[HN Gopher] Tiers of answers to half-baked questions
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Tiers of answers to half-baked questions
Author : epoch_100
Score : 27 points
Date : 2020-04-24 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.plover.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.plover.com)
| empath75 wrote:
| I think this is related to X-Y problems where someone wants to do
| x, thinks that y is the way to accomplish it, but can't do Y
| either, and so goes online to ask about Y.
|
| Everyone else knows that Y is a weird or unusual thing to be
| doing, but either helpfully tries to explain how to do it, which
| won't solve their real problem anyway, or tells them that Y is
| dumb and they're dumb for asking about it.
|
| A really helpful answer would try and think about what could
| motivate someone to ask about Y, and if unable to think of one,
| will ask why on earth they want to do Y and what are they are
| really trying to do.
|
| Similar to this situation is that they're asking a question
| _because they want to know something about the world_ and trying
| to meet them halfway or ask clarifying questions is much more
| helpful than literally answering their question as asked.
| prosaic-hacker wrote:
| I have ask this half baked question many time in many places and
| I have received the lower tier answers all the time.
|
| Driving on a multi-lane highways with no traffic (yes it can
| happen, eg upstate NY Adirondacks overnight ) you can straighten
| the road shifting lanes to always be on the inside of the curve.
| Calculate the shortest path.
|
| I once vaguely phrased this what shortest line that can be drawn
| between two parallel curved line a constant distance apart. I
| think this is mathematically half baked and could be restates.
| vlasev wrote:
| Perhaps a good starting point would be to look at a "chord"[1],
| which is a line segment between two points on a circle. Then
| you'd look at a chord that is tangent to the inner circle of a
| set of two concentric circles. You can find the length of the
| chord from the radii of the circles.
|
| But what you're asking about is more general. You are looking
| for some sort of shortest path between two parallel curves [2].
| Which seems like it would be a tricky problem to solve. Are you
| considering physics here? If you are, you are basically looking
| at a "racing line" [3]. And that's a complicated problem since
| it involves a lot of physics and engineering. You can't look at
| a single turn in a track and determine the best racing line.
| That's because the best racing line for a specific turn depends
| on the best racing lines of the nearby turns. You'd have to
| look at the track as a whole. There are entire theses written
| on this topic [4].
|
| But a highway road is not the same as a racing track. In
| highway engineering they often use the Euler Spiral [5] to
| construct the turns, because of its nice properties. Funny
| enough, Euler Spirals play a role in optimizing your entry into
| turns on a track [6]!
|
| I think those might be some good jump-off points for further
| inquiry.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_(geometry)
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_curve
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_line
|
| [4]:
| https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/64669/7068253...
|
| [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_spiral
|
| [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_spiral#Auto_racing
| Jun8 wrote:
| On the Physics SE a similar cluster of questions are asked about
| the finiteness of the speed of light e.g
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/230703/do-we-kno...,
| why the Principle of Least Action exists, and the "paradox" of
| size of the universe being larger than it's age x c
| mjd wrote:
| It's "tiers of answers", not "tired of answers".
| dang wrote:
| Fixed. Thanks!
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(page generated 2020-04-24 23:00 UTC)