The FBI has released two notes in code that relate to the murder case of Ricky McCormick from 1999. McCormick had been murdered and his body was dumped in a field. The only clues were the two encrypted notes below that were found in the victim’s pockets. Despite several experts working on the code (including …
The first is xkcd, who is apparently trying to give us all headaches by turning every comic into 3D looking: As you move your mouse around the boxes/perspective changes. Next, Wolfram|Alpha is apparently now Bieber|Beta:
The discount chain 99 Cent Only Stores decided to increase their prices to 99.99 cents (that’s less than a penny increase) and as a result were sued by its customers. The chain was hit with two class-action lawsuits last year for “deceptive business practices” and “misleading advertising”. One lawyer says, “If they call themselves 99 …
99 cent store sued for raising prices to 99.99 cents Read More »
Christian Rudder has a post over on the okcupid blog discussing the lies people tell on the online dating site. For example, the male heights on okcupid follow the expected normal distribution, however, it is shifted to the right of where it should be: He also looks at age, income, sexuality and age of profile …
In baseball, what’s the fastest way around the bases? If you hit a long ball and know you can reach at least second base, then rather run in a straight line towards first base, you should veer towards the dugout in a circular fashion. The optimal baserunning path is one that is studied by Williams …
Brandon Hansen has an interesting article about traffic where he analyzes data that he recorded for a period of a year. He kept track of his departure and arrival times both to and from work. After a detailed analysis, he concludes that he can save over 30 hours per year by simply moving his schedule …
Hi guys, For all you math geeks out there I decided to create a forum for math geeks to unite and discuss math and more math! (Of course, any one can join even if you aren’t a math geek). So if you’re bored and looking for something to do, feel free to check them out …
Last year, physicists Jaoshvili, Esakia, Porrati and Chaikin published a paper in Physical Review Letters confirming that the D4-shaped tetrahedral die pack more densely than any other shape (yet tested). “The revelation is the result of a series of experiments that involved pouring tetrahedral dice into containers, shaking them, and adding more dice until the …
What shape dice pack tighter than any other shape? Read More »
News has it that mathematician John L. Selfridge (born February 17, 1927) has passed away on Sunday, October 31st, 2010. Selfridge was an American mathematician who made contributions to the fields of analytic number theory, computational number theory, and combinatorics. His main collaborators were Paul ErdÅ‘s (14 papers) and Richard Guy (10 papers). He was …
(Image by Rama used under cc license). Benoît B. Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, has died at age 85 (the cause of his death has not been released as of yet). You can check out his homepage here and you can see him giving an excellent TED talk here.