Viewing profile — strangestchild

You're simulating a full game of poker. Once a player has been given card 'i', you have to ensure that card 'i' isn't drawn again during the game. You could maintain a set containi…

Homeopathic obesity – what an intriguing idea...

There are recruitment agencies which only take individuals with autism on their books, and try to find them roles which suit their particular skills profile. A quick Google should …

Horses for courses. Whilst I'm skeptical that we're at the stage where mechanical proof-checking is viable, such a technique would be immensely valuable. On the other hand, it is o…

What a ridiculous article. The statement "70% [are] on prescription drugs" is devoid of moral content. If the title had been "70% are on prescription drugs unnecessarily" or indeed…

Scientists definitely do have a test for the so-called IQ, and it's called the IQ test – but 'Intelligence Quotient' and intelligence are not synonymous. One need only read Mensa m…

What I mean is that since Goodstein's theorem is provably true for the naturals, but is not a consequence of the Peano axioms, then the definition of the naturals used to demonstra…

How then are the naturals defined? By the Von Neumann construction? (0, {0}, {0, {0}}, ...)

Agree - especially given that this was funded by the Campaign for Real Beauty, and it wouldn't exactly have supported Dove's ad campaign if the pictures looked the same or the sket…

I know, I was being facetious. I just like the thought of the campaign finishing and runn1ng posting each of his sponsors a $0.99 protractor.

I use a similar workflow with SVN to great effect. I have never had a sync issue - whether this is luck or that the repository structure is more robust in this setting than Git's, …

The problem has already been solved: http://goo.gl/NLdou

Looks good - I've signed up :) I would say though that I think your articles and lectures could do with a bit more organisation. In both cases, the user would benefit from posts ha…

Perhaps your experience has been different from mine, maybe because I'm based in the UK - I know that US education tends to be more generalised. Among my friends with or pursuing p…

That seems a pretty strong generalisation. A doctorate in Model Theory doesn't give you the authority to talk stats.

I agree with you that the ... notation is ill-defined. It's common in mathematics to use conventions that are a little woolly, but only where everyone understands how to express th…

All good fun problems - and some less well-known as well as the old favourites. That said, calling these the "12 most controversial facts in mathematics" is like calling the truth …

I think the point is that storing even encrypted passwords is not as safe as storing (salted) hashes, because if the database was compromised, the encryption key would likely be co…

I had to read this three times before I realised you were being sarcastic. My blood pressure does not thank you.

I think this is very dependent on the area of maths. In applied mathematics, obviously simulation is of huge importance; and in very fundamental pure maths the language is close en…

Big fan of this app - definitely something I'll make use of. One idea though: something that as a singer I would find useful is the ability to select a single base note and practic…

Absolutely. For example, the ingroup bias allows a group of related individuals to benefit at the expense of those with whom they are less likely to share genetic material; and the…

That's a good intuition so long as the people trying to sell you a product aren't themselves aware of it. The problem comes when companies sell slightly different products at a gre…