Second the rec on Sadava. I strongly preferred it to Campbell, the other standard intro bio text, which I found insufficiently precise. I’d go to make an Anki card about some concept, only to find that Campbell’s discussion lacked enough precision for me to state exactly what was going on. Sadly, I haven’t read another biology book (having been quite satisfied with Sadava’s), so I can’t make a Luke-compliant recommendation.
zedzed
Karma: 599
Book’s homepage: http://www.mcafee.cc/Introecon/
There seems to be threeish versions about:
The original (the one your link goes to), which McAfee believes may be preferred by the mathematically sophisticated or engineers. This is the one I’m personally using, currently.
A second version, meant to improve accessibility, which McAfee expects professors considering the text to prefer
Version 2.1, which appears to be a refinement of version 2. Includes solutions to exercises, cosmetic improvements, and “small edits for consistency of notation and for clarity.”
(I’m vaguely reminded of Debian-Ubuntu-Mint Linux distros. Yay open source?)
There are theoretical reason to expect long-term harm from it.
Such as?
I wouldn’t be surprised if every single principle of effective learning has, by someone, somewhere, been co-opted into a dark art.
My favorite part of this post was the inclusion of the exercise left to the reader; working through it really helped me deeply understand what you were saying. I suggest that this type of thing become more common because generation effect.
The answer is 42.
(But, seriously, I think 15 is fine. I’d even be fine reducing it to 10 (username is currently #12)).
From a technical perspective. However, many of my friends respond to fb messages and not emails. Near as I can tell, they’re young enough that, when establishing a “best way to contact me,” they chose “website I’m going to be on anyway.”
I think, now that they’re graduating college, they’re going to have to get themselves a professional email, but the best way to contact them socially is going to remain fb because, for most social stuff (or at least, social stuff my friends and I get up to), we don’t really need any more features than fb has, which I find disappointing, being in the minority who could really use everything you listed.
Thank you for the reply. I somewhat disagree that this detracts from the purpose of the thread—I find signalling via grammar (a) nonobvious and (b) useful, making my comment very much in place in a thread about instrumental rationality (albeit less so in a questions thread)—but I do very much appreciate the feedback.
In that case, “it’s” is a contraction equivalent to “it is”. For a possessive, use “its”.
Examples:
Practical advice from its members.
and
It’s inspired by the stupid questions.
(What’s the point of paying attention to this stuff if you’re communicating clearly? Briefly, signalling. If I notice you’ve made a grammatical error, on average, I estimate you’re less well educated or not invested in making the writing worth my while than in the opposite case, and am less likely to finish reading if I get bored or have to expend mental effort to understand what you’re saying or something. Also, there’s an aesthetic element: error-free writing is, ceter paribus, more pleasing to read.)
(Also, wondering if this was downvoted because someone thinks I’m incorrect, because they think I’m being an ass, or for some other reason.)
Are there any nootropics that have decent evidence of nonnegligible effectiveness that aren’t listed in Slate Star Codex’s Nootropics Survey Results. Asking so I can use replies to this comment + survey as an exhaustive list of nootropics worth considering.
Are there any 2014 videos? I can find the 2013 keynotes here, but nothing since then.
If there were videos recorded and never posted for 2014, then the 2015 prospects look not so good.
Please do.
So, Folding at Home, but with money involved? Any idea if it can justify the increased electrical bills?
I agree with the point, though my immediate intuition is that a few months might work better than a few years; in StarCraft, there’s almost no lag, but that hasn’t stopped people from innovating, and any meta that persists more than a few months starts feeling stale.
Maybe have 3ish-month seasons like SC2*, and competitors disclose at the end of the season.
* There’s three stages of a season: qualifiers, lower league, and upper league. Anyone can compete in the qualifiers, which consist of single-elimination brackets. The lower league is composed of 24 qualified competitors and the bottom 24 (out of 32) finishers from the previous season’s upper league. The qualified competitors match up against the competitors who dropped from last season’s upper league, and the winner advances to this season’s upper league. These 24 players, along with the top 8 competitor’s from last season’s upper league compete in a single-elimination bracket, until a champion is crowned (or, I guess, trophied). (There’s also dual tournaments, which have the exact same effect of eliminating half the players in a round, but I prefer because it’s more forgiving of bad seeding—you don’t have #1 seed knocking out #3 seed in round of 32, for instance).
Korean academy in Guatemala
I notice that I am confused. What, exactly, is a Korean academy doing halfway around the world? Were you teaching people-who-speak-Korean English in a Spanish-speaking country?
And thus, another school that could have implemented effective SRS (probably) won’t (I’m assuming, with you there to advocate for it, near-universal adoption is inevitable, but without an advocate, nobody will undergo the trivial inconvenience of doing something new, especially when they don’t fully understand the cognitive psychology behind it). I’m reminded of Teaching Linear Algebra, where someone applies cognitive psychology to teaching, is hugely successful, and promptly never teaches again because a better opportunity came along.
That said, best of luck!
Obligatory link to The Best Textbook on Every Subject.
I’m told that Mas-Colell’s book is the classic on microeconomics (provided you have the mathematical prerequisites), although this recommendation is second-hand since it’s still on my to-read list.
Oops. I did, in fact, mean vocal music. Fixed and thank you.
Sending them a card is never required but always appreciated.