I missed an easy solution to a silly problem
A few years back I wrote a couple of articles about the extremely poor macro plugin I wrote for Blosxom. ([1][2]). The feature-poorness of the macro system is itself the system's principal feature,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A modern translation of the 1+1=2 lemma
A while back I blogged an explanation of the “” lemma from Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica:W. Ethan Duckworth of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Loyola University...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Randomized algorithms go fishing
A little while back I thought of a perfect metaphor for explaining what a randomized algorithm is. It's so perfect I'm sure it must have thought of many times before, but it's new to me.Suppose you...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No, it is not a compiler error. It is never a compiler error.
When I used to hang out in the comp.lang.c Usenet group, back when there was a comp.lang.c Usenet group, people would show up fairly often with some program they had written that didn't work, and ask...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Down with the negation sign!
[ Credit where it is due: This was entirely Darius Bacon's idea. ]In connection with “Recognizing when two arithmetic expressions are essentially the same”, I had several conversations with people...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Another system software error
[ Warning: This article is meandering and does not end anywhere in particular ]My recent article about system software errors kinda blew up the Reddit / Hacker News space, and even got listed on Voat,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mathematical jargon for quibbling
Mathematicians tend not to be the kind of people who shout and pound their fists on the table. This is because in mathematics, shouting and pounding your fist does not work. If you do this, other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An instructive example of expected value
I think this example is very illuminating of something, although I'm not sure yet what.Suppose you are making a short journey somewhere. You leave two minutes later than planned. How does this affect...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mathematical pettifoggery and pathological examples
Last week I said:Mathematicians do tend to be the kind of people who quibble and pettifog over the tiniest details. This is because in mathematics, quibbling and pettifogging does work.This example is...
View ArticleMy new blog
Over the years many people have written to me to tell me they liked my blog but that I should update it more often. Now those people can see if they were correct. I suspect they will agree that they...
View Article… Then you win.
National Coming Out Day began in the U.S. in 1988, and within couple of years I had started to observe it. A queer person, to observe the event, should make an effort, each October 11, to take the next...
View ArticleGit PSA: git-rev-parse
Another public service announcement about Git.There are a number of commands everyone learns when they first start out using Git. And there are some that almost nobody learns right away, but that...
View Article
