Really?

Every answer can result in a new question. — Yiddish proverb

— Yiddish Proverbs (@YiddishProverbs) December 22, 2019

Using a 'Sort' Function to Order the Chicken and the Egg

Wel that settles that. 😂 pic.twitter.com/0xHvS8Dply

— allie, 🎃 the spookiest 👻 transbian 💀 (@aBagorn) October 14, 2018

(I saw this through a 'like' by Chris Danforth on Twitter.)

In Conclusion, Hilarity Ensues.

"Hilarity ensues." is acceptable for the Conclusions section of a paper, right?

Why Not?

Go to the Matlab command line and type 'why'. Then do it several more times. (For bonus points, find a clever way to use this command as part of a loop or some other series of commands.) I wonder how long this Easter Egg has existed? I only just found out about it today. Maybe I'm easily amused, but (a) I think this is awesome and (b) there must be some clever thing that one can do with this. :)

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts things for Matlab on Facebook.)

Suggestions for Alternative Use for Underwear?

I accidentally bought underwear of the wrong size. Damnit. Now I'm going to need to find an alternative use for them. Maybe to use as flags on some stray flagpole?

Does anybody have any good ideas? I'm willing to take suggestions.

I don't have the time to go and return them, so I figure it's better to find some alternative usage for them. You might think of this as turning underwear into underwear-ade.

(I'm sure there is a peanut gallery out there who can give some creative suggestions.)

An Excellent Statistics Question

Now here's a truly excellent statistics question.

Those of you at Caltech who also took Alan Hájek's "Philosophy of Probability" course will know exactly what this question reminds me of. :)

Hajek's test was the best test ever when it comes to exam-taking paranoia: It was multiple choice. For each question, instead of picking a correct answer, we assigned a probability of correctness to each possibility, and our score on each question was determined by a formula that included a logarithm. Woe to anybody who assigned probability 0 of correctness to a choice that turned out to be correct, because then one got a grade of -infinity in the course. The result of this was to ask oneself nervously on every question: Am I truly sure that I am 100% confident that this answer isn't right? (Not only that, but exactly how confident am I on every possible answer for every question?)

[The scoring methodology was announced before the exam when I took the course, so I computed beforehand exactly what I should place instead of '0' on the questions in which I was maximally confident that some choice wasn't correct.]

(Tip of the cap to Tammy Porter and Danny Suiza.)

Jam Versus Marmalade

I had a toasted baguette with marmalade this morning, and that got me to wondering: Just what is the different between jam and marmalade?

You can find attempts at answering this question here and here. (By the way, I appreciated the targeted ad for The Jam on the second one of this pages.)

Exercise for the Reader: Suitably adapt an appropriate reference from Spaceballs.

Answer Fail

Students can sometimes write the best answers to questions. For example, this one (reported by the Fail Blog) isn't as awesome as the mathematical ones I've seen ("There's an elephant in the way!"), but it's pretty damn funny nonetheless. I wonder if the student wrote the answer with a Uni-ball pen?

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Diaz.)

Mort

This evening, I saw a play called Mort, which was adapted from the eponymous Terry Pratchett book. I have (obviously) heard of Discworld, but I have never actually read any of it. Nevertheless, the idea of a play based on stuff like that sounded appealing [and, interestingly, Tolkien's (great? great great?) granddaughter, an Oxford freshman, was in the play so there are other fantasy connections as well] and I was not disappointed. (It turns out that one of my perturbation methods students from last term was also in the play.)

I hadn't know about the play until I read a review of it in one of Oxford's student newspapers, and I was thankfully able to make it today (the last day). The author of the review seemed to find it mediocre, but I was intrigued by both the theme and his/her comments that the character of Death had a very dry sense of humor. That was more than enough to make me want to see it because I like that sort of thing. Sure enough, Death was awesome!

One thing this makes me want to do is read the book, but in looking at Mort's wikipedia entry, there appear to be three books that come before it. My question to the audience is first whether this is necessary for this particular book and second (independent of the answer to the first query) what you think of those three preceding books (as well as this one).