Misc

Question 1

Machine learning important professor

Answer 1

Geoff Hinton

Question 2

• What is pluralistic ignorance?
• Who studied it?
• What triggered the study?
• what was the experiment?

Answer 2

• it’s when each person decides that since nobody’s concerned, nothing is wrong, even though something might be wrong. It’s the bystander effect.
• Latanté and Darley
• The murder of Catherine Genovese
• 85% of individuals helped an actor that appeared to be having a seizure. But when 5 bystanders were present, only 31%

Question 3

Who is the author of the philosophical work, the Cave? What was it about?

Answer 3

Plato. In the story people live in a cave and they’re only knowledge of the outside world is the vision of shadows on the wall. But one day a person escapes into the real world and sees everything for what it is, the bark of trees the colors of birds etc. He enters the cave and tries to tell the people but they do not believe his stories because all they have ever known of shadows. They become sarcastic and eventually threaten his life.

Question 4

What is a jigsaw classroom?

Answer 4

Developed by Eliot Aaronson. Groups are formed in the classroom and every member of the group has a piece of the information needed for a test. Each person is assigned to teach the rest the group this knowledge. Groups are forced to work as stronger teams.

Question 5

Tell me about Aristotle

Answer 5

“Practical philosopher”; Taught Alexander the Great; creator of rhetoric

Question 6

Tell me about Baruch Spinoza

Answer 6

Jewish philosopher that believed God was the governing force of the universe, but was impersonal and timeless.

Question 7

Tell me about Blaise Pascal

Answer 7

Genius in science and math; hunchback. When he was 36 is ill health force and away from science into philosophy. He wrote a book with two parts: first part was to convince people of how horrible life was, second part was to convince people to follow God.

Question 8

Tell me about Renée Descartes

Answer 8

I think therefore I am. He believes that he could think about philosophy ignoring all the thought that came before him. He was important figure philosophically during the French Revolution. He tutored a couple of royal queen’s in passions and how to control their passions.

Question 9

Tell me about David Hume

Answer 9

Skeptic. Believed that emotion or as he called it passions ruled life more than reason. Thought that beliefs came from feelings first and reasoning was used later to back them up. Was religiously skeptical but argued for high tolerance in different religious beliefs.

Question 10

How are mature companies valued? How about growth companies?

Answer 10

Mature: P/E (price-to-earnings) ratio
Growth: P/S (price-to-sales) ratio

Question 11

What does Geoffrey Moore mean by “crisis of prioritization”?

Answer 11

A mature company needs to prioritize creating the next disruption but there is too much incentive to stay with the mature model: sales team can’t sell the new/untested thing, e-staff is incentivized toward increased earnings, inertia

Question 12

Tell me about Edmond Burke.

Answer 12

He introduced the idea of the sublime. The idea that things from nature or art or eternity are bigger than us. That makes us feel small but that also makes us put our lives in better perspective.

Question 13

Tell me about Hegel

Answer 13

German. Bad and confusing writer. Believed that history was not just a more primitive version of the present. Rather each part of history had important truths and it was important for historians to retrieve them. Also great ideas are hidden mixed in with bad ones. Ex: nationalism is often bad, but it demonstrates the need for people to have pride in something bigger than them. Also art is for conveying ideas in a way that also conveys feelings.

Question 14

Tell me about Arthur Schopenhauer

Answer 14

First to talk about Buddhism within Western philosophy. Believes that we are controlled by a “will to life” that most importantly causes us to pick a mate so as to produce a “balanced offspring”. Life is not about happiness but about being driven wherever will to life takes us.

Question 15

What are the 4 zones of Geoffrey Moore’s Zone to Win

Answer 15

• Incubation (disruptive innovation, revenue performance)
• Transformation (disruptive innovation, enabling investment )
• Performance (sustaining innovation, revenue performance)
• Productivity (sustaining innovation, enabling investment )

Question 16

Tell me about Søren Kierkegaard

Answer 16

First existentialist.
Disdained of what was considered a “good” life in his time (prestige, wealth, women).
Your choices are meaningless.
But he was a Christian and made the idea of required leap of faith.

Question 17

Tell me about Friedrich Nietzsche

Answer 17

Existentialist. “God is dead and we killed Him.” “What doesn’t Kill me can only make stronger.” Ideas: 1. Embrace envy 2. Don’t be a Christian 3. Don’t drink. Become the person you really are.

Question 18

Tell me about Jacques Derrida

Answer 18

Deconstructing - removing yourself away from your biases and preferences and being able to see the positive parts of even bad ideas
Aporia - the correct condition of being puzzled about the nature of truth, we shouldn’t always look for the “answer” because plenty of thing don’t have answers
Logocentrism - belief that you can use logic to find any answer; he thought this was bad

Question 19

How do you fit clone the foo repo from Eventbrite?

Answer 19

git clone git@github.com:eventbrite/foo.git

Question 20

Cantor slash

Answer 20

Technique used to prove that there are more Reals than Natural numbers. Assume that there is a mapping from naturals to reals and then show that that list can’t contain a number where the ith digits all differ from the ith diagonal digit of the mapping

Question 21

What is the “fundamental theorem of algebra”

Answer 21

Any polynomial has a complex root