MachineMachine /stream - tagged with numbers http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com Methods for Studying Coincidences http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/methods-for-studying-coincidences/ With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen. The point is that truly rare events, say events that occur only once in a million [as the mathematician Littlewood (1953) required for an event to be surprising] are bound to be plentiful in a population of 250 million people. If a coincidence occurs to one person in a million each day, then we expect 250 occurrences a day and close to 100,000 such occurrences a year. Going from a year to a lifetime and from the population of the United States to that of the world (5… ]]> Mon, 21 May 2012 10:44:39 -0700 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/methods-for-studying-coincidences/ Network Science of the Game of Go http://bit.ly/JoYn3H They constructed their networks in a simple way: if one board position can lead to another, they are connected. Using a dataset of about 1,000 professional games and 4,000 amateur games, they began to construct these networks. Of course, the Go board is very large and so you can’t compare entire board layouts. Instead, they decided to make it much more tractable and look at the board composition surrounding a newly placed piece (a move in Go consists of putting a stone on an intersection of the grid lines of the board). In this case, they looked at the pieces… ]]> Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:29:50 -0700 http://bit.ly/JoYn3H "As you can probably imagine, this took some effort to make." http://www.metafilter.com/114058/As-you-can-probably-imagine-this-took-some-effort-to-make "The calculator itself is just over 250x200x100 blocks. It contains 2 6-digit BCD number selectors, 2 BCD-to-binary decoders, 3 binary-to-BCD decoders, 6 BCD adders and subtractors, a 20 bit (output) multiplier, 10 bit divider, a memory bank and additional circuitry for the graphing function." Yes, someone built a working scientific calculator, in Minecraft. ]]> Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:44:41 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/114058/As-you-can-probably-imagine-this-took-some-effort-to-make Minecraft Scientific/Graphing calculator - Sin Cos Tan Log Square root http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgJfVRhotlQ&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:51:21 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgJfVRhotlQ&feature=youtube_gdata 100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FExqG6LdWHU&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Sun, 18 Mar 2012 07:59:30 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FExqG6LdWHU&feature=youtube_gdata The Body Counter: A statistician’s guide to mass atrocities http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/the_body_counter?page=full/the-body-counter-by-tina-rosenberg-foreign-policy A statistician’s guide to mass atrocities: http://t.co/GdyiVo8T ]]> Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:59:31 -0700 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/the_body_counter?page=full/the-body-counter-by-tina-rosenberg-foreign-policy Next Step Infinity http://edge.org/conversation/next-step-infinity/next-step-infinity-conversation-edge Next Step Infinity: "Infinity can violate our human intuition, which is based on finite systems..." http://t.co/tJ08Vvqg #x ]]> Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:21:41 -0700 http://edge.org/conversation/next-step-infinity/next-step-infinity-conversation-edge How Computational Complexity Will Revolutionise Philosophy http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/8731851297

Since the 1930s, the theory of computation has profoundly influenced philosophical thinking about topics such as the theory of the mind, the nature of mathematical knowledge and the prospect of machine intelligence. In fact, it’s hard to think of an idea that has had a bigger impact on philosophy.

And yet there is an even bigger philosophical revolution waiting in the wings. The theory of computing is a philosophical minnow compared to the potential of another theory that is currently dominating thinking about computation.

@ Technology Review

]]> Wed, 10 Aug 2011 05:31:23 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/8731851297 Brute force or intelligence? The slow rise of computer chess http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/force-versus-heuristics-the-contentious-rise-of-computer-chess.ars When you visit the History of Computer Chess exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the first machine you see is "The Turk."

In 1770, a Hungarian engineer and diplomat named Wolfgang von Kempelen presented a remarkable invention to the court of Maria Theresa, ruler of Hungary and Austria. It consisted of a mechanical figure dressed in (what Europeans saw as) Oriental garb, presiding over a cabinet upon which a chess board sat. Full of gears ostentatiously placed in a front side drawer, The Turk was cranked up by hand, after which an opponent… ]]> Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:39:13 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/force-versus-heuristics-the-contentious-rise-of-computer-chess.ars On Discovering Life http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_discovering_life/ There is an aspect of life sciences that has been largely absent: the confrontation of fundamental questions of biology much as particle accelerators grapple with fundamental questions of physics. The roll call of early pioneers and prospectors is notable, but short. Fortunately, increasing numbers of researchers are now re-entering this fertile frontier.

The open secret of this emerging frontier is that we do not have a fundamental definition or understanding of life. Similarly, we do not understand life’s origins, how life emerges from chemistry. We do know that the chemistry of life on Earth, or “Terran” biochemistry… ]]> Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:05:30 -0700 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_discovering_life/ Oh, Infinite Stream of Data and Light http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/icon/oh-infinite-stream-of-data-and-light/ Visitors enter the dark, gargantuan room and take up postures of reverence in front of a massive screen, which towers 40 feet above them. They take off their shoes at the edge of the white floor—the sort used in dance studios—laid across the room’s stripped wooden floorboards. They sit down in front of the screen with legs crossed, rapt in attention. Some lay flat on their backs. Others press their bodies up against the vertical screen and let the sound and light play over them. Strips of black and white flash across the screen in varying configurations, loosely attuned to… ]]> Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:22:37 -0700 http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/icon/oh-infinite-stream-of-data-and-light/ The Fundamental Physical Limits of Computation http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-fundamental-physical-limits-of-computation/the-fundamental-physical-limits-of-computation-scientific-american

Old Skool article @sciam : The Fundamental Physical Limits of Computation #information #data

]]> Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:44:07 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-fundamental-physical-limits-of-computation Our data, ourselves http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/bostonglobe/29571858_1_data-privacy-public-health Who owns the data in that cloud has been the subject of ferocious debate. It’s not all stored in one place, of course — our lives are tracked and documented by a diffuse assortment of entities that includes private companies like Google and Visa, as well as governmental agencies like the IRS, the Department of Education, and the Census Bureau. Up to now, the public conversation on this kind of data has taken the form of an argument about privacy rights, with legal scholars, computer scientists, and others arguing for tighter restrictions on how our data is used by companies… ]]> Mon, 30 May 2011 15:11:01 -0700 http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/bostonglobe/29571858_1_data-privacy-public-health Biomathematics: The formula of life http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2011/04/viruses-essay-pattern Biology used to be about plants, animals and insects, but five great revolutions have changed the way that scientists think about life: the invention of the microscope, the systematic classification of the planet's living creatures, evolution, the discovery of the gene and the structure of DNA. Now, a sixth is on its way - mathematics.

Maths has played a leading role in the physical sciences for centuries, but in the life sciences it was little more than a bit player, a routine tool for analysing data. However, it is moving towards centre stage, providing new understanding of… ]]> Wed, 11 May 2011 03:32:59 -0700 http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2011/04/viruses-essay-pattern James Gleick’s History of Information http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/books/review/book-review-the-information-by-james-gleick.html Gleick makes his case in a sweeping survey that covers the five millenniums of humanity’s engagement with information, from the invention of writing in Sumer to the elevation of information to a first principle in the sciences over the last half-century or so. It’s a grand narrative if ever there was one, but its key moment can be pinpointed to 1948, when Claude Shannon, a young mathematician with a background in cryptography and telephony, published a paper called “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” in a Bell Labs technical journal. For Shannon, communication was purely a matter of sending a message… ]]> Sun, 20 Mar 2011 05:41:08 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/books/review/book-review-the-information-by-james-gleick.html Why the Basis of the Universe Isn’t Matter or Energy—It’s Data http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/mf_gleick_qa/all/1 Information flows everywhere, through wires and genes, through brain cells and quarks. But while it may appear ubiquitous to us now, until recently we had no awareness of what information was or how it worked. In his new book, The Information, science writer James Gleick documents the rising role of information in our lives and the way new technologies continue to increase its velocity, volume, and importance. Gleick—whose first book, Chaos, was a National Book Award finalist and whose biographies of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton were both short-listed for the Pulitzer—spent seven years compiling his epic account. Wired spoke… ]]> Sun, 06 Mar 2011 04:43:51 -0700 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/mf_gleick_qa/all/1 I, for One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords http://www.american.com/archive/2011/february/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-robot-overlords In case you haven’t heard, the newest champion of "Jeopardy!," the popular TV game show, is a computer. Watson, an enormous computer developed by researchers at IBM, was pitted against the two previous human champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. At the end of the first round, aired on Valentine’s Day, Jennings and Watson were tied for first place. But Watson trounced both humans in the next round, despite making some odd mistakes. And he won the second game, aired on February 16, suggesting the first victory was more than just beginner’s luck. When the IBM computer Deep Blue beat… ]]> Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:15:04 -0700 http://www.american.com/archive/2011/february/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-robot-overlords How to Make Anything Signify Anything http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/40/sherman.php It is unlikely that Bacon’s cipher system was ever used for the transmission of military secrets, in the seventeenth century or in the twentieth. But for roughly a century from 1850, it set the world of literature on fire. A passion for puzzles, codes, and conspiracies fuelled a widespread suspicion that Shakespeare was not the author of his plays, and professional and amateur scholars of all sorts spent extraordinary amounts of time, energy, and money combing Renaissance texts in search of signatures and other messages that would reveal the true identity of their author. Even after the recent publication of… ]]> Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:17:39 -0700 http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/40/sherman.php Infinite Life http://www.tnr.com/article/76715/infinite-life?passthru=MDBkMjEwNTgzZjNhNGZmYjBhNzEzZTdiZmVlZDk0Nzg A starry firmament, or sand cascading through one’s open fingers, or weeds springing up time after time: the first conception of infinity, of the uncountable and the unending, is not recorded, but it must have been stimulated by experiences such as these. It may have merged in the mind of an ancient progenitor with thoughts of a God, a possessor of unlimited might, an infinite being itself. But whether or not the idea of God was born with the first thoughts of what cannot be counted, this wonderful book by an American historian of science and a French mathematician teaches… ]]> Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:18:00 -0700 http://www.tnr.com/article/76715/infinite-life?passthru=MDBkMjEwNTgzZjNhNGZmYjBhNzEzZTdiZmVlZDk0Nzg Think Globally http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/think-globally/ The most familiar ideas of geometry were inspired by an ancient vision — a vision of the world as flat. From parallel lines that never meet, to the Pythagorean theorem discussed in last week’s column, these are eternal truths about an imaginary place, the two-dimensional landscape of plane geometry.

Conceived in India, China, Egypt and Babylonia more than 2,500 years ago, and codified and refined by Euclid and the Greeks, this flat-earth geometry is the main one (and often the only one) being taught in high schools today. But things have changed in the past few millennia.]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:54:00 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/think-globally/