(This is just a copy of the test instructions, so that you can see them while you're taking the test)





[b]Summary[/b]

You’ll read part of this essay: [url=http://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-Visual-Information/]http://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-Visual-Information/[/url] on information theory, do some written exercises based on it, then have a conversation with us to discuss it further.



[b]Why this task?

[/b]The Ought COO will need to communicate with funders, potential hires and collaborators, and other people outside the organization about our research, at least at a high level. The COO will also need to weigh in on strategic decisions for the organization -- for example, which roles should we prioritize hiring for in order to facilitate progress on our research agenda? For these reasons, it’s important that the COO can learn and discuss technical information related to our research.



In the previous technical reading task using the Of Arguments and Wagers article (https://medium.com/@paulfchristiano/of-arguments-and-wagers-ee16a0e84cf7), we evaluated your ability to grapple with and make sense of slippery technical concepts, where the scheme described in the article was unclear and underspecified. This essay is much clearer and more didactic, so this task will evaluate your ability to learn specific technical information when that information is laid out relative clearly.



[b]The task

[/b]Read the essay: [url=http://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-Visual-Information/]http://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-Visual-Information/[/url] through the section “Cross-Entropy.” You do not need to understand the proof the author gives in the section that they say readers can skip. Then do the exercises below.



Between the reading and the exercises, please take no more than 3 hours total. [b]The time limit will definitely not be enough time to finish all the exercises, and some later ones are unduly difficult - no worries, that’s by design.[/b] We’ve arranged the problems roughly from easier -> harder, so just do as many as you can.



Also, please don’t consult anyone or any resources outside the article about the topics covered in the article -- though it’s fine to search on the Internet or whatnot for information about mathematical concepts that the article assumes and that you aren’t sufficiently familiar with, like logarithms. 



For each exercise, please show how you arrived at your answer. Feel free to write out your answers by hand and send us a photo of your work (at operations@ought.org), since it can be tough to get mathematical symbols to show up properly on a computer.



Here's another copy of the instructions, in case you want to keep them open in a separate tab: [url=https://gist.github.com/stuhlmueller/acd1ab34755824fb0df6a3942ce25354]https://gist.github.com/stuhlmueller/acd1ab34755824fb0df6a3942ce25354[/url]

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