8 ms·

Sometimes I read a comment on HN that is so advanced that it's just as readable to me as Greek. Love reading it just to see someone work though!

by xeromal 2mo ago

alexpotato 2mo ago
> so advanced that it's just as readable to me as Greek I used to feel this way about statistics. The language and terms are hard to understand and many of the formulas are taught as "just memorize this" instead of building up from first principles. But then I started using statistics to analyze something I cared a lot about (paintball) and I quickly realized it's like learning anything new: - there is jargon - and core concepts - when you learn the above, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.
- xeromal 2mo ago
  I gotta know what you use stats for regarding paintball. I haven't played in years but I loved playing back in the tipman 98 custom era (not sure if that's still a popular marker).
  - sigmarule 2mo ago
    That era is now! (Still)
    - alexpotato 2mo ago
      Paintball had a peak in the mid-2000s (I would say 2006) due to a combination of: - Millenials who were kids of the baby boomers being in their late teens early 20s - Disposable income due to the real estate bubble / positive consumer sentiment It dropped off a lot after the 2008 GFC though. BUT A lot of those kids playing in the mid 2000s are now parents of ~10 year olds so apparently there is a bit of a resurgence going on.
      - goosejuice 2mo ago
        There was even a hl mod with an esports league.
  - sota_pop 2mo ago
    Wow, a blast from the past to be sure. Was not but any means avid, but did own a tipman. And was always dazzled when someone showed up with an angel.
  - alexpotato 2mo ago
    So I wrote a whole bunch about college paintball statistics here: https://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=3949120 https://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=3949120 Then I wrote some more about pro paintball stats in the below three Reddit posts: 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1h17f2m/intro_to_paintball_game_theory_and_why_i_think/ https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1h17f2m/intro_to... 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1jy5xqp/paintball_game_theory_comparing_pro_players/ https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1jy5xqp/paintbal... 3. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1k6bzi7/paintball_game_theory_ranking_pro_players_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1k6bzi7/paintbal... Some highlights: - I started with just pen, paper and a stopwatch (as a college coach) - I assumed paintball would be more like football where it's hard to track individual effects - Turns out it's a surprisingly simple and stable "state machine". e.g. the odds of winning with +1 body (e.g. 5v4, 4v3 etc) is, in college, about ~75% - Paintball is one of those sports where "the weakest player determines the outcome". Why? b/c if 1 player gets out early, you are fighting out of a hole. It also made me appreciate that as good a book as Moneyball is, reading it after you try to create analytics for your own sport makes it 3x as enjoyable/insightful. One downside though: I would watch games and I got so good at internalizing the stats per state of the game that it was like watching the world series of poker where I could see both player odds of getting eliminated and probability of winning over time charts as I watched the games. Made it harder to be the "come on guys! we can win this" coach when we were down on points + bodies.
    - nugator 2mo ago
      > Made it harder to be the "come on guys! we can win this" coach when we were down on points + bodies. Would you say that paintball on that level is almost deterministic? Compared to, for example, (American) football where momentum and perseverance can turn games around completely.
  - vrighter 2mo ago
    same here. Then I started writing a path tracer and now i think in probabilities
- Abishek_Muthian 2mo ago
  This is a great suggestion, use complex hard stuff for doing fun stuff.
- jkhdigital 2mo ago
  This is my exact experience right now trying to wade through the research on psychometrics and skill/knowledge assessment design. It’s mostly just applied statistics but like all such fields, over decades of specialization it acquired its own jargon for abstractions that are quickly recognizable to anyone with a sufficiently developed nose for modern mathematics. But you still have to wade through all the definitions to make those connections before you actually understand everything.
semiquaver 2mo ago
Thanks for posting this comment, it makes me proud of myself to be able to partially comprehend the comment :)
spicyusername 2mo ago
Not to diminish the comment, but most things are not as complex as they sound when phrased in everyday language or sound much more complex than they are when phrased in technical language. Technical language is a tool that allows insiders to say less and refer to more, and to be specific, but it's just a tool. Most things can be described in accessible ways. I think you'd be surprised at what you could understand and at just how few domains are truly complex enough that a layman couldn't understand with a little bit of patience and an accessible summary.
- fooker 2mo ago
  Saying things colloquially gives everyone an intuition about it. You'd think intuition is great, but no, about half of the important things are counter intuitive. That makes intuitive thinking about complex technical topics you don't know enough about worse than useless.
- johnisgood 2mo ago
  Yeah, heck, whenever an LLM puts my thoughts and intuition into words, it sounds really complex as well. (FWIW I have an issue with producing words, rather than recognition. I do have the intuition I just lack the labels for it.)
Vasbarlog 2mo ago
Έχεις απόλυτο δίκιο!
georgeburdell 2mo ago
I don’t think OP made much effort to make the comment accessible to non-experts, and so it should be taken as a gauge of the fundamental difficulty of the topic.
BobbyTables2 2mo ago
It took me a while to understand a lot of these math concepts. Turns out people doing Engineering research are using a very small but powerful bag of tricks from a handful of few famous Mathematicians. The concepts are named after them!

Sometimes I read a comment on HN that is so advanced that it's just as readable to me as Greek. Love reading it just to see someone work though!

by xeromal 2mo ago

Sometimes I read a comment on HN that is so advanced that it's just as readable to me as Greek. Love reading it just to see someone work though!

alexpotato 2mo ago

> so advanced that it's just as readable to me as Greek I used to feel this way about statistics. The language and terms are hard to understand and many of the formulas are taught as "just memorize this" instead of building up from first principles. But then I started using statistics to analyze something I cared a lot about (paintball) and I quickly realized it's like learning anything new: - there is jargon - and core concepts - when you learn the above, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.

xeromal 2mo ago
I gotta know what you use stats for regarding paintball. I haven't played in years but I loved playing back in the tipman 98 custom era (not sure if that's still a popular marker).
- sigmarule 2mo ago
  That era is now! (Still)
  - alexpotato 2mo ago
    Paintball had a peak in the mid-2000s (I would say 2006) due to a combination of: - Millenials who were kids of the baby boomers being in their late teens early 20s - Disposable income due to the real estate bubble / positive consumer sentiment It dropped off a lot after the 2008 GFC though. BUT A lot of those kids playing in the mid 2000s are now parents of ~10 year olds so apparently there is a bit of a resurgence going on.
    - goosejuice 2mo ago
      There was even a hl mod with an esports league.
- sota_pop 2mo ago
  Wow, a blast from the past to be sure. Was not but any means avid, but did own a tipman. And was always dazzled when someone showed up with an angel.
- alexpotato 2mo ago
  So I wrote a whole bunch about college paintball statistics here: https://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=3949120 https://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=3949120 Then I wrote some more about pro paintball stats in the below three Reddit posts: 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1h17f2m/intro_to_paintball_game_theory_and_why_i_think/ https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1h17f2m/intro_to... 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1jy5xqp/paintball_game_theory_comparing_pro_players/ https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1jy5xqp/paintbal... 3. https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1k6bzi7/paintball_game_theory_ranking_pro_players_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/paintball/comments/1k6bzi7/paintbal... Some highlights: - I started with just pen, paper and a stopwatch (as a college coach) - I assumed paintball would be more like football where it's hard to track individual effects - Turns out it's a surprisingly simple and stable "state machine". e.g. the odds of winning with +1 body (e.g. 5v4, 4v3 etc) is, in college, about ~75% - Paintball is one of those sports where "the weakest player determines the outcome". Why? b/c if 1 player gets out early, you are fighting out of a hole. It also made me appreciate that as good a book as Moneyball is, reading it after you try to create analytics for your own sport makes it 3x as enjoyable/insightful. One downside though: I would watch games and I got so good at internalizing the stats per state of the game that it was like watching the world series of poker where I could see both player odds of getting eliminated and probability of winning over time charts as I watched the games. Made it harder to be the "come on guys! we can win this" coach when we were down on points + bodies.
  - nugator 2mo ago
    > Made it harder to be the "come on guys! we can win this" coach when we were down on points + bodies. Would you say that paintball on that level is almost deterministic? Compared to, for example, (American) football where momentum and perseverance can turn games around completely.
- vrighter 2mo ago
  same here. Then I started writing a path tracer and now i think in probabilities
Abishek_Muthian 2mo ago
This is a great suggestion, use complex hard stuff for doing fun stuff.
jkhdigital 2mo ago
This is my exact experience right now trying to wade through the research on psychometrics and skill/knowledge assessment design. It’s mostly just applied statistics but like all such fields, over decades of specialization it acquired its own jargon for abstractions that are quickly recognizable to anyone with a sufficiently developed nose for modern mathematics. But you still have to wade through all the definitions to make those connections before you actually understand everything.

semiquaver 2mo ago

Thanks for posting this comment, it makes me proud of myself to be able to partially comprehend the comment :)

spicyusername 2mo ago

Not to diminish the comment, but most things are not as complex as they sound when phrased in everyday language or sound much more complex than they are when phrased in technical language. Technical language is a tool that allows insiders to say less and refer to more, and to be specific, but it's just a tool. Most things can be described in accessible ways. I think you'd be surprised at what you could understand and at just how few domains are truly complex enough that a layman couldn't understand with a little bit of patience and an accessible summary.

fooker 2mo ago
Saying things colloquially gives everyone an intuition about it. You'd think intuition is great, but no, about half of the important things are counter intuitive. That makes intuitive thinking about complex technical topics you don't know enough about worse than useless.
johnisgood 2mo ago
Yeah, heck, whenever an LLM puts my thoughts and intuition into words, it sounds really complex as well. (FWIW I have an issue with producing words, rather than recognition. I do have the intuition I just lack the labels for it.)

Vasbarlog 2mo ago

Έχεις απόλυτο δίκιο!

georgeburdell 2mo ago

I don’t think OP made much effort to make the comment accessible to non-experts, and so it should be taken as a gauge of the fundamental difficulty of the topic.

BobbyTables2 2mo ago

It took me a while to understand a lot of these math concepts. Turns out people doing Engineering research are using a very small but powerful bag of tricks from a handful of few famous Mathematicians. The concepts are named after them!