It's called a "fever" because of the madness of which people buy the tickets. I get math fever when I look at all the fun numbers being bounced around the news today as the lotto jumps from $460, to $500, and now stands at $640 million.
Ten Fun, Weird, and Sometimes Disturbing Factoids About the $640 Million Mega Millions Lottery
My brother has already bought his tickets and I'll be picking my numbers with my family this evening. :)
Friday, March 30, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Math and Prophecy
Okay, okay, not the Biblical kind, leave that up to God, but trying to make sense of our actions and their association with future actions. It's called Predictive Analytics and yes, it's math in our life. Or invading our life some would argue. Facebook and Google want to analyze all our online decisions and make predictions based on these actions. They stand to make a lot of money if they can do that.
This video is an interview of Charles Duhigg who wrote The Power of Habit and he talks briefly about stores using your information to produce ads just for you.
Facebook and Google want to analyze all our online decisions and make predictions based on these actions. They stand to make a lot of money if they can do that.
Now, we can turn off Google and Facebook but your information is still being collected. Take the grocery store for example. When you use a "discount card", it also collects information and spits out coupons based on past and present purchases. This information is collected even if you don't have a "discount card". If you use your credit card, stores will also keep track of purchases based on that number. I used a credit card at the store the other day and surprisingly, it spit out a coupon for the same toothbrushes I'd bought a couple of months ago.
Can you imagine a world where you walk down the street and, based on the rdif tags in your phone, the ads around you change? That would be wack to us today but not so much in the future. I know F 451 talks about ads in the future but I never see them on Star Trek for some reason.
This video is an interview of Charles Duhigg who wrote The Power of Habit and he talks briefly about stores using your information to produce ads just for you.
Facebook and Google want to analyze all our online decisions and make predictions based on these actions. They stand to make a lot of money if they can do that.
Now, we can turn off Google and Facebook but your information is still being collected. Take the grocery store for example. When you use a "discount card", it also collects information and spits out coupons based on past and present purchases. This information is collected even if you don't have a "discount card". If you use your credit card, stores will also keep track of purchases based on that number. I used a credit card at the store the other day and surprisingly, it spit out a coupon for the same toothbrushes I'd bought a couple of months ago.
Can you imagine a world where you walk down the street and, based on the rdif tags in your phone, the ads around you change? That would be wack to us today but not so much in the future. I know F 451 talks about ads in the future but I never see them on Star Trek for some reason.
Friday, February 3, 2012
It's Groundhog Day!
Ground Hog Day is just a bit of speculatory fun we Americans have each year. This year the most awesomely named Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more week of winter. If we consider all possibilities equal, then here are the possible results:
Sees shadow, predicts winter, winter happens
Sees shadow, predicts winter, spring happens
No shadow, predicts spring, winter happens
No shadow, predicts spring, spring happens
All things being equal, this groundhog only has a 25% chance of getting it right! The festival has been going on for over a hundred years now and that gives us a very large amount of data points to work with. My morning weatherman says Phil has been right only 39% of the time. You know what this means? It's not Phil that's wrong, it's us that reading his results wrong! If we flip the readings to no shadow=winter, then our results flip, giving Phil a wonderful success rate of 61%! We can pat him on the head and so warmly saying,"Good rodent, nice work."
When asked about the results Mr Johnson, vice President of Punxsutawney Phil's Inner Circle, says
"He's never been wrong." Phil is "incapable of error," he said, because the groundhog smartly avoids being site-specific in his prognostications.
If Phil predicts six more weeks of winter, said Johnston, "I guarantee you someone's going to have six more weeks of winter."
Yup, Punxsutawney Phil is 100% right, but we won't know it fully until we teach him to throw darts at a map.
Here's hoping calendar companies will start adding this wonderful holiday to the calendar again!
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Math can explain anything!
What is the temperature going to be tomorrow? Math problem.
When do you need an oil change? Math problem.
Why do serial killers kill? Math problem?
From Fox News:
Math formula may explain why serial killers kill
Researchers have discovered that the seemingly erratic behavior of the "Rostov Ripper," a prolific serial killer active in the 1980s, conformed to the same mathematical pattern obeyed by earthquakes, avalanches, stock market crashes and many other sporadic events. The finding suggests an explanation for why serial killers kill.
When do you need an oil change? Math problem.
Why do serial killers kill? Math problem?
From Fox News:
Math formula may explain why serial killers kill
Researchers have discovered that the seemingly erratic behavior of the "Rostov Ripper," a prolific serial killer active in the 1980s, conformed to the same mathematical pattern obeyed by earthquakes, avalanches, stock market crashes and many other sporadic events. The finding suggests an explanation for why serial killers kill.
Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury, electrical engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, modeled the behavior of Andrei Chikatilo, a gruesome murderer who took the lives of 53 people in Rostov, Russia between 1978 and 1990. Though Chikatilo sometimes went nearly three years without committing murder, on other occasions, he went just three days. The researchers found that the seemingly random spacing of his murders followed a mathematical distribution known as a power law.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Where exactly are we?
Math was in the news again this week, this time old math. Astronaut Jim Lovell auctioned off the notebook he made his Apollo 13 calculations to save the crippled space craft. I wonder if he used a solar calculator? (*audience groans*)
It's been pretty hard to track down exactly what these "calculations" were. An internet search of the terms "OG, IG, and MG" have proven pretty fruitless to me. They do seem to be coordinates though. On Earth we use the two-dimensional system of longitude and latitude but in space they would need three, an x, y, & z.
I did find a real treat of a website that would make any math junkie happy: Orbital Mechanics where Robert Braeuing uses real Apollo 11 data to calculate their exact position.
I noticed that the writing is all in pencil and thought it was because the space pen hadn't been invented yet. The Fisher Space Pen (great gift idea) was invented in the 1960s and they were present on the Apollo 13 flight. I guess Lovell just preferred to do his math with an eraser.
Could you do the math needed to make the calculations and save your shuttle?
It's been pretty hard to track down exactly what these "calculations" were. An internet search of the terms "OG, IG, and MG" have proven pretty fruitless to me. They do seem to be coordinates though. On Earth we use the two-dimensional system of longitude and latitude but in space they would need three, an x, y, & z.
I did find a real treat of a website that would make any math junkie happy: Orbital Mechanics where Robert Braeuing uses real Apollo 11 data to calculate their exact position.
I noticed that the writing is all in pencil and thought it was because the space pen hadn't been invented yet. The Fisher Space Pen (great gift idea) was invented in the 1960s and they were present on the Apollo 13 flight. I guess Lovell just preferred to do his math with an eraser.
Could you do the math needed to make the calculations and save your shuttle?
Friday, January 6, 2012
A Picture of a Percentage
Percentages used to be the norm for explaining how a whole was broken into parts. Well, they still are except you don't get the % sign as much. This chart doesn't have any percentages listed on it but it's still the same as a pie chart. You also don't have to have a legend box. I'm sure they have a special name but I don't know what it is.
From Washington Post, released by Blue Shield of California:
From Washington Post, released by Blue Shield of California:
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