Take a look at this video, of Google’s Self-Driving Car :
Author: Dr Mike
Truth, Beauty and Practical Math
In an earlier post, I discussed whether math was really real, or just made up. I came to the conclusion that there’s a difference between the math that is implicit in the laws of logic, and the math that people happen to study and learn. The difference is that the latter is much much smaller than the former.
Is Math Real or Invented?
When we learn that, say, 2+2=4, is that something really true about the universe, or is it something some caveman made up? Does a cube exist as something more than just a figment of our imagination?
Less Than Zero
Here’s how my four-year-old responded when I threw him a curly math question – it’s cute!
We were trying to teach him to count backwards…
Swimming and Math
I was doing a bit of random lunch-hour web-surfing, and came across a blog post by a swimming instructor. It starts with the eye-catching line “before you can teach something, you have to realize it’s hard”
The blogger writes about their insights into how (and how not) to teach swimming, and then wonders “how much this applies to other areas (teaching math in elementary school, for example?)” Having read the post, I’d say an awful lot does. Here’s my take on it.
A Toasted Bread Puzzle
I have four different things I can spread on my toast. If I want to taste them all, I need four slices of toast.
Should Students Pay for Education?
When I was a student in university, I felt quite strongly about this issue. I believed firmly that education should be free. After all, education is necessary for a nation to succeed. An educated populace, I believed, should be seen as a form of infrastructure – as necessary for a strong economy as good transport or telecommunications systems. Therefore, the government should pay for everyone to get educated for free, I thought.
Incentives – Grading On A Curve
Tim Harford is an economist who has a newspaper column called “The Undercover Economist”. He presents tongue-in-cheek answers to a wide variety of questions from readers. In his book, “Dear Undercover Economist,” some of his favorite responses have been collected together. Two that really tickled me were related to the practice of grading on a curve.
Newsletter #46 – Dinosaur Dodger!
[This is a back-issue of this website’s newsletter]
The Bongo-Kazongo Track I came across an interesting paradox the other day, called the Absent Minded Driver problem. I won’t go into details here – you can read about it at this blog post. In the paradox, you imagine a lost explorer on a track like the one pictured here. He has to take the second exit, but he can never recall which exit he’s on. Therefore, he makes his decision based on a probability he decides on beforehand. The paradox comes about because there are two ways to work out the best probability. Both sound perfectly logical, but they give different answers.
Dinosaur Dodger Tips and Strategy
I recently uploaded a game I call “Dinosaur Dodger“. It’s based on an interesting paradox I read about on this blog, by an economist who has authored a number of good books. The paradox is called the “Paradox of the Absent Minded Driver”. It goes like this : imagine a driver, driving home along a highway. They need to take the second exit to get off, but for some reason they can’t recall which exit they are at when they get to an exit.