i'm confused, if you don't need an expert, and you know all this stuff, why don't you just do whatever it is you are hiring someone to do?

I am lonely, and I asked the boss for an assistant as a ruse to conduct a telephone quiz show for extra human connection and personal entertainment.

Finished my associates in comp sci this weekend. Got an A in every comp sci class I took, feels good man.

Working on an app now to publish before sending out resumes!

On learning about processor architectures I would expect the knowledge acquired to be pretty much the same whether one learns about MIPS or ARM. If you learn about one of them learning about the other is actually a small step. However, potential employers don't always take that view so that was the motivation for my comment.

Not sure if you're joking but are you really saying there's no actual job that requires any of these skills and you're messing with these people for no reason?

"Introduction to computer architecture" class isn't going to help potential employers who need expertise in ARM no matter what they teach - you spend like two weeks programming completely trivial stuff in assembly - and the number of such jobs is minuscule compared to the number of students who take that course. It doesn't matter what they teach but MIPS is used almost everywhere because the MIPS founder/inventor/researcher (John L. Hennessy, now President of Stanford University) wrote the most popular computer architecture textbooks.

Anyone got any ideas for this?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...33292_23813272

I know it's solvable, but I just can't wrap my head round it at the moment! Love solving problems like this but this one is fiddly.

How difficult is your typical computer architecture course? i was thinking of taking it alongside calculus and c++ next semester because the c++ class is just introductory and will likely be boring.

Tom,

I just want to make sure I understand.

In USD, GBP, and Yen, is there anything more to it than taking the actual price (based on conversion) and then measuring the distance to the neighboring 99 and 49 points, and finding the smallest distance one?

With bitcoin, it seems you have additional step deciding what decimal of accuracy represents a single "cent," since the actual accuracy is so high?

Am I missing anything?

Thanks for looking! Yes that's the basic problem, but for currencies that can't be subdivided, or can be subdivided to n digits.

The number of significant digits to use should be based on the value of x (where x can be for example £0.10).

got it. looks like you already have a couple good answers tho.

Why not use a fixed number of significant digits (4 would work in your example) instead of the conversion from 0.10 GBP? That would be simpler conceptually and more robust to GBP fluctuations.

You can find the position of the first significant digit using log base 10 as in this question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...ures-in-python

Once you have the place values it's just a matter of checking which of the 3 possible roundings is closest.

Edit: Just re-read your last response. I think you still need to keep track of the max possible precision for each currency so that $1.499 becomes $1.49 for example.

R/ggplot question (tried searching online):

I'm using facet_wrap to create two graphs side by side. I'm then using geom_path to draw a square in each graph, but I want a different square in each one. Right now I can only get the same square in each graph, or both squares in both graphs. So basically need to do something to one section of the facet_wrap but not the other.

I didn't imply anyone was going to be an expert after taking a first course. Just if someone was hiring a new grad actually. Didn't even it would matter very much.

It depends actually. What does the course syllabus state?

No syllabus available til later this summer. I hear data structures is hard so i don't want to **** with it quite yet.

This. Our textbook was coauthored by David Patterson and John Hennessy and as far as I know MIPS is used by the vast majority of CS schools when teaching this stuff.

Data structures is not difficult if you think logically.



Here is the the syllabus for the Computer Architecture course I am taking right now:

Computer Architecture

Course Description:
Models of computing systems are studied. These include the multicore, multiprocessor and vector processor models. Pipelining and memory organization are examined to improve the performance of computing system. Power model shows how cloud computing affects the power usage of mobile device.

Prerequisites: Computer Systems
Credits: 3 S.H.
Textbook: Computer Organization and Design, 5th Edition, by David A. Patterson; John L. Hennessy, ISBN-10 0-12-407726-9
Instructor: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Website: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Classroom: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Office Hours: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Phone: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
E-mail: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Modern computer technology requires professionals of every computing specialty to understand both hardware and software. The interaction between hardware and software at a variety of levels also offers a framework for understanding the fundamentals of computing with the central ideas in computer organization and design. This course is to show the relationship between hardware and software and to focus on the concepts that are the basis for current computers.

Course Objectives and Expectations:
Upon entering Computer Architecture, students should have
 Studied an assembly language, and
 One year experiences in high-level programming language.
Upon completing Computer Architecture, student should
 understand concepts of computer organization and design in their abstractions;
 be able to discuss design issues related to performance of computer;
 understand both pipelined, multi-core and multi-processor architectures;
 be able to optimize programs for those architectures.

Course Outline:
1. Introduction to Computer Architectures
a. Eight Great Ideas in Computer Architecture
b. Moor’s Law
c. Measuring Performance
d. Cycles Per Instruction
e. Power Usage of Processors
2. Instruction Set Architecture
a. Computer System in its Abstraction
b. R-type, I-type and J-type instructions
c. Subword Parallelism
3. The Processor
a. Building a Datapath
b. Improving Performace with Pipelining
c. Data Hazards
d. Control Hazards
e. Instruction-level Parallelism
4. Memory Hierarchy
a. Cache, Main Memory, Flash Memory and Magnetic Disk
b. Reducing Cache Misses
c. Optimization via Blocking
d. Cache Coherence
e. Optimizing Subword Program via Blocking
5. Parallel Processor Architectures
a. Multithreading
b. Multicore
c. Graphics Processing Unit
d. MapReduce

Course Grading:
4 Homeworks (20%)
5 Pop Quizzes (45%)
Final Exam (35%)

Suggestions by Instructor:
Please note that programming projects which are not done with a “good faith” effort, especially those which have compiler errors, will receive minimal (if any) points. I encourage you to talk to me or our tutor if you have difficulty understanding the material or getting “stuck”, or if you are unsure of what is expected of you for the assignment. Programming projects, which are based on those in the text, will have their due dates announced in class or on the assignments. Projects may be done in pairs only when clearly designated on the assignment.


I don't think the class would be nearly as hard if taken during a normal semester. The fact that it is condensed into 4 weeks in the summer with 5 hour long classes is what makes it difficult.

But "ARM" isn't like Java or Ruby or WordPress or HTML - no one looks for that in a resume unless they need an expert. There's no market for CRUD web apps written in assembly.

It's easier than courses like Compilers, Operating Systems, Algorithms or Theory of Computation, probably on par with Computer Networking, Data Structures and other courses like Database/AI/Security/etc and harder than Discrete Math, Intro to CS, any course with a language name in it.

Edit: obviously it depends on the exact curriculum, professor and your background, etc. But where I went to school, it was about the median course in terms of difficulty, for the average CS student.

+1

jmakin, I doubt you'd have any problems taking it with the other stuff given how you've done so far.

Computer Architecture / Digital Hardware were some of my favorite courses.

Theory of Computation was a very interesting course, I just took it spring semester. Taking Theory of Algorithms in the fall, I've heard it is the hardest CS course offered.

Wait until you get the old "Dude I thought you weren't screening."..oh JOIN..er nevermind

asm.js though

Hey thanks everyone for the input I really appreciate it, that syllabus was helpful as well. I think I could handle that, but I've never studied assembly language. You guys helped me a lot picking out my classes this last semester so thanks.

Here's all I have left before I move on to UCI:

Calc 1 and 2
Linear Algebra
Intro to Discrete Mathematics
Theories of Computation
Computer Architecture
Data Structures
Software Engineering
Intro to C++ and advanced C++
Python is recommended so I'll throw that in somewhere.

That and 2 art courses are all I have left. Possibly French. Kind of discouraging to type that all out, looks difficult. My advanced java class won't transfer to UCI but I'm really glad I took it.

I just thought that was a bizarre question, so I responded in kind.

I've gotten this one a few times. Oddly, they are perfectly okay with the seemingly impromptu screening, even the ones who blow each question. At some point, you are like.... uh, do you know what select means?

I finally had one person who knew what a transaction is. Oddly, they knew commit and rollback but didn't know begin. The fascinating part is that this person never had a job in their life and only took an intro class a built a few products on their own time.

I know this part is the total AIDs, but I find it fascinating none-the-less. I've called about 15 people. Only 4 of them were women. Interesting to note that some of the women had androgynous names so I really had no idea who I was calling beforehand.

Of the 10 or so guys I talked to, only one had no relevant working experience. Most had years of experience and considered themselves very good at databases. All but one failed my little quiz.

Of the 4 girls I spoke with, all of them talked intelligently about data, yet they either had no experience or very little experience, often describing their comfort level as "okay." Of the 4 that I talked to, all of them pretty much nailed the questions and thus were invited in for interviews, aside from one because I couldn't, in good conscience, ask someone to drive so far.

I'm not sure how it is going to look when I have a bunch of women coming in for an interview. To prevent the accusation, I asked everyone the same general series of questions, getting comments from my coworkers about asking questions that are "too hard." lol.