Topics

1

Science and Information / What would the be current (2015) salaries for software engineers working at the

« on: November 28, 2015, 01:07:42 PM »

This was when I filtered for Google salaries in the UK.

    These figures put the basic salary for IT and software development much higher than Glassdoor does - £66,000 vs. £55,390.
    Total salary including bonus would be more than £85,000 according to Emolument. Does anyone know if the Glassdoor figures take bonuses into account?
    IT & Software Development is listed as an activity, so might include roles like Senior developer as well. Possibly we need to filter the data further by title or years of experience.

2

Science and Information / Robotics: What qualities does Google look for in Robotics engineers?

« on: November 28, 2015, 01:05:34 PM »

Artificial intelligence/robotics engineering with respect to intelligent fully autonomous robots and working towards creating artificial life and intelligence in machinery. As such modern day robotics is deeply rooted in artificial general intelligence and the aim is to create fully autonomous and possibly self replicating intelligent robots that operate independent of an operator. As a robotics engineer I often ask what does Google require and test when hiring an autonomous robotics engineer and aside from the normal neural algorithms, C++, fuzzy inference, OpenGL, OpenCV, evolutionary programming and AGI, what are those qualities that distinguish a Google quality engineer with regards to Robotics?

3

Science and Information / How many robots are there in the world?

« on: November 28, 2015, 01:05:03 PM »

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS
--------------------------
In terms of units, it is estimated that the worldwide stock of operational industrial robots will increasefrom about 1,020,700 units at the end of 2009 to 1,119,800 at the end of 2013, representing an average annual growth rate of less than 1% between 2011 and 2013. In 2010, the stock will increase by 7%. In the traditional markets: North America, Japan, and Western Europe, the stock is stagnating or decreasing while it is surging in the emerging markets

4

Science and Information / coolest robots in the world?

« on: November 28, 2015, 01:04:26 PM »

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-coolest-robots-in-the-world

5

Science and Information / Bioinformatics: What are the softwares and tools used for molecular docking?

« on: November 28, 2015, 01:01:34 PM »

Well, the question is more generous.
Choice of molecular docking softwares/algorithms are dependent on what is your type of target, what is the real biological problem (inhibition/activation/conformation change/stability) and what the modeller want to design (does he/she wants to consider water molecules, metal ions, covalent interactions etc.,).
To conclude, please elaborate your question with an example of actual problem you want to analyze and then experts worldwide can suggest you which is the best tool/algorithm.
Meanwhile, you can try or test with tools mentioned by Keith Callenberg and Soumendranath Bhakat. Even for more you can visit XTutorials

6

Science and Information / How are Markov chains used in bioinformatics?

« on: November 28, 2015, 01:00:45 PM »

HMM were introduced for Multiple sequence alignment in MSA tools. And further their application in gene-prediction tools was implemented. Various tools like Glimmer, genemark, genscan etc work on Interpolated or generalized HMMs. Nucleotide Annotation tools use HMM of 5th order generally and protein annotations are based on 2nd and 3rd order HMMs.

7

Science and Information / Bioinformatics: How much will bioinformaticians earn in 2025?

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:59:21 PM »

Not sure why 2025 is important but I went to one search. all jobs. Indeed.com. I searched nationwide for Bioinformatics. There were two primary job titles- Scientist and Analyst. Using Indeed's salary tool I found that analysts average $46,000 while Scientists were between $85,000 and $95,000. I searched specifically for bioinformatrician and they were the same salary as the scientists.  One would expect that an entry level would get paid less and an experienced scientist would get paid more in 2025. BUT, it is evident that this would easily lead to a six-figure salary in the next ten years with 3% increases, promotions, and inflation. To tell the difference between an analyst or a scientist, I recommend search the job ads to make sure you are on track with experience for the higher dollar numbers.

8

Science and Information / bioinformatics

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:58:48 PM »

Bioinformatics is essentially the collection, storage, manipulation, analysis and modelling of biological data. It is inextricably intertwined with computational biology, which broadly speaking is the application of computer science or mathematical techniques and algorithms to biological problems. Often in the past the terms have been used interchangeably, but as the field of computational biology has grown 'bioinformatics' has tended to become reserved for its more specific meaning.

9

Science and Information / differences between a linked list and an array list in Java?

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:57:58 PM »

Adding element - Add in linked list is always O(1) where as in Array list it ranges from O(1) to O(n).
Retreving an element - For ArrayList it is O(1) where as for Linked List it is O(n).
Read more about difference between arraylist and Linked list here - http://netjs.blogspot.com/2015/0...

10

Science and Information / difference between the linked list and array data structures in Python?

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:57:11 PM »

Linked list doesn't give you ability to access Nth item in list easily. Array is similiar to python's list - ["some_text", 4, ...] but supports only one type. You can't mix them like in the above list. Profit of such solution is speed of accessing to Nth item.

Linked list isn't exactly the same as normal python's list.

11

Science and Information / What is the application of linked lists in data structures?

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:56:43 PM »

Linked lists can be used to implement stacks, queues, graphs, etc.

Linked lists let you insert elements at the beginning and end of the list in O(1) time. This makes for efficient implementations of stacks, queues.
Linked lists also remove the overhead of bothering about the size of the data structure. The size need not to be known in advance.

They can also be used for the adjacency list representation of graphs.
Hash tables with chaining is also possible.

12

Science and Information / What are the most important data structure and algorithms to prepare for Google

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:54:28 PM »

Stick to Basics. I would classify the following data structures as **must know**

    Linked List - Single and Doubly
    Stack
    Queues
    Binary Search Trees or general Binary Tree
    Heaps
    Basic Graph Traversal and Shortest Path
    Hashing


Following data structures may be asked. I would say that their probability of being asked is between 50 to 75% -

    Tries
    Advance Graphs like flow and min-cut etc.
    Bit Manipulation


You will probably crack interviews with sufficient knowledge of above.

Following have very low probability of being asked ( < 25%) :

    Segment Trees / Binary Indexed Trees
    AVL Trees
    B+ Trees


Other hard data structures are absolutely unnecessary.

Following Algorithms / Tricks / Topics may also be important :

    Memory Management
    Basic Co-ordinate geometry - Manhattan Distance, Closest Point Pair
    Divide and Conquer
    Greedy
    Dynamic Programming - Extremely important
    Probability and basic Number Theory
    Sorting and Searching


Following topics is important for Knowledge / Experience based questions :

    OS - Threads, Processes and Locks using Mutex, Semaphores (Operating systems Archives - GeeksforGeeks)
    Scalability Issues, RPCs, Rate limiter, etc.
    OOP Concepts
    Databases - SQL, NoSQL, Writing simple Queries, Transactions, ACID
    Linux Commands - sed, grep, ps, etc.

13

Science and Information / How can one be well prepared to answer data structure/algorithm questions in int

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:53:22 PM »

Here was the list I used:

    LinkedList
    Stack
    Queue
    Priority Queue
    Graph
    Heap


    Depth-First Search
    Breadth-First Search
    Dijkstra's algorithm
    Floyd-Warshall
    Traveling Salesman


    Bubble Sort
    Quick Sort in-place
    Insertion Sort
    Heap Sort
    Bucket Sort
    Radix Sort


    Binary Search
    Binary Search Tree
    AVL Tree
    Red-Black Tree

14

Science and Information / What is a list of data structures that a competitive programmer must know?

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:51:05 PM »

Answer is different for different skill levels. I will try to categorize,

Beginner: Linked List, Stack, Queue, Binary Search Tree.
 
Intermediate: Heap, Priority Queue, Huffman Tree, Union Find, Tries, Hash Table, Tree Map.

Proficient: Segment Tree, Binary Indexed Tree, Suffix Array, Sparse Table, Lowest Common Ancestor, Range Tree.

Expert: Suffix Automaton, Suffix Tree, Heavy-Light Decomposition, Treap, Aho-Corasick, K-d tree, Link-Cut Tree, Splay Tree, Palindromic Tree, Rope,  Dancing Links, Radix Tree, Dynamic Suffix Array.

I have seen all of the listed data structures being used in various programming contests.

Many of them are given in language libraries. But it is very important to understand their dynamics. Otherwise understanding related higher level structures will be difficult (if possible

15

Science and Information / Where can I find practice problems (algorithms and data structures) in the TopCo

« on: November 28, 2015, 12:49:38 PM »

The entire Topcoder match archive can be found here - TopCoder Statistics.
To submit problems, you need to log in to the TopCoder Arena.