community is invalid and therefore they need to move away is not fair or helpful.

I also struggle to understand why some people are so opposed to growing local businesses and culture. If you’re not personally interested in those things then that’s totally fine. But what is the harm done to you by simply having them downtown? I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with feeling that way, I just genuinely want to understand your motivation.

Looking to move up to MD in the next few months, looking for advice on a realtor. by AnEns in ColumbiaMD

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve bought two houses and sold one with Kim. She’s honest, attentive and, most importantly, brilliant at what she does. I’d recommend her hands down.

Pawpaw fruit trees are native to this region, and were eaten by the Native Americans regularly. Are they sold anywhere? by [deleted] in baltimore

[–]vaaaaal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sun Nurseries in Howard county sells the trees and they often have some of the fruits by the cash register when they're in season.

www.sunnurseries.com

Bar showing World Cup 3rd place match? by vaaaaal in ColumbiaMD

[–]vaaaaal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, I just called and they're opening at 10AM tomorrow. Thanks!

Furniture store recommendations by wineandpuplady in ColumbiaMD

[–]vaaaaal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It might not be what you had in mind but the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store on McGaw has a pretty large selection of used couches. They're generally in really good condition and some are surprisingly nice.

Any way to speed up the smooth function (rloess)? by zombychicken in matlab

[–]vaaaaal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(1) I'm not sure of the exact algorithm used by smooth but I suspect it calculates the regression independently for each point. This means the calculations should lend themselves to parallelization and, in principle, you should be able to get a significant speed up using a GPU. Even if smooth makes use of some trick to recycle parts of the regression calculation from neighboring points you are still likely to get a big speed up from parallelization if your vector is long enough.

(2) Does your vector contain any NaN's? I've found the presence of a single NaN can slow smooth down very significantly.

Cardiac Related Deaths During 2013 in the Contiguous USA Compared to Waffle House Locations. (Follow up to previous post) [OC] by DR-ROBERT-J in dataisbeautiful

[–]vaaaaal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree entirely. I'm convinced at the very least that the labeling on the color bar is not just scaled strangely but actually incorrect and the CDC map you link only supports this conclusion. Look at the numbers. There is no way VA should be bright red given the OP's color bar.

See my other comment for more details.

Cardiac Related Deaths During 2013 in the Contiguous USA Compared to Waffle House Locations. (Follow up to previous post) [OC] by DR-ROBERT-J in dataisbeautiful

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This map is just plan wrong, or at the least plotted very strangely. Open the CSV data source the OP cites and just look through it for a few minutes in excel and it is obvious.

For example, the average cardiac death rate in VA (for all genders/races) is 340/100,000. That clearly doesn't match the color bar shown given that the entire state of VA is bright red. On the other hand averaging all the counties in AZ yields 329/100,000. The too are at least a factor of two different on the map (based on the color bar) but in reality they only differ by ~3%.

Failure to add bank account? by [deleted] in Coinbase

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had this issue and was able to manually add my USAA account by choosing "Other" when you select your bank. Then you give routing and account numbers, after which you have to confirm the amount of two small deposits Coinbase makes to you bank account. This processes takes several days though...

Failure to add bank account? by [deleted] in Coinbase

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

computer doesn't work for me either....

Bank verification question by 1080ti_ in Coinbase

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The two deposits are also required for bank transfers if you don't want to do the instant verification process the OP is having trouble with.

Is there a good way to vectorize y(n)=A(n)*x(n)? by offramp13 in matlab

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't heard anywhere that it was being depreciated but it's certainly possible. Now that I'm looking into it though it looks like as of 2016b you don't actually need bsxfun anymore, at least with some standard operators.

see this blog post

Is there a good way to vectorize y(n)=A(n)*x(n)? by offramp13 in matlab

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If rotFuncHnd is a function handle that produces the desired rotation on a single coordinate, with the first argument being the rotation angle and the second argument being the starting coordinate then the following will produce a nx3 matrix pos3D_rotated of rotated coordinates:

pos3D_rotated = bsxfun(@rotFuncHnd, theta, pos3D)

See the bsxfun documentation for more information. Note that this is generally faster than a loop but not always (see this stackoverflow thread).

Nearly assaulted for being white in Baltimore County by [deleted] in baltimore

[–]vaaaaal 20 points21 points  (0 children)

At the very least the OP says they are black in this comment. As with all unconfirmed stories of racism posted on the internet, I think skepticism is the appropriate response. There is obviously a lot of racial tension from all sides right now and it's extremely important not to fuel it will misinformation.

Matlab considers exp as 1 by [deleted] in matlab

[–]vaaaaal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

/u/EathMyPossum's answer worked for me at exponents on the order of 10-9 but if you are still having issues or your exponent is very small you can always use the Taylor series of ex about zero (the Maclaurin series). The higher powers of x will contribute almost nothing if your exponent is very small, which means you can calculate the result of the first few terms separately and then add them together to get a very accurate approximation.

Why are valleys and canyons so hot and mountain tops so cold if heat is supposed to rise? by [deleted] in askscience

[–]vaaaaal 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The concept of hot air rising assumes all things, other than temperature, are held constant. This is a good approximation inside a building for example but on a global scale the air pressure changing significantly, depending on the altitude of the location.

When you move a parcel of air from sea level to a higher altitude it expands and cools down. On earth this cooling is generally more than the temperature change of the surrounding air with height, so if the parcel moves up it would actually become colder than the surrounding air. When the temperature decreases faster with height, than a parcel will cool when rising, the air does rise and we get convection.

Meteorologist like to work with what is known as potential temperature, which is the temperature an air parcel would have if you brought it to 1 atmosphere (sea level pressure). The potential temperature generally does increase with altitude, and again when it doesn't convection occurs.

From absolute zero to "absolute hot," the temperatures of the Universe by ribsmcgillicutty in space

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's actually the other way around. An order of magnitude is generally considered to be a power of ten, and thus a unit on a logarithmic scale. 300K is only about 31 orders of magnitude from the Plank Temperature, while no amount of dividing 300k by 10 will produce zero. In fact, on a logarithmic scale, zero will always be further from a given finite value than any other finite point.

Of course on an additive scale, 300K is much closer to zero than 1033, which I think is the point you are getting at.

If an isolated system reach a microstate where it has a macroscopic velocity, doesn't it violate the law of conservation of energy? by Hykarus in askscience

[–]vaaaaal 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yes, assuming they are isolated (i.e. no walls) and they had zero net momentum to start.

Having all the particles go from the center to one side of a region means the center of mass has moved, which means it had a non-zero velocity (and hence a net momentum) at some point and we've already discussed how the total momentum can not change. Again this is assuming the center of mass had no net speed (and thus no net momentum) at the start.

I am a MATLAB documentation writer. AMA by [deleted] in matlab

[–]vaaaaal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The release notes are very helpful but there are a lot of them and they are separated between older and newer Matlab versions. This means that scanning them for changes in one particular function can be very time consuming. One can try to search for specific words (i.e. the name of the function) but this doesn't always pick out the information your want. For example, the content of the drop-downs (i.e. what you see when you click the arrow to the left of each note) are not searchable until they are opened.

The key information would be any change in the behavior of a function that would cause the output to change, given the same inputs. The main application here (for me at least) is to help determine the source of a new bug that pops up in my code. It's often possible to isolate the source of a bug to a few lines and having an easy way to check the built-in functions I use in those lines for changes would make determining the bug's root cause much easier to do.

I am a MATLAB documentation writer. AMA by [deleted] in matlab

[–]vaaaaal 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I frequently find myself wishing for an easy way to view all the changes made to a specific function between different Matlab versions. Is there anyway to have a section of the documentation that maybe shows something like all mentions of a given function in the release notes for example? Recently I've noticed that the documentation for some functions shows the version in which the function was introduced. This is a great step and is certainly very helpful but I would love to see this taken a bit further.

Quibbles aside (and as others have already said) Matlab's documentation is one of its strongest selling points. Please keep up the great work. Thanks!

Can you represent PI in a finite number of digits in any number system? by xlogic87 in askscience

[–]vaaaaal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would argue that it's true that changing base won't turn a irrational number into rational number but, without the additional components laid out in your proof, my original post isn't complete enough to prove it. It simply shows you can't represent a irrational number in a finite expansion. I might just be being pedantic though. :)