Empty sets, really?

There is just absolutely no point in empty sets.

Sorry.

Some things I like about >>>this

Beginner's Python stuff it may be, still there are some very important concepts wrapped in this ...

>>> import this
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

(... and some things I'd be too happy to debate or discuss, such as "hard to explain" is very subjective - a picture sometimes speaks a thousand words, and what if it's a sound, sculpture; prior education, a shared interest to come at help, you name it, rules are not really rules, but guidelines for the here, now and us, but let's not get lost in the details, rather get things right ... good thing.)

The irony ("life always finds a way")

Fixding. So typocal :) Though I guess it's just appreciable self-irony.

Anyway, you can't escape fate - "if they cut off one head, two more shall take it's place".

Out of memory again? Cut me some ...

The recent purchase of a new 5 yo laptop has made things fluent again work-wise.

But then, when getting to do some feasibly picked exploratory data processing, R started running out of memory, seemed unreasonable at first.

The bad boy seems to be the Slack client version installed via the Ubuntu Aptitude. There's an interesting-looking article (which I am yet to read in its full glory) about some likely difficulties faced when relying on web UI's on the desktop, saying:

Work is underway to fix the underlying factors affecting client memory consumption, but in the meantime we’ve built a tiny new Slack client to help address this issue.

... which is still giving me some daunting moments when installing the old client.

However, I am already on 6.2.3, the latest Ubuntu 64-bit beta version :S and the change log does mention some mem. footprint improvements. Hopefully those "tiny client" improvements weren't those and are to come soon ...

Me and nudging

Just read about nudging ... it does happen everywhere, the funny thing is I'd never have thought someone will reinvent a name for this relatively intuitive behaviour.

However, I'd certainly question if it's a nice thing to do. I guess it's a step on a ladder of questionnable ethics. Point being: handle with care - empowered teams are meant to be competent - maybe (god forgive) even smart!

<3 Dishonesty

As first of all: this is just that. You my big friend mate are in full control, but I do get you to do what I want you to do. Are you, my mate actually in full control then? Or is it just a plain illusion of freedom?

<3 Underestimation

I mean, imagining that smart people won't notice being nudged, is ... so then they are by chance thought of as "not smart" enough. And then how is being noticeably influenced not very similar to being controlled in their mind?)

But how would we have even thought living without - at least in our minds, degrading everyone around? We all want to feel exceptional ... or at least that over 90% percent of people who are thinking they are smarter than the average, or that they have a 100+ IQ. I have hopes I'm not amongst them, up to the reader to work out in which way.

<3 Works?

Hm ... hm ... maybe doesn't. Maybe it's just not better. Would you wholeheartedly do what someone, an Interpersonal Expert, who's less than capable to appreciate/assess you wants you to do? Hm... Nudge-nudge.

Conclusion!

Because every South Park episode should have one (except for the multi-episode stories). One exception: if being nudged is openly done? And then it's nothing, but sharing of intentions and techniques, and helping others to develop themselves. I also heard "good management does not tell you what to do, it only removes obstacles". I think that approach is also closer to my heart.

About the Outstanding Hungarian GDP Growth [Draft]

While government propaganda will be keen to emphasize the extraordinary growth rate in my home country, and label it as a huge success, taking a slightly deeper quick (and dirty) look behind the headline numbers shows how this may be all misinterpreted, and which country to attribute with true and extreme success.

Just as I found in a Hungarian article by portfolio.hu, Hungary has stepped up quite a bit in the ranking of EU countries based on GDP growth figures, accomplishing 1.3% for 2017 Q1, making it 5-6th, tied with the Czech Republic.

Browsing through the chart provided there, it becomes quite clear that those big income western countries, such as the UK, didn't perform too well. It is easy to cough up some intuition though! Perhaps the higher an absolute performance has risen from the mean abs. performance of others, the more difficult it becomes to maintain a relative increase, a steady relative development rate?

Similarly, it has crossed more than one mind already that any relative growth figure over 100% is actually even theoretically unsustainable on a finite-sized Earth. But instead of philosophising, for now, let's just examine what those poorly growing countries had already achieved before they got seemingly stuck with their progression, and put that in contrast with the recent relative GDP growth numbers (source).

This chart already reveals a definitive downward trend - the more you earn, the harder it becomes to stretch it farther, at least proportionately.

The second chart even underlines that the GDP change (estimated) is almost uniform.

The two key takeaways are

• the relative growth of the Hungarian economy is apparently nothing short of usual in its category
• the amazing Finnish performance diminishes all other top ranked countries

I'd say it's highly advisable to keep an eye on how this performance was rolled out by Finland.

Their progressive educational system is already famous - otherwise blame Salmiakki?

(Finland for president! The workbook for the charts can be found here.)

Python

Python declares a war on declarations with each variable left undeclared.

I spoke. Good night.