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Author Archives: Stuart Shieber
Recursion
To recurse is to curse again, not an activity that an academic, or an algorithm for that matter, should engage in. When a process is repeated or is subject to recursion, it is said to recur.
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Epicene pronouns
The use of the pronoun “he” as a bound pronoun of neutral gender is problematic on two grounds. First, its use is blatantly sexist (although the sexism is of a historical nature, so that those who continue to use “he” … Continue reading
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Covering overhead slides
Pat Winston in his lecture on How to Speak notes that covering up parts of overhead transparencies and revealing them slowly like a strip-tease artist is a technique that drives 10 per cent of your audience nuts. I am in that 10 … Continue reading
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Citations are parentheticals
A citation is not a first-class participant in a sentence; it cannot serve as a noun phrase. Rather it is a parenthetical — that is why it appears in parentheses — and like all parentheticals should be removable without changing … Continue reading
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