Archive for the ‘Math & Science’ Category
The Predictions of Punxsutawney Phil: An Empirical Study
Punxsutawney Phil is, perhaps, the most famous rodent in the world. For over a century, the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has celebrated the tradition of observing how their mascot, an actual groundhog named Phil, emerges from his home and (sometimes) flees from his shadow. If Phil flees, 6 more weeks of winter; otherwise, an early spring.
But is Phil a good weatherman? In this blog entry, I’ll do my own statistical analysis on this paradoxical prognosticator. Full disclosure: my middle name is Phil, named after the famed Groundhog Ambassador from Punxsutawney (he is also my father. And before you ask, the groundhog was named Pete when my father was born – so technically the rodent was named Phil after my dad.)
The Bizarre Bazaar: Misconceptions of Open Source
Open source software is a strange thing. Often described as a bazaar-like marketplace of innovation, open source software has gained a lot of traction in the last decade. But with its success has come a lot of myths. Let’s settle some of those myths here.
Myth: Open source is just an academic pipe dream.
This was a more prevalent argument 10 years ago. Today, all I have to do is point out that open source software is everywhere. Mozilla Firefox is one of world’s most popular web browsers. A huge proportion of the Internet’s websites are run by products like Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Tomcat, WordPress, and Java. Google’s Android platform is becoming one of the biggest platforms for mobile devices today. Software developers themselves use a plethora of open source software tools and libraries, the most famous is probably Eclipse. Open source is so ubiquitous, you’d be hard-pressed to argue it’s not relevant.
Fun With Numerology: White Elephant Gifting Patterns
Ever notice an interesting number pattern and think, what are the odds of that happening? For example, I kept noticing when the odometer on my car would read a palindrome (e.g. 142241). What are the odds of that happening?
Turns out – about once every thousand miles.
The fact is, though, our brains are wired for pattern recognition. What we don’t realize is that the number of patterns we would recognize are much larger than we are aware of, significantly raising the chances we run into a pattern. This is the foundation of numerology – the study of the significance of patterns. Read the rest of this entry »
Everything Returns to the Central Limit Theorem
Mathematicians are very humble, so you know that when you see the word “Central” in the name of a theorem, it must be pretty important. In fact, the Central Limit theorem is the foundation for all of statistics.
What is the central limit theorem? In a nutshell, “everything eventually is normally distributed”. What does that mean? Well, you’ll just have to read on.
The Agile Manifesto, in Plain English
Imagine yourself on a team of programmers, and you’ve just finished a new feature. What should you do next? Do you write more code, or test what you have? In the world software engineering, the philosophy that dictates what you should do next is what we call “the process”.
Every software development team has a process, even if it’s not explicitly articulated anywhere. The process tells you what you should do, how much you should do it, when you should do it, and why. Sound boring and bureaucratic? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be.