My name is Mason Porter. I am a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at UCLA. Previously I was Professor of Nonlinear and Complex Systems in the Mathematical Institute at University of Oxford. I was also a Tutorial Fellow of Somerville College.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
A "mind-reader" (courtesy Julius Su)
One of my favorite stories from Caltech involves Julius Su and a friend of his who claimed he could figure out what number somebody was thinking of by the number of lines in their eyes (his friend's success was, shall we say, craptacular). This story (that I probably told at some point to several of the people reading this) will be in Legends III, but I got an e-mail from Julius today with the following psychic website, so I naturally thought of that memorable incident from sophomore year. This one works quite a bit better, although it's essentially a nice web implementation of an old trick. (I can't remember the precise rules of the trick, but I have encountered it before without the extra visual effects.)
Okay that psychic website was pretty cool but if you do the math for any given number you get a number that corresponds to the same symbol every time.
ReplyDeleteWhy am I telling you this. You're the math genius.
Astros are looking good for the Series at this writing
Yes, the old trick is solvable via a little bit of arithmetic (modular arithmetic, if I remember correctly). I heard this verbally at some point, but having the pictures with it makes things cooler.
ReplyDeleteThe Astros are in good shape right now. Tomorrow is the game in which they're serious underdogs, so I expect the series will go 2-2, and then we'll see. Today was a very important game for them.
I figure they can scrape together two wins out of the next three (after tomorrow) given their starters. Last time I checked, that's all it takes.
ReplyDelete