mathematics
Remember The Problem of the Unfinished Game? And the almost 2,500 comments those two posts generated? I know, I like to pretend it didn't happen, either. Some objected to the way I asked the question, but it was a simple question asked in simple language. I think
programming languages
One of the more famous Edsger Dijkstra quotes is from his 1972 Turing award lecture, How do we tell truths that might hurt? Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. Note that he specifically
probability
Today's post is a simple question. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you met someone who told you they had two children, and one of them is a girl. What are the odds that person has a boy and a girl? Consider your answer carefully, without doing a
statistics
An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning is an extraordinary piece on Bayes' theorem that starts with this simple puzzle: 1% of women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer. 80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammographies. 9.6% of women without breast