alt Hacker NewsThis is one of my favorite philosophical questions to ponder. I always ask it in interviews as a warmup to get their thoughts. I’ve noticed that interviewees often curl up, thinking it’s a technical question, so I’ve been modifying the question one after the other to make it less scary. The interviews are for data scientist roles.
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hilliardfarmer • today at 3:48 AM
A lot of times I can't tell if I'm the idiot or if everyone else is. Says that this isn't an interesting question at all and the article was horrible. I studied data science for a few years but I'm no expert, but it seems pretty obvious to me that if you make a series of 50/50 choices randomly, that's the shape you end up with and there's really nothing more interesting about it than that.
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I haven't read the article, but my understanding is that a normal curve results from summing several samples from most common probability distributions, and also a normal curve results from summing many normal curves.
All summation roads lead to normal curves. (There might be an exception for weird probability distributions that do not have a mean; I was surprised when I learned these exist.)
Life is full of sums. Height? That's a sum of genetics and nutrition, and both of those can be broken down into other sums. How long the treads last on a tire? That's a sum of all the times the tire has been driven, and all of those times driving are just sums of every turn and acceleration.
I'm not a data scientist. I'm just a programmer that works with piles of poorly designed business logic.
How did I do in my interview? (I am looking for a job.)