Answers to Quora questions.

Friday, July 26, 2019

What advice would you give to a young woman in high school considering computer science?

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Subject: Question: Young women in computer science To: Keith Winstein <keithw@...> Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2019 08:47:14 -0400 I am a senio...
Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Advice on the CS faculty interview

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Here is a bunch of  advice   that people gave me on   interviewing for an assistant professorship in CS in 2014 that proved helpful at the...
Sunday, February 7, 2016

Stock advice for undergraduates interested in doing a Ph.D. in computer science

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Thank you for getting in touch! As you may know, Ph.D. students at Stanford are admitted by a department committee, and students usually rot...
Monday, August 26, 2013

What is Cambridge, MA known for?

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Cambridge has been reinventing itself for four hundred years. It's a former farming village that became a major industrial town (New Eng...
14 comments:
Thursday, July 11, 2013

“Is Computer Networks a boring area?”

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Over on Quora , the question-and-answer Web site, my hackles were raised when I saw this question that seemed out of left field: Is Comp...
51 comments:
Monday, February 4, 2013

Q: How accurate is Google Flu Trends?

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Update March 14, 2013: In 2012–13, Google Flu Trends did not successfully track the target flu indexes in the U.S., France, or Japan. Here ...
229 comments:
Friday, December 21, 2012

Q: The probability of success in each of a series of independent trials is constant. How can a 95% confidence interval for this proportion be obtained?

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This is called the "binomial confidence interval," and there are a few solutions. Wikipedia discusses this here:  Binomial proport...
9 comments:
Friday, November 30, 2012

Q: Event A has a probability of 70% of happening within the year and event B, 40%. The events are independent and uniformly distributed through the year. What is the probability that they will occur within 3 months of each other?

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There is more than one way to answer this question! The ambiguity comes down to exactly how we interpret the statement that "Events A...
2 comments:
Monday, October 29, 2012

Q: What is it like to have the process of video encoding or transcoding bring you to tears?

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In 2005, we built a system to do the first amateur ATSC HDTV broadcasts. We broadcast MIT sporting events and the January "Integration ...
4 comments:
Sunday, October 21, 2012

Q: What are France's most remarkable contributions to the modern world?

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How about: Aviation (Montgolfier brothers, Robert brothers) Moving pictures (co-invented by the Lumière brothers) Electromagnetism (many...
6 comments:
Friday, October 5, 2012

Q: How many unique Tweets can ever be posted?

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At least   (a number with 1,264 decimal digits), using the contents of the tweet alone. Plus there is all the metadata, which probably adds ...
2 comments:
Thursday, August 30, 2012

Q: Why is the SI second defined as 9,192,631,770 periods of the transition between two states of cesium-133?

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In 1895, the astronomer Simon Newcomb published his "Tables of the Sun," based on observations of the sun's position from 1750...
8 comments:
Saturday, August 25, 2012

Q: If one day is not exactly 24 hours and is in fact 23 hours, 56 minutes, shouldn't the error add up, and shouldn't we see 12 a.m. becoming noon?

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You're right that a "sidereal" day is about 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds. But this is not a day in the everyday sense. A ...
79 comments:
Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Q: Why don't we see green stars?

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Stars are black bodies in thermal equilibrium ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation ). Their spectrum depends only on their te...
1 comment:
Friday, May 4, 2012

Q: What is the safest, simplest, and most effective method to anchor an average-size sailboat?

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There is technique (and many strong feelings) to anchoring, but I don't think there are any great secrets beyond what is taught in saili...
1 comment:
Friday, April 20, 2012

Q: Does all "white noise" sound like the same hiss?

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The answer is no: not all white noise sounds alike! White noise can sound like "hissing" of a shortwave radio or it can sound li...
3 comments:
Thursday, February 9, 2012

Q: What were some surprising court decisions?

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American Council for the Blind v. Boorstin, 644 F. Supp. 811 (D.D.C. 1986), holding that the First Amendment required the U.S. Government to...
2 comments:
Thursday, February 2, 2012

Q: What are the most impactful inventions created in Boston?

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I think the telephone is probably the all-time top Boston invention, but also these: 1802 -- Modern navigation -- Bowditch 1886 -- Ma...
2 comments:
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