Technology

Challenge Game Theory Technology

Rock, Paper, Scissors

This is a great interactive Rock-Paper-Scissors game from the New York Times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/rock-paper-scissors.html

The computer will narrate its strategy for you as you play, telling you whether it has correctly predicted your choice or not.

Skeptical? Play the game against the Veteran computer and watch it beat you! Then, go check out this infographic for some tips on how to improve your play.

It might be fun to pit a 6-sided die against the computer to see what happens.

By patrick honner, 14 years8 years ago

Another Mechanical Calculator

This video demonstrates the Original Odhner mechanical calculator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz8_tNDUDog

It looks like a miniature typewriter, and it seems to operate in the same manner as the Curta mechanical calculator: switches allow you to “input” numbers into the machine, and then turning a crank performs addition or subtraction.

The video demonstrates some basic operations of the Odhner, and it includes a nice (if lengthy) computation of the square root of 2 that involves a few arithmetic tricks.

By patrick honner, 14 years8 years ago

Appreciation Technology

New Pi Record

A Japanese man has set a new world record by computing 5 trillion digits of pi.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70J7S220110120

Apparently Shigeru Kondo accomplished this feat using a home-built computer that worked non-stop for 90 days. Apart from this dramatic triumph for mathematical hobbyists (Kondo is a systems analyst for a food company), the article contains the following two excellent lines:

“Calculating a more accurate pi, which is believed to go on forever, has been a challenge for scholars for thousands of years.” Believed to go on forever? Is the reporter some kind of mathematical agnostic?

And this, from Kondo himself: “I really want to praise my computer, which calculated continuously for three months without complaint.” Credit where credit is due, I suppose.

It is interesting to note that, while 5 trillion is indeed the new record for consecutive digits of pi, researchers at Yahoo were able to compute digits that are much farther out than that; they just don’t know all the digits that lead up to it!

By patrick honner, 14 years8 years ago

Application Technology

Mechanical Calculator

This videos demonstrates the absolutely amazing Curta Mechanical Calculator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYsOi6L_Pw4

Invented in the 1940s, this is an entirely mechanical multiplication device. To operate it, you set the sliders on the side to the first number, and then turn the crank on top an appropriate number of times to multiply by the second number. Because of it’s obvious resemblance, this is affectionately known as the pepper-grinder calculator.

In the video, the narrator takes his Curta apart and explains a bit of the inner-workings of the device.

If they don’t have one already, the Calculator Museum should definitely make acquiring a Curta a top priority!

Thanks to Ivan for showing me this!

By patrick honner, 14 years8 years ago

Game Theory Technology

Google Goggles Does Sudoku

Another installment from the amazing file: an iPhone app that looks at and then solves Sudoku.

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-beat-sudoku-puzzles-using-google-goggles/

Image recognition software aside, the interesting mathematical idea here is how one would create a computer program that can solve an arbitrary Sudoku puzzle. It doesn’t seem like a particularly challenging task, but finding an efficient method may be a challenging problem. After all, I imagine some strategies are better than others.

Experienced Sudoku solvers probably have a general algorithm they follow, but I imagine that intuition (guessing?) plays a role at some point. Can you program that in somehow?

By patrick honner, 14 years8 years ago

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