I start my daily commute by saying “OK Google, drive to work” into my phone, and Google responds by showing me the fastest route. This morning, Google thought I said “have to work”: Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Competitive Programming: SPOJ – String Problem
Link to problem Substring of some string A is defined as one or more (not necessary succeeding) elements of the string with maintaining the sequence. There are given two strings, string VOKI and string TOKI. Write the program that will calculate the length of any shortest substring of string VOKI such as it is not substring of string TOKI. Input In first line of input file there is string VOKI and in second one is string TOKI. The only characters that will occur are lowercase characters of English alphabet (‘a’- ‘z’). String lengths will be less or equal to 1000. Note: input data will be such so there will always be a solution. Output In the first line of file you should print the length of wanted substring. Sample input banana anbnaanbaan Sample output 5 (eg. banna) Sample input babab babba Sample output 3 (eg. aab) Solution below . .… Read more →
Teaching Computer Science: Tips and Tricks for the AP CS Principles Performance Tasks
Your most valuable resource for the performance tasks is the AP Computer Science Principles Exam page. Look for the section titled Sample Responses and Scoring Information. There’s a rubric for performance tasks, but they’re graded by humans so scoring is somewhat subjective. This page takes the guesswork out of it. You’ll find multiple student responses from previous exam administrations, including scoring guidelines and commentary. Some of the responses are excellent, some are bad, and the rest are somewhere in-between. But they all come with a detailed explanation for each row of the rubric as to why points were or were not awarded. Don’t submit your performance tasks without ensuring that they most closely resemble the high-scoring examples on this page. Teachers are limited in the type of questions they can answer regarding your performance tasks. It has to be your own work. That being said, if you have a… Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of
“Calendar” as a verb: “Can you given me an estimated delivery date so I can calendar it?” I’ve never heard that before today and I’m already sick of it. Read more →
Competitive Programming: SPOJ – Palindromes
A palindrome is a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that has the property of reading the same in either direction, e.g. ‘racecar’, ‘solos’. Task You are given a number k (2 <= k <= 30000) and a non-empty string S whose length does not exceed 30000 lowercase letters. We say two palindromes are different when they start from different positions. How many different palindromes of the length k does S contains? Input The first line contains K. The second line contains S. K does not exceed the length of S. Output The first and only line should consist of a single number – the number of palindromes found. Example Input: 5 ababab Output: 2 Time limit: 0.100s Link to problem Solution below . . . Read more →
Two Great Fears
We now know that the human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are protected from: the fear of life and the fear of death. — Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Read more →
Competitive Programming: SPOJ – Distinct Substrings
Given a string, we need to find the total number of its distinct substrings. Input T- number of test cases. T<=20; Each test case consists of one string, whose length is <= 1000 Output For each test case output one number saying the number of distinct substrings. Example Sample Input: 2 CCCCC ABABA Sample Output: 5 9 Explanation for the testcase with string ABABA: len=1 : A,B len=2 : AB,BA len=3 : ABA,BAB len=4 : ABAB,BABA len=5 : ABABA Thus, total number of distinct substrings is 9. Link to problem Solution below . . . Read more →
Teaching Computer Science: Inequality = Bad?
I’m volunteering a couple mornings a week in a high school computer science class . . . “Why don’t schools and classes have sponsors?” I ask one of the teachers. “When my kid was in school, they were always complaining about not having enough money. So why couldn’t you, for example, come in and say, ‘Hey kids, before you come to 1st period, make sure you have a good breakfast at McDonald’s. I’m lovin’ it!’? “And McDonald’s pays you 100 grand or whatever to say that.” “My concern,” he says, “is that would lead to more inequality in education.” I’m not sure he really thought that through. It seems more like a mechanical response to an abstract notion, i.e., “Inequality is bad.” As a parent, I always supported inequality in education. I wanted my kid to get the best possible education, better than most other kids. As a classroom volunteer,… Read more →
Dawn Wells is 80!?
Here’s some information that will ruin your day if not your entire life: Dawn Wells is 80 years old! Read more →
We Didn’t Even Have Indoor Plumbing
In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report on “the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.” “Pre-industrial levels” is defined in the report as the the period from 1850 to 1900. Not explained in the report, unless I missed it, is why I should feel confident in the scientific precision of air and sea surface temperatures taken in the 19th century. Read more →
Willie McCovey, 1938-2018
Willie McCovey: Giants legend dead at 80 — SFChronicle.com My boyhood sports idols are dying . . . RIP Willie McCovey Read more →
$15 Trillion for “Free” Healthcare
$300K = free healthcare for 60 people?! $50K per person?! Multiply by 300 million Americans . . . check me on the math but isn’t that $15 trillion? For “free” healthcare?!?!?! Here’s what it looks like if you write it out: $15,000,000,000,000. Is this guy insane?!?!?! Read more →
Things to Leave Out of Your Online Dating Profile
Former NFL player Rae Carruth released from prison after serving 18 years for killing his pregnant girlfriend — NY Daily News Read more →
Jesus Discovers America
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. — Matthew 4:8 “Satan, what is that land mass way over there to the west?” “Oh that’s America. It hasn’t been discovered yet.” Read more →
Amazon Has Good News and Bad News for You on the Minimum Wage
Good News: We are raising the minimum wage for all U.S. employees to $15 an hour. Bad News: We’re replacing all of you with robots. Read more →
Spot the Fake News: Students Call For USC Professor To Be Fired
A professor at the University of Southern California has come under fire after sending a reply-all email last week to the student body stating “accusers sometimes lie.” “If the day comes you are accused of some crime or tort of which you are not guilty, and you find your peers automatically believing your accuser, I expect you find yourself a stronger proponent of due process than you are now,” Professor James Moore wrote in the email. “Accusers sometimes lie.” Nearly 100 students reportedly attended a rally called “Times Up for James Moore” on Monday in protest of Moore — who is tenured — demanding that he be fired. — Students Call For USC Professor To Be Fired For Saying ‘Accusers Sometimes Lie’ | Daily Wire Nearly 100 students! Not mentioned: USC has 44,000 students. A more accurate way to frame this would be “Out of 44,000 USC students, 43,900 understand… Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: A Star is Born
OK, actually I haven’t seen A Star is Born and here’s why: When I go to the movies, I like to see something I’ve never seen before. I don’t care for sequels, prequels, reboots, spinoffs, adaptations of TV shows, video games, comic books or other movies. I don’t like love stories. I find them unrealistic. I read a lot and the books and authors I like mostly exclude the possibility of true love. What is worse than when you want to see a movie and someone spoils it by telling you how it ends? If you’re remaking A Star is Born for the fifth time, everyone already knows how it ends. You’ve spoiled your own movie. Director: Cast: IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
To Make the Accusation is to Prove It. To Hear the Allegation is to Believe It.
Simply to make the accusation is to prove it. To hear the allegation is to believe it. No motive for the perpetrator is necessary, no logic or rationale is required. Only a label is required. The label is the motive. The label is the evidence. The label is the logic. Why did Coleman Silk do this? Because he is an x, because he is a y, because he is both. First a racist and now a misogynist. It is too late in the century to call him a Communist, though that is the way it used to be done. . . . That explains everything. — Philip Roth, The Human Stain Read more →
Brain Eating Amoebae: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
New Jersey Man Who Died Of ‘Brain Eating Amoeba’ Recently Visited Texas Surf Resort — CBS Philly Read more →
They Submitted Fake Papers to Peer-Reviewed Journals — Here’s What Happened Next
Three writers produced 20 intentionally outlandish academic papers and submitted them to the best peer-reviewed journals associated with fields of scholarship loosely known as “cultural studies” or “identity studies” (for example, gender studies) or “critical theory.” Seven of the papers were accepted for publication and seven more were still under review when the authors elected to end the experiment. Their point would seem to be that scholarship in these fields is based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances. Just about anything can be published, so long as it falls within the moral orthodoxy and demonstrates an understanding of the existing literature. The authors summarize their methodology as follows. (I’ve inserted the material in brackets from elsewhere in the article, which you should look at in its entirety because there’s too much good stuff to summarize.) What if we write a paper saying we should train… Read more →