programmingravenclaw

Latest Posts by programmingravenclaw

6 Things I Learned From Studying For Exams in College

If you skip a topic or don’t study it thoroughly enough because you think it won’t be on the exam, it will be. Study that in particular so you won’t be surprised when it shows up as the first question. Unless your professor explicitly states that it won’t be on the exam, don’t skip any topics.

Put aside the content you’re comfortable and familiar with and start studying the things you don’t know. It’s hard and time consuming but that’s where the actual learning happens.

Start studying at least 4 days in advance. I always regret not starting earlier when I’m at the library 24 hours before the exam and not even close to being done. When I’m having trouble focusing, I’ll sit there and imagine myself an hour before the exam scrambling to finish up a topic, wishing that I had these extra few minutes, hours, or days that I have now. Take advantage of the time you have right now.

Changing up my location helps a lot when I’m studying. If I study in the same corner at the library, eventually my brain will start associating that spot with everything I do in that chair, including wasting time. For me, new location + new material = focus. A few location ideas: a quiet corner in the library, a noisy floor in the library, at your desk at home, a room with a view of the outdoors from high up, a bench/table outside, a cafe or brunch place.

Stay on top of studying and homework from day 1, not after syllabus week and not a month into the semester. When you submit a homework assignment, make it a point to 100% understand everything you just handed in. Homework is assigned for a reason; they’re meant as practice exercises for the material you learned and exams often mimic them. Once you hand in homework, you should know and understand the material. This saves you time when it’s finals week and you have old and new material to study.

Well before the exam, make a list of topics you don’t understand and get your questions answered. There have been so many times where I didn’t fully understand something and thought, “It’s okay, they’re probably not going to ask that,” and it shows up on the exam. When you get your question answered, branch out and ask things like, “What if it weren’t this particular situation/these particular numbers but a different one instead. How would you work through it this time?” (physics/math) or “What caused that/what came after that as a result?” (history). Try to understand all possible scenarios if you can.

do u ever remember all the horrible offensve things u said when u were like 15 and u literally feel ur soul detach and turn 2 dust 

when my computer decides to deny me access because of “admin restrictions”

Cool resume cheat sheet

PEMDAS more like

Please

Excuse

My

Dumb-

Ass

Self

real talk tho you might feel like you aren’t doing enough or you’re behind or you haven’t set yourself up well enough and you aren’t in the right place but you can still work it out and there are beautiful, amazing things ahead of you. two years ago I had a 2.8, was on the verge of losing my scholarship, had no idea how to study, and wouldn’t have been able to handle a research position even if I knew how to get one. now I’m working in a lab, have tons of research experience, co-authored a publication, have an amazing advisor who is helping me with a honors thesis, and am set to do eight months of paid research abroad next semester. (and the 2.8 is now a 3.6). it’s not over, it can get better, you aren’t a failure, and wonderful things are waiting.

How To Easily Remember the Unit Circle

I work in a walk-in tutor lab at my university and one of the other tutors showed me this a couple years back and it has changed my life.

First, you make a table that looks like this.

Then, go ahead and add in some nice denominators of 2 in every entry in the table.

Then give yourself some nice square roots on the numerators.

Alright – now we’re going to fill it in. The only value you have to remember is that sin(0)=0. So we put 0 in the numerator for 0 in the sine column. Then we just count up as we move down.

Then we do the opposite in the cosine column.

Then we simplify!

And voila – a beautiful unit circle table. 

In whatever you choose to do, do it because it’s hard, not because it’s easy. Math and physics and astrophysics are hard. For every hard thing you accomplish, fewer other people are out there doing the same thing as you. That’s what doing something hard means. And in the limit of this, everyone beats a path to your door because you’re the only one around who understands the impossible concept or who solves the unsolvable problem.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (via mathblab)

me, trying to understand something at work: So basically what you're saying is that this code is held together by a piece of gum?

person explaining it: Haha! No. It's much worse than that

So if you lived in a society where you had to secure your communication in order to be yourself around others, here are the apps that could help you do that.

Why did the integer drown?

It couldn’t float.

😁 [Via The Simpsons]

How I call my friends: myFriends();

The O(1) solution to any problem is to stop trying

"Stop beating yourself up. You are a work in progress - which means you get there a little at a time, not all at once."

- Unknown

Things Programmers Shout #684

“WHERE IS THE BUG? WHERE IS THE BUG?? IT WAS HERE LAST NIGHT WHY ARE YOU WORKING PROPERLY NOW WHERE DID IT GO?” // submitted by @lemememeringue

Things Programmers Shout #698

“Okay, well that’s still an error but at least it’s a different error.” // submitted by @freedominfantasy

Allow yourself to be a beginner. No-one starts off being excellent.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

person: How many languages are you learning?

me: Uhh, human or programming?

all these studying tips saying ‘stay away from your computer’ and ‘use these apps to control the sites you can access’ and I just keep thinking

i’m a computer science major

I have to use programs to write code

I have to check websites

how exactly am I supposed to do that and still get work done

“Java got rid of multiple inheritance because it caused a lot of problems with performance” Well by that logic, java should just get rid of java.

How I call my friends: myFriends();

The only thing that’d be more potentially embarrassing than my internet history would be my calculator history, a chronicle of all the painfully simple math I couldn’t manage to do in my head.

“We are assuming here that the user is competent. In reality this is always false. Users are very dumb and will do weird things.”

Intro to Computer Programming Professor (via mathprofessorquotes)

The O(1) solution to any problem is to stop trying

People think coding / debugging means highly concentrated furious typing, but mostly it’s just angrily staring at the screen for long periods of time waiting for the problem to solve itself

The thing about programming is that it may be 3am, but you can’t help but think it won’t take all that long to add another quick feature…

Yep! And now it’s 5:40am and I’m still sitting here.

Coding is occasionally bad for your health.

(via fyeahcode)

Did you know that 2015 equals 11111011111 in binary, a palindrome?

Oh, and by the way, on May 15th, 2015 at 02:09:25 UTC, Unix time will be 1010101010101010101010101010101.