What is the best skill you possess that makes you stand above the average person?
Statistical modeling.
And yes, I am miffed about the use of the word “exponential” in this post’s title.
Math (I'm a graduate student). And "exponentially more experienced than the average" means nothing as exponential is a progression, not a comparison between two values.
What this person is trying to say is they are exponentially better at being technically correct.
My pet peeve with mathy stuff, "something is X times closer/smaller etc than something else"
If A is 1 away, saying B is ten times closer means what exactly? Is B 10 away? 9, 0.1?
I think what most examples are trying to say is that A is ten times the distance to B, but the way it is said if just annoying."Ten times closer" is pretty unambiguously 0.1. What starts getting more confusing is "300% further" which is technically 4 but many understand as 3 (try replacing by 50%, 50% further is 1.5 not 0.5). Also "50% closer" being the same as twice closer while 50% further is only 1.5x further can get confusing too, and it gets even worse with "50% slower" - is speed now 1/1.5 (= it takes 50% more time) or 0.5/1 (= speed is reduced by 50%) ?
Most of the time it is pretty easy to know what the winter is trying to imply.
It gets really silly when using big numbers. e.g. a nanometre is 100,000 times smaller than a human hair.
By feel I can identify 20 lb, 24 lb, 28 lb, 65 lb cover, 110 lb cover, and 12 pt matte paper. I'm increasingly impressed by people's business cards as a result, as it is often much, much heavier than 12 pt matte.
Using comparison I can distinguish 80 lb semi-gloss cover, 100 lb semi-gloss cover, 8 pt gloss, 10 pt gloss, and 12 pt gloss. (But then again, most people could, given multiple choices rather than a free-response question.)
I too consider myself better at this than the average person. I often find myself slow blinking at random cats in the street.
I wish I had this skill! I love cats and dogs and wish I could talk to them and pet them every time I see them.
Pole dancing! I’ve taught professionally for like 15 years.
Btw this instance is about to be exposed to amazing pole fitness content, prepare yourselves.
Since the Reddit blackout I decided to learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube. My best time for solving one so far is 82 seconds. I know it's no world record but the average person can't solve a Rubik's cube so I'm way more experienced.
Way to go! I used to hustle the lunch room with my Rubik's cube and get people's desserts by solving it in less than a minute. I only knew the inefficient layer-by-layer method, so it really was a race.
It was my eldest that got me going actually. He came home from school with the old shit cube he had, did 3 turns on it and said "There, I solved it Dad."
I said "Did you fuck. Who sorted that for you?" and he told me a kid at school was just asking everyone if they had a cube and to bring it in to school, so he did and the kid solved it for him.
I thought "If a 12 year old can do it, so can I" and used it to help with my Reddit withdrawals.
I've finally got a magnetic cube now and just have it in my pocket. I'm trying to improve my F2L speed where you put the corners in and the 2nd layer at the same time. I really like doing the last layer with algorithms, it's like magic.
When you look up how to solve them, it's a white cross (so the white would be the first layer), making sure your middle tile of the cross pieces match the middle of the sides (red green blue orange), then you put the corners of the bottom (white) layer in, matching the colours. The middles don't move so you then put in the corners of the middle layer, completing 2 layers.
The top layer is the yellow one, opposite the white layer.
See the icebergs?
Yeah magnetic cubes!
They have little magnets in the corner pieces so when you push, it stops in the right place.
There's also maglev cubes that have magnetic cores. I just have corner magnets ATM because EVRI ARE A DOGSHIT DELIVERY COMPANY but that's another story for another time
I picked up cubing half a year ago as a middle aged dad. I set myself a goal of being able to solve it in under 30 seconds. I’m averaging around 40s now so I’m slowly getting there. It’s a fun little hobby and I always carry my cube around with me and practice as often as I can. I just finished learning all 21 PLL algorithms and I’m quite proud of myself 😄
I'm 39 and right there with you, although I can't seem to get under 80 seconds for a solve yet. I've been cubing for a couple of months and have got the 2 look pll and oll down nearly now, just a couple of algorithms I'm struggling to remember. Love doing the last layer though, it's like magic.
I'm at a point now where I'm solving faster than I was (it was around the 3 minute mark a couple of weeks ago but I've just got a RS3M) and it is starting to feel "easy" now.
I also have one in my pocket most of the time, it's another hobby my wife hates lol "Do you HAVE to bring that thing with you?" YES I DO
I’ve just got the Tornado V3 Pioneer, and I’m loving it. Just using that cube cut off some time in itself. Have you started doing F2L and cross directly in bottom yet? I averaged 55ish with 2-look OLL and PLL with F2L and cross in bottom. It takes a long time to get really fast with F2L so that’s a ongoing thing I’m trying to optimize.
I've been eyeballing the Tornado V3 Flagship myself. I do the cross on the bottom, but advanced f2l means adding the f2l while doing the cross and I'm not that good yet. I feel like this week I've just started getting a real feel for pairing up the blocks, and that's lead to quicker solves. It'll be a few more weeks of practicing to get it intuitive but I'm definitely on the right path.
I want to join in here too with the exceptionally good driving. I, like everyone else here, am totally a very much better driver than the average person on the road. Exponentially much better, even!
All you have to do in order to be a better than average driver is to be alert to what's going in around you. I do that, and I drive fast. I'm an exponentially better driver than most.
That's cool, I love telling stories too. Some people here do it professionally, and they use their audience to give the tales a nice theatrical vibe.
It doesn't mean inferring something about a population from a sample?
I am, without trying to sound arrogant, much better at cornering, roundabouts, and general driving than a large part of the population in Australia.
I can enter a roundabout, in a preselected gear, at appropriate revs and speed. Load up the suspension just right, so I'm released into my chosen exit, kissing the apex with a release of energy that feels so sweet, smooth and safe, that it's a beautiful part of my life.
All within safe thresholds, and always when I know it's safe. And the way others use roundabouts, it's always safer than the general population.
As a fellow Australian I think this is partly down to the equipment as well.
I can take a roundabout much faster and more confidently in my sports car with a low centre of gravity and performance tyres compared to an SUV with cheapo tyres like a large proportion of the population drives.
I'm guessing you also drive a car which is more performant than most on the road.
No matter what you drive, it's still not hard to be better than all the people who stall traffic because they don't realize they can squeeze through a gap about 4 feet wider than their car so we can actually pre fill the turn lane while the light's red.
Nor is it hard to actually know to accelerate smoothly through a turn instead of braking through it.
Or to know how to just stay in your clearly marked turn lane during your turn (literally marked through the entire intersection) instead of cutting off the other two turn lanes (this happened to me yesterday).
None of these things are actually much harder to do in a large car than a sports car, just obviously your actual speed and acceleration should change based on your car, tires, and everything else. I use the same principles I use when driving a fun car to help drive safely when it's a minivan.
This feels like a cheat answer, but as someone who has played for 25 years and organized events for 15, I’m likely much more knowledgeable about the rules of Magic: the Gathering than the “average person”. Not sure that I am necessarily exponentially better than the average player, but maybe I am now that so many people play digitally and don’t need to know the rules as much.
Exponentially denotes a progression, a rate of change. You probably mean greatly or vastly
For me it would be authoring images-illustration, rendering, etc. I guess most people can answer with their job
. I guess most people can answer with their job
Yeah I was going to make a pithy joke about my job, but note that having any skill in a field that's at all niche puts you well above the average.
I have a lot of experience reconstructing whale skeletons for museums and such. I do it as a hobby with a friend of mine who is the marine mammals recovery coordinator for the state of North Carolina.
I am "exponentially" better at nothing in comparison to others. There's always this one kid, who will do whatever I do, far better than I can ever do.
Sounds you're like the main character in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once . If you haven't watched it I recommend
Yeah, I've seen the movie. The best cluster fuck experience I could ask for. I still do not know what the donut was all about. 😅
