This summers winner is... silveradept!

[silveradept]

First things first, cue up whatever victory fanfare/theme you have available and play it - I got the position I wanted for the summer! Hopefully, I'll have both the ones I want and be able to complete my summer work credit requirement. The position is headquartered in the Youth department, so I'm going to get to know whether it's really up to my caliber or not. Still, the awesome is great - I got the job! That gets rid of the last concern for summer. Now, all there is left is exams.

Lots of strange coincidences are actually quite probable. Things like the small-world phenomenon, the likelihood that if you have two dozen people, the probability is greater than 1/2 that two of them have the same birthday, those sorts of things. Combined with perhaps a little selective vision, some things that are easily explainable become quite marvellous. Worth trying out on your own to see the results. It's at least as entertaining as figuring out how to embarass a duck.

Another one of those things we knew but science seems to want to prove: Guys make worse decisions when exposed to sexual imagery. It's not something irreversible, but well, sex sells, yaknow.

Also, in many easy steps, how to write a scientific paper. It's the essence of paper-writing, really. And it's gotten me through this far. Hopefully, it'll keep working until I get the degree.

Comments

[eleme.livejournal.com]

awesome! Good job on the summer-job-getting. Is the position here in the lovely A2?

[silveradept]

Mm-hmm. Right downtown.

[eleme.livejournal.com]

Sweet! I shall wave and say hello if I see you!

[przxqgl.livejournal.com]

i don't have a fanfare cued up, but you're welcome to use my latest creation, dwkydwiz, as a substitute... 8)

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Congrats! I hope to find something myself when we get back in June, I need something paying somewhat better than what the university is paying.

[silveradept]

Well, good luck on your own search then. Hopefully, it turns out with similarly good results.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) The duck: disturbing in parts, but amusing in others.

The half-division to get repeated 'successes': quite interesting, in many incarnations (first exposure: finding one psychic in any television audience, by using binary chop with a penny.).

*amusement at the paper-writing article*

[silveradept]

The paper-writing article is true more often than I care to admit.

As for the "psychic" of chance, my first exposure to that was on a programme called Square One Television (a programme that explored mathematics and its applications in short segments), in the "Mathnet" segment. The mathematicians employed by the police force exposed and stopped a scam that took advantage of that principle. Was very fun to watch happen.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I remember Square One!!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I meant to comment on the birth date stunt. I went to a party in Tempe for a friend's comic book and we had a good 30-40 people at it, took out the top floor of the club we were at. The owner of Flying Buffalo, Rick Loomis, tried it.

Absolute bomb. No hits.

I found it very amusing. He was trying to be amusing, but I don't think it was amusing in quite the way that he intended. :-)

[silveradept]

Well, it does say only that the probability gets over half or so at that point - to be absolutely sure, you would need 366 people that you knew had different birth dates (and one that had the same). So there's going to be a failure every now and then, because probability says so.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Hey, you didn't mention THAT to me! Good job, dear! (Congratulations, Alexander.)

Mmmm. The Theory of probablility. That was always fun stuff to figure out. Also, It's possibly to play 6 degrees of Becca. kind of like the Kevin Bacon game. I can nearly guarentee you that there is a random person you know that I also know thorouh some strange channel.

[silveradept]

Well, if you hang out in the same social circles, yes, that's normally true. According to my search and retrieval class, though, you could play six degrees of anyone and the property would still hold - it might just take a while to get through all the people that you both know, and the people they know, and such. Human memory's not that great, though, and so people will probably fail because they forgot the right link.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

But even if it's not a person from the same social circle. I'm talking that people randomly know someone through a different channel that I went to hs or college with, or knew somehow.

for example: the guy i dated after we both graduated college, didn't even know wach other in college, wound up living next door at GWU to a girl i went to HS with.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

But really, do you know the names of the the people that the people you know know that you don't know?

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Huzzah!

[silveradept]

Huzzah! And now, damnable finals...

I'm glad my article has been helpful! :)

[eric-schulman.livejournal.com]

I wrote it shortly after I finished my Ph.D. thesis at U of M. You might also be interested in my other science humor papers (http://members.verizon.net/~vze3fs8i/air/). Good luck with your studies!

Re: I'm glad my article has been helpful! :)

[silveradept]

Ah, so you know intimately the wonders of writing these papers and have had plenty of practice at it. I'll probably have a good chuckle at the other papers, even though I've got a liberal arts degree.