Collaborate Disseminate
Programmer [aemkei] Tweeted the formula (x ^ y) % 9 alongside code for more “alien art”. But how can a formula as simple as (x ^ y) % 9 result …read more Continue reading Alien Art Drawn with Surprisingly Simple Math
A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient. Nature reports: Across a series of […] experiments, the… Continue reading Adding Is Favored Over Subtracting In Problem Solving
Sam Blake, writing at Wolfram Blog: The Zodiac Killer (an unidentified American serial killer active during the 1960s and 70s) sent numerous taunting letters to the press in the San Francisco area with regard to a local murder spree. In these letters, … Continue reading The Solution of the Zodiac Killer’s 340-Character Cipher
It’ll be Pi Day when this article goes live, at least for approximately half the globe west of the prime meridian. We always enjoy Pi Day, not least for the …read more Continue reading Hackaday Links: March 14, 2021
ZDNet reports:
Scientists from quantum computing company D-Wave have demonstrated that, using a method called quantum annealing, they could simulate some materials up to three million times faster than it would take with corresponding classical method… Continue reading Quantum Computer Solves Decades-Old Problem Three Million Times Faster Than a Classical Computer
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [A] group of researchers from the Technion in Israel and Google in Tel Aviv presented an automated conjecturing system that they call the Ramanujan Machine, named after the mathematician Srinivasa R… Continue reading Machines Are Inventing New Math We’ve Never Seen
Just 11 months before his death in 2001, famous author Douglas Adams answered questions from Slashdot readers.
And Slashdot reader Informativity still remembers how Adams (also a Doctor Who script editor) had included a supercomputer named Deep Thoug… Continue reading Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy: New Research Says #42 Really Is Our Number
I was reading Joshua Vasquez’s marvelous piece on the capstan equation this week. It’s a short, practical introduction to a single equation that, unless you’re doing something very strange, covers everything you need to know about friction when designing something …read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: In 2010, Austin Sendek, then a physics student at UC Davis, created a petition seeking recognition for prefix “hella-” as an official International System of Units (SI) measurement representing 10^… Continue reading Quixotic Californian Crusade To Officially Recognize the Hellabyte
Siobhan Roberts, writing for The New York Times: In March of 1970, Martin Gardner opened a letter jammed with ideas for his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Sent by John Horton Conway, then a mathematician at the University of Cambridg… Continue reading The Lasting Lessons of John Conway’s Game of Life