A useful skill. I didn’t realize that anyone had written a book about it. It’s available as a free PDF file too, there’s a download link in the “related links” section. I’ve picked it up, and I plan to read it when I have a chance. (Via BoingBoing)
Archive of posts filed under the Mathematics category.
“Google, boffins crack Rubik’s Cube mystery”
The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything may be 42, but it seems that the ultimate answer to how many moves (at most) it would take for an omniscient being to solve the Rubik’s Cube is much lower. (No omniscient beings were harmed in the calculation of that answer.)
“Enhancing the Placebo”
I find the placebo effect to be utterly fascinating. It’s almost certainly responsible for the successes of shamans, faith-based healers, and homeopathy. And, on the other side of the coin, the documented successful witch doctors’ curses. But it’s literally all in your head. Which means that everyone who has ever been affected by any of [...]
“Petition to make “Hella” the prefix for 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000″
Sounds like a good idea to me. Finally, when someone says “that’s a hella-big number,” I’ll know exactly what they’re talking about. I don’t know whether it will go through or not, but it’s likely to get adopted colloquially regardless. It’s already pretty much there.
A Rant About Computer Books
I really, really wish that computer book authors would pay more attention to their work. I know that I’ve mentioned the Montgomery reduction algorithm here before, and the sad state of nearly all of the few things that describe it. I finally got it to work properly a while back, thanks in part to the [...]
Busy, Busy, Busy…
There was no entry yesterday because I was deep in a programming project. Very deep… I was up and at it at 8am, and other than a few very short breaks, kept going until 3am this morning. And that’s on top of about six hours on it the day before. Around 1995, I started writing [...]