I've been playing a lot of solitaire (Klondike 3) on my phone recently. My app has a timer, for some reason. It made me come up with some funny ideas like doing a solitaire speedrun. To my delight, it already exists! It's become a mild addiction, but this game has made me come up with an interesting question. How likely are you to win a game of solitaire? What is the maximum possible win rate that the best solitaire player can have?
I was introduced to the \(3x+1\) problem in a few [1] [2] YouTube videos, which made it seem like there was no solution. I am here today to prove them wrong! Or perhaps, right, depending on how you interpret this. As I was writing this, I kind of lost track of what I was doing.
The US electoral college has its flaws, but forget about that. I'm curious what the minimum popular vote could possibly be in order for a candidate to win the US general election.
Something that always irks me is when a website or app requires phone number verification, often called SMS authentication. Usually, that means whenever you want to log in to, let's call it BookFace, it will text you an automated code that you enter, or a link to click, to verify that the number is really yours and it is really you trying to log in. Many websites are now beginning to enforce this policy. In my opinion, this is a terrible system for several reasons.
Let's get rid of pounds, kilograms, feet, meters, seconds, and degrees altogether and come up with a new, pure unit system based on limits of our universe, to describe our world. Believe it or not, this actually exists! It's called Planck Units, and it's a completely ideal system of measurement based on our universe's fundamental constants. For example, "speed of light"s describe quantities of velocity. Here's a really neat way to create Planck units using linear algebra and math. Since this is a blog post and not a scientific research paper, let's keep this simple, assuming there are only 4 (out of the seven) physical base units in our universe. Let's also assume our universe has 4 fundamental constants. See the tables below for the list of each and symbols.
I have a problem with... dates. But probably not the date you're thinking. Not going out, not the fruit, but the instance of time. Why? Good question.
Have you ever tried to sign up for something, and you get this frustrating message?
Username unavailable! Try again.
If you have an idea of how many accounts are signed up on that website, you can use some math tricks to find out how to find a good username without being forced to guess over and over.
There are 3 basic rules to the game of Rock Paper Scissors. You and one opponent both hold out a closed fist and count down, usually with a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" or "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot." Clarify with your opponent beforehand to make sure you both are on the same page in terms of the countdown method. During this time, you both will think of Rock, Paper, or Scissors at random (ideally) and use the appropriate hand gesture to display which object you had chosen.