1. 2012
    Nov
    12

    I have a problem. Pun intended.

    OMG I missed an XKCD!

    This was posted a couple months ago, but I don’t remember seeing it until yesterday. The really interesting part is the title text:

    FYI: If you get curious and start trying to calculate the time adjustment function that minimizes the gap between the most-used and least-used digit (for a representative sample of common cook times) without altering any time by more than 10%, and someone asks you what you’re doing, it’s easier to just lie.

    Sure, it is easier to lie, but where’s the fun in that? Half the point of being a geek is watching the looks of confusion develop on other people’s faces when you start talking about your hobby. But don’t tell them I said that ;-)

    No, the more interesting part of this title text is the problem it poses. Naturally, as soon as I read it, I had to figure out how to derive this optimal time adjustment function.

    The easiest way to derive something is, of course, to look it up. And the XKCD forum thread for this comic yielded the dirt, so to speak. Tallys Yunes, an operations research expert at the University …

  2. 2011
    May
    06

    Teaching physics

    Best XKCD ever:

    I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to explain to people that all the analogies we use are just analogies, and that if you think about them too hard they don’t make sense, and that’s okay because physics is all about the math anyway.