kalid

Congrats Paras, really happy for you!

Not a full spreadsheet, but I have a passion project that can support units:

https://instacalc.com/56734

I wanted a quick, shareable "back of the envelope" tool.

Happy to help! To give some context: there was a GPT prompt which was something like "Act as a language tutor. I'll have a conversation with you, and you reply back. If I make a grammar mistake, keep the conversation going, but put the correction in a parenthetical statement."

I was using that for a bit, but typing in another language was enough friction (vs. speaking) that I didn't use it that much.

For this, audio is perfect -- all I need is the gentle reminders about what to fix, and why. GPT could probably have a parenthetical part in the official transcript too.

Anyway, hope that helps give context.

I've been meaning to brush up on Spanish and the app worked great to just hop in! The best part about using GPT is being able to talk about whatever is on your mind.

I noticed the transcription APIs clean up my mistakes (which is good for the transcript) but I wonder if there is a way to show the raw and corrected transcript to help guide corrections? Either way, it's already useful as is, looking forward to using it more.

You probably understand logs intuitively. Don’t worry about notation, here’s the idea: sometimes we count digits, not values.

When we say someone has a 6 figure salary, we are counting how many 0’s (10s) to takes to get there.

For memory, we say something has 32 bits and can have 2^32 possible values. It’s more graspable to talk about the “address size” vs the “number of possible values”, especially for things that grow fast (like storage).

I’d suggest starting with your intuitions and slowly translating them to math.

(Without being a shill, I wrote about real world logs here, it may help: https://betterexplained.com/articles/using-logs-in-the-real-...)

Congrats on the prototype! Signed up and looking forward to checking it out once it's launched =).

y(t) = bank balance

y'(t) = income

y''(t) = raises

Glad the site was helpful! Helping spread the word with people it could help (educators, students, curious autodidacts) is great. There are BetterExplained books/courses you can get as quick stocking stuffers, though helping support local businesses now may be even better :).

Hey Chris, thanks for the support! =)

Appreciate it Paras! I remember our exchanges fondly as well :).

Congrats Paras, it's great seeing far VWO has come!

That's awesome to hear, thanks for helping share it :).

Wow, that's awesome to hear! One of my fears is having to keep blogging continuously, but luckily math is pretty evergreen, so my intermittent writing schedule doesn't punish me too much.

Thanks, one of my favorite aha! moments :).

Thanks, appreciate it!

Plug, but I have a blog for exactly this. As an EE/physics student you may appreciate this one on Euler's Formula:

https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding...

Shameless plug, I made https://instacalc.com (pastebin for calcs) for back-of-the-envelope number crunching. Fast, free, gets out of your way.

Have you checked archive.org for a backup? It's saved me a few times.

That's a great point. I think you could train a network on what clicks were meaningful or not by looking at whether the future game state was changed by the presence of the click. (I.e., if you click to attack 4 times, but clicks 2 3 and 4 don't change the impact of the battle when they are removed, they were likely spam.)

Is it necessary for the realization you've torn a muscle to be unpleasant? (It's that realization you're reacting to, not the pain.)

Ultimately, we're making a prediction: my life is guaranteed to be worse off because my muscle was recently torn. Is this true?

https://sivers.org/horses

Here’s the best analogy I’ve heard.

Imagine you wake up and your back is sore. Getting out of bed is a struggle, everything aches and you must move slowly.

Without other knowledge, you may get worried, anxious, feel distressed.

If you remember you had a workout yesterday, you may actually enjoy the feeling. It reminds you of the effort you put in, the future progress you’ll make as muscles are repaired.

The physical sensation is exactly the same.

Thanks for the pointer -- I have an article here.

https://betterexplained.com/articles/colorized-math-equation...

If you hover any diagram, there are options for a colorblind-friendly version.

As a side project, I made "pastebin for calculators" for these back of the envelope questions. Here's one for your scenario:

https://instacalc.com/51462

Congrats Drew and Arash, amazing job! I still remember meeting you at Startup school and wear account #27 with pride :).

I appreciate it, thank you! I have a similar wish, hoping more people would share math in the way that truly helps them.

Thanks! So, the red 1 represents the 100% interest we intend to earn; the pink n in the denominator represents the compounding pieces we divide it into.

For example, an approximation of e would be (1 + .01)^100, where the 100% interest had been chopped into 100 separate segments of 1%.

Analogies on their own are limited if you don't continue to the technical definition. They are a raft to cross the river.

Shameless plug, I write about math on BetterExplained.com

For each symbol, I try to make an analogy. For "e", for example, I have the notion of "continuous growth". The formal definition is this:

https://betterexplained.com/ColorizedMath/content/img/E_(mat...

"The base for continuous growth is the unit quantity earning unit interest for unit time."

Once you see the role of each part of the definition, the idea snaps into place. I just wrote about it here: https://betterexplained.com/articles/colorized-math-equation...

Hope that helps!

Much less mental stress; ~90% of the issues that used to bother me don't any more. Specifically, notice that emotions/thoughts tend have a physical component which you can observe without judgment (tightness, heat, tingling, etc.).

Breaking the loop of "negative" physical sensation -> negative emotion/thought is freeing. Feeling tightness in your chest does not require you to become afraid, it just means you are feeling tightness in your chest. But typically we have years of stimulus/response conditioning so we jump to the negative thought / emotion once the sensation arises.

I meditate 10-30 minutes ~5x a week, usually breath counting or doing the above. I found Noah Elkrief's videos helpful.

Just seeing this now -- thanks for the recommendation!