Pi

I just found a very interesting webpage about pi. It is based on the, pi is normal, conjecture. That is to the never ending sequence of digits that make up pi behave statistically as a list of random numbers. If we then convert the digits of pi into letters (in base 26) then the the monkeys banging away on a typewriter forever scenario is realised and any sequence of letters will eventually be met if we search through the digits of pi! The author of the page has been so kind as to work out how far one has to go through the list to find words of length N. The results are:
N #digits
– ——-
2 4
3 13
4 81
5 1000
6 14800
7 272000
8 5.7 Million
9 140 M
10 3900 M
Very interesting I think! The first 6 letter word found is Oxygen! Now there is a cool fact for you!!
The full page is to be found here and contains much more pi-related discussions!

Evan

American Presidential Election

This year I have decided to pay attention to the US presidential election and the lengthy run-up which has already started a long time ago. BBC and Sky News are showing it a lot so I guess they decided for me but anyway …

I have been watching the coverage from the Iowa caucuses. What is a caucus you say? That’s what I thought but wikipedia soon explained. Apparently they are public ballots held by both the Democratic and Republican parties (Nobody else does this I think, but as Kang and Kodos said, it is a two-party system in the states).

Both parties do their caucases differently. The Republicans have a simple system where everyone attending writes down their preference for Republican presidential candidate on a piece of paper and these are then counted. Fair enough. The Democrats do it differently, where candidates with <15% of the vote are eliminated and people who voted for them choose someone else. This is like the system used in Irish general elections where one can vote with as many preferences as one likes. When your first choice is elected/eliminated, then your vote gets transferred to your 2nd choice if you indicated one.

The upshot of it all is that Barack Obama (a member of the US senate with the support of Oprah!) won the Democratic caucus and Mike Huckabee (an evangelical preacher with the support of Chuck Norris – I kid you not!) won the Republican caucus.

But a few things I have noticed are noteworthy I think. Firstly, I was very surprised with the big deal that is made of all this. Americans are really into their elections! This is great, and anything that makes more people vote is brilliant. What I don’t understand is why the voter turnout in the states is typically notoriously very low? Then again, all the reports from these polls in Iowa suggest turnout their at least had doubled this time around. Cool. Secondly, it seems that voters have to register their party allegiance officially! Yes you can be a registered Democrat or Republican. Surely this is quite odd? Isn’t that invasive/illegal? It seems like a weird practice to me. Can anyone explain this to me? I can’t imagine anyone in Ireland being asked to register their allegiance to Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, …; or people in the UK being asked to register whether they were Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, ….

Evan

A very good lecturer

I came across a very good lecture online – given in MIT concerning work, energy, etc. The end of the video shows a very good illustration of conservation of energy!
The video is available as a Real player file to download from http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFall1999/VideoLectures/detail/Video-Segment-Index-for-L-11.htm.
“Physics works and I’m still alive, see you Wednesday.”

Snow in Manchester?

Very cold in Manchester – me wonders if there will be a white land-scape in the morning. That would be cool. I really like snow. I have not seen it very often in my life. I was glad today to hear that Canadians get a good old laugh when the UK shuts down after a few hours of snow paralyses the country. You wouldn’t get that in Canada … and they even have bears eating people who venture out to make snow-men (don’t correct me on that point anyone, it’s a nice image … well funny at least!).

Evan

Trains, Fares and Super-bugs

If there is one thing I have done in my time in the UK, it is take the train! Many many times in fact. I am mad today with the ticket price increases which are much higher than inflation and as high as 11% increases (on Canterbury-London) have been implemented. The government says it wants customers bare more of the cost of rail upgrades and take the burden off the tax payer. WHY?!! I pay plenty of tax and I would be happy to think that some of that is going towards maintaining infrastructure like railways. Where exactly are the government planning to put this spare tax money which is not going into rail investments? Does anybody know? If anyone can point me towards an explanatroy website I would be glad of it.
In other news I am pretty maddened by David Cameron’s proposal for funding cuts for the NHS when a patient catches one of the so-called “super-bugs” in hospital. Great idea David! That’s exactly what the NHS need to treat people need when they get sicker – less money! Boo-urns.

Great Goal by Adebayor

This is such a great finish – from Arsenal’s New Year’s day clash with West Ham. Brilliant!

Looks like this movie keeps getting taken down from daily motion/youtube/etc. – d’oh! If the link doesn’t work look it up though – brilliant goal!!

Happy New Year Everyone!

It is 2008, and I find myself filled with the optimism and plans that each new year brings. I hope that everyone reading this had an enjoyable xmas period and hope that the new year brings much joy. This year for me will be interesting – I will get stuck into some real research for my PhD. Maybe I will find out if I am any good at this research craic or not! I’m sure it will be fun finding out!

Evan