Statistics, laymen, and shuffling cards

On Sunday, we usually spend hours by playing Canasta , a card game, in a broader family. Most typically, there are 2 teams with 2 players each (the c…

Monty Hall Paradox

This is a good example how people who professionally deal with statistics can disagree about the results if the problem is not accurately defined. Th…

Rube Goldberg machine: video

If you've never seen a Rube Goldberg machine, open this Rube Goldberg video . Is this how the real world works? First of all, this machine is exa…

Extraterrestrial aliens in Fermiville

Shocked by the noise? Click here to get to the previous article about the evolving fine-structure constant , and to browse the articles one by one. S…

Smartkit: I/O game

Full screen (click) There are no instructions, so you must solve it yourself. ;-) It told me that the total time was 5 minutes. If you solve it, you…

Smartkit: On the edge game

Click the screenshot for the game. Jump on each white square once before you end up with the red square.

Abracadabra and M-theory

Over at neopets.com , the Lenny Conundrum #100 has already been judged. About 2,000 kids of all ages between 2 years and 90 years divided 10 millions…

06/06/06 06:06:06, devil, 666, and Cosmic Variance

This article was posted on 06/06/06 at 06:06:06 pm. What does it all mean ? Why is the devil associated with the number 666? Is it because the sum of…

Happy Thanksgiving

Verizon

I forgot to include an elementary introduction to the black holes in string theory before the black hole posting in the morning, so here it is: The …

Witten's dog

It turned out that Witten's dog, the simple perturbative diagram in superdupersymmetric string theory, is actually dual to Schrödinger's cat.…

12 people becomes 13 people

Count the people on the picture. You should get 12. Wait for 12-13 seconds. The people will permute their organs. Count them again. You should get 13…

Chinese IQ river test: SWF

Via Arcade Temple Full screen... (click) The Japanese employers use this test to hire employees in the IT sector. You should get all the people to t…

Crystal ball predictions: flash

Full screen... Many laymen can't believe that the physicists can make some predictions by pure thought without looking at the experiments. Doesn&…

Some geography: Statetris

A helpful exercise not only for future wars among the respectable readers of TRF: Statetris - Europe Statetris - USA Traveler IQ challenge

A newspaper snippet

Rae Ann has scanned and sent me an interesting newspaper snippet that is apparently going to be published on Sunday : Please don't ask me what it…

String theorist wins $570,960

Marcel Vonk, a Dutch string theorist currently working in Lisbon, has won the sixth and final championship of the 2010 World Series in Poker on July …

A newspaper snippet

Rae Ann has scanned and sent me an interesting newspaper snippet that is apparently going to be published on Sunday : Please don't ask me what it…

Left brain vs right brain

Click to get a more economical page with the animation. Is she rotating clockwise or counter-clockwise? If clockwise , your right hemisphere is more …

Abracadabra and M-theory

Over at neopets.com , the Lenny Conundrum #100 has already been judged. About 2,000 kids of all ages between 2 years and 90 years divided 10 millions…