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zen + google = zengle
I really dig simple pages. Simple and to-the-point. That's the motivation behind what I'm calling "zengle", a simple front-page for google. Just type your query and hit enter - no need for any buttons...
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a better way to buy and sell airline tickets?
If you've ever used farecast.com, then you've probably experienced a little wonder at how major airlines choose to price their tickets. Sometimes, as you walk down a jetway built in the 60's to board a...
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The gnomes in a circle brainteaser
A friend of mine (Neil S) recently told me about the following puzzle:A group of n gnomes have been captured by an evil wizard. The wizard, in his twisted ways, has granted the gnomes a tricky...
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gnomes puzzle : hint + answer
I just wrote up a quick hint and a solution to the gnomes-in-a-circle puzzle (see the last post for the puzzle).
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how to pour soda on ice
Have you ever noticed that you can pour soda directly into a cup of ice at most restaurants, but when you try it at home, your cup fizzes out the wazoo and all your carbonation is gone, like so many...
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math puzzle: average of the set of sums
My friend Chris Altomare once asked me a math question which inspired this one:Given a set S of real numbers, define the setsums(S) := {t: t = ∑ T for some T ⊂ S}and the set functionavg(S) := ∑ S /...
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puzzle answer: avg(sums(a set))
This is the answer to the last math puzzle. You should check out the puzzle before you read the answer!It turns out thatavg(sums(S)) = ½ ∑S.Why?The main observation is that, for any T⊂ S, avg({∑ T,...
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Music and emotion
I've always been curious about why certain musical entities "feel" a certain way to most people -- for example, why does a major chord feed nicer than a minor, or just a bunch of other random notes?For...
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proofs as explanations
Most proofs that I've seen feel like defensive, motley soups of disparate thoughts whose composition does indeed imply the theorem in question; but the reader is left without a strong intuition as to...
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a measure of civilization
civilization = opportunity available to every individualIt might be good to have a way to measure civilization, since it's certainly something we want to improve throughout the world, and (a fact which...
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wiki time
Have you ever wanted to put something very silly, esoteric, zany, or just very poorly edited on wikipedia, but never bothered because you knew it would be removed immediately anyway? I know the...
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Company ToDo: Something New
Let’s imagine: tomorrow your employer dissolves. All corporate assets are split evenly among all employees, and everyone is told to work for themself, or in a group of former co-workers. Would the...
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Turning a convex partition into a Voronoi diagram
[New wiki page on Voronoi diagrams]A Voronoi diagram (named after Russian mathematician Georgy Voronoi, 1868-1908) is a partition of space based on a set of points. This is the main idea: we are given...
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should considered harmful
When I was young, I learned a few words to never say. The entire concept of "bad words" always seemed funny and weird. It really doesn't make much sense to disallow the utterance of a few key phonetic...
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mistaking your wife for a hat
In 1985, neurologist Oliver Sacks published the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - a collection of 24 essays exploring fascinating case studies in neuropsychology. The title essay describes...
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exposé: poorly Lego'd Eggos
It's always interesting when a new mix of two different worlds pops up. Remember when Drew Barrymore married Tom Green? Sometimes these things work out - like the glory of rock stardom and video games....
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fairness is contageous
Here is a trick to simulate a coin toss between two people if both of you are caught coinless: each person secretly chooses a number, either 0 or 1, and both announce their choice simultaneously. If...
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driving is kind of crazy
It can be fun to ask yourself questions that help re-think our world. An example:Suppose an advanced alien civilization discovered our human life on earth, and studied it carefully. There would...
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the scaled interest principle
Here's an idea that I've seen in action throughout my life, although I've never seen it explicitly put into words:Events of interest tend to happen more quickly at smaller scales, and slower on large...
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mathskool.com
I just launched the alpha version of mathskool.com.This is a website I've been working on for the past month, meant to help connect great math teachers with motivated middle and high school students....
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