What Will My Baby Look Like Genetics Generator

November 2021

[0-9] digit puzzle
Rearrange the digits [0-9] to make three numbers: x,y,z such that x+y=z.

October 2021

September 2021

52 card pickup
How many times will you need to pickup a randomly jumbled deck if each time you discard the face-up cards?

Venn Diagrams
What is the overlap between US States and Chemical Elements?

August 2021

Missile Command
What is the probability of survival if each missile battery selects its own target?

July 2021

June 2021

Horse Jumping
How many different ways can you configure seven fence components?

Recycle Logo
Are you sure you are looking at the correct logo?

May 2021

April 2021

Two Dice, Same Score
What are the chances that your total from a pair of dice matches your friend?

Texas Hold'em Poker
You are more likely to get a Royal Flush than a King-High Straight Flush!

One Billion
Two numbers multiplied that do not end in zero.

March 2021

February 2021

January 2021

Cluedo
What is the best starting hand?

Rolling Two Dice
Are you more likely to roll a twelve before two sevens in a row?

CES 2021
There will be no CES showfloor this year.

December 2020

Alternate d4 labelling
How can you label a four sided die using only one number per face?

Two Decks Puzzle
If you deal from two shuffled decks, in parallel, card by card, what is the probability that at least one pair of cards matches?

HTTPS
My site will now be exclusively dispensed over HTTPS.

November 2020

October 2020

September 2020

Hitting the Sun
It's practically impossible to fire a rocket and hit the Sun.

August 2020

July 2020

Firework Science
A quick look at the ballistics and stability of aerial fireworks.

June 2020

Gold Cubes
How to fairly distribute cubes of gold.

Toxic Sludge Puzzle
How many people will it take to empty the sludge in an hour?

Second Place?
What is the probability that the second ranked team makes it to the final?

Perfect Roots Puzzle
What is the smallest number that is a perfect square, cube, and fifth power?

May 2020

50:50 Sock Puzzle
How many socks do you need to take to have a 50% chance of getting the pair you want?

711 Price Puzzle
Four items whose sum of prices is the same as their product.

April 2020

March 2020

Bucket of Dice
How many dice do you have to roll to have 95% confidence you'll get at least one six?

Blackjack
What is the probability of dealing a Blackjack?

Sum of Digits
Can you write code to sum up all the digits in numbers 1-N?

Finding Nemo
How long does it take Nemo's forgetful friend to find him?

February 2020

January 2020

Gambler's Ruin
How easy (or not) is it double your money in a casino?

CES 2020
Notes from my visit to the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show.

December 2019

The Best Full House
What is the best Full House you can be dealt in Poker? (Warning: You'll probably get it wrong)

String Selfie
Winding a single thread around a collection of pins to make an image.

November 2019

October 2019

Self Similarity
A guest post from Rami Luisto about self-similarity.

Sum Free Sets
How can you arrange numbers into sets so that no two elements adds up to a third?

Four Points Puzzle
How can you arrange four points so that there are only two distinct distances between any pair?

September 2019

Venture Beat Article
Thank you to my friend, Dean Takahashi, for writing a moving article about my condition.

Elf Chalkboard Puzzle
If math elves replace pairs of numbers with their differences, will the result be odd or even?

August 2019

Pearl Bracelet
What is the relationship between the diameter of a bracelet and the diameter of the pearls that make it?

July 2019

June 2019

April 2019

March 2019

February 2019

Uncut Spaghetti
Can you connect each square on a grid with a single thread?

Drones and Helicopters
Why are we trying to scale-up drones and not just use helicopters? It's unmerited!

AIME Math Puzzle
A fun little problem from a past American Invitational Mathematics test.

Christmas Tree Lights
Something weird happens when you wrap lights tightly around a conical tree.

Bogus Science
What is really happening when you throw a cup of boiling water into frigid air?

Ten square units
How can you make a ten square unit square on a chessboard?

January 2019

CES 2019
Notes from my annual pilgrimage, and thoughts for the future.

Rotagrams
Anagrams made by rotating letters.

December 2018

November 2018

Stereograms
What are autostereograms, and how do they work?

Mirrors
How big a mirror do you need to be able to see all your body, and what happens to the size of your reflection if you back away from a mirror? Also, what is the Venus Effect?

October 2018

Slot Machines
The psychology of why people love to play slot machines.

September 2018

Overlapping Disks
What is the relationship between the percentage overlap during an eclipse, and the separation of the objects?

August 2018

July 2018

Verlet Simulations
Simple physics simulations of cloth and rag-dolls based on Verlet Integration.

Poor Customer Service
Why do companies not understand how poor customer service, whilst seemingly advantageous in the short term, is damaging in the long term?

June 2018

May 2018

Six Dice Betting Game
What are the chances that rolling six dice will result in four distinct numbers?

How digital cameras work
And the clever math that turns their color-blind sensors into full color images (plus some bonus calculus and interpolation).

How analog TV worked
The clever technology around how analog TV protocols were created, and why there was an odd number of lines on an old TV screen.

March 2018

Turning Water into Wine
How to turn water into wine (with and without recursion). Calculating Levenshtein distances.

Sock Puzzle Revisited
What is the probability of pulling out matching pairs of socks from a drawer in darkness?

Nine digits puzzle
Arrange the digits 1-9 to make a nine digit number such that the first digit is divisible by one, the first two digits are divisible by two, the first three divisible by three ...

February 2018

Cribbage Scores
What is the distribution of all possible cribbage scores? (And what is the connection between Cribbage and nuclear submarines?)

Pancake Numbers
A classic problem involving the optimal way to flip a stack of pancakes into sorted order using just a spatula (prefix reversal). A young Bill Gates co-wrote a paper on this, and his upper bound solution was the best known solution for almost 30 years!

Linus Sequence
A mathematical sequence named after a famous Peanuts cartoon character.

Superbowl Helmet Puzzle
A quick geometry puzzle for a shape that looks (a little) like a football helmet.

January 2018

Moravec's Paradox
Predicting the future is a crap shoot and, ironically, what appears to be hard is easy, and what appears easy, is really hard.

Shortest Crease Problem
A classic problem about how to calculate the shortest crease by folding the corner of a piece of paper (and how most calculus text books get this wrong).

CES 2018
Notes from the show this year.

December 2017

November 2017

Incremental means and variances
How to keep a rolling track of the average and standard deviation of a stream of numbers, without having to reprocess the entire set, and minimize the chance of precision loss.

October 2017

Multi Armed Bandit
What strategy should you employ when faced with a series of parallel experiments that have unknown outcomes?

August 2017

Poor Customer Support?
GoDaddy took one of my websites offline for six months, and only offered compensation of one month of future hosting costs if I were to renew!

June 2017

May 2017

April 2017

March 2017

February 2017

January 2017

CES 2017
Notes and thoughts from my visit to CES 2017.

December 2016

Ackerman Steering
How, and why, the front wheels of your car turn at different rates.

November 2016

Grazing in a circular field
How long a rope do you need to allow a goat to graze half a circular field, if it is tethered to the circumference?

Aligned Clock Hands
How many times a day do the Hour, Minute, and Seconds hands of an analog watch align perfectly?

October 2016

September 2016

Poker Odds
What is the relationship between the chances of a poker hand occuring and its rank?

Wire Gauges
Why do wire gauge numbers go up as wires get thinner?

August 2016

Lagrange Points
Orbital mechanics, and Lagrange Points (things most physics text books get wrong).

Moscow Math Olympiad Puzzle
How can you and a friend publicly communicate about cards you are holding without a third person knowing?

Balanced Field Length
What is your best strategy if your plane experiences an engine failure during take-off?

July 2016

June 2016

May 2016

Piano Keyboards
Why are the black and white keys of a piano spaced the way they are?

April 2016

Baseball Card Collecting
On average, how many baseball cards do you need to buy to ensure you get a complete set?

Eiffel Tower
Is it true that the air around The Eiffel Tower weighs more than the tower?

Solar Eclipses
What's the difference between a total and an annular solar eclipse?

March 2016

February 2016

Grazing and Calculus
What is the optimal shape for a rectangular grazing paddock?

Two nugget problem
How do you determine the two heaviest nuggets (out of sixteen) in the least amount of weighings?

d20 stopping puzzle
Roll a d20, and collect the value value shown, or pay to roll again?

Russian Roulette
How do the odds of this game change with more chambered rounds?

January 2016

Hamming Codes
Detecting (and correcting) errors in digital signals.

CES 2016
Consumer Electronics Show 2016.

December 2015

November 2015

Mazes
Generating mazes with back track recursion.

Golf Balls
How much does the addition of dimples adjust the Volume and Surface Area of golf balls?

October 2015

September 2015

August 2015

July 2015

Fan Direction
If you are trying to cool a room with a fan, is it better to suck or blow?

June 2015

Space Needle Climb
I'm climbing the Seattle Space Needle to raise money for cancer research.

Roulette Wheel
Why are the numbers on a roulette wheel distributed the way they are?

Carnival of Mathematics
I will be hosting the August 2015 edition of the Carnival. Do you have any interesting facts about the number 125?

Standard Deviation Puzzle
What number can you add to the set {1,2,3} so that the standard deviation remains the same?

The Pardoner's Puzzle
Can you connect sixty-four towns with eight straight lines, and what is the connection with Harry Potter?

Five Circles Puzzle
Is it possible to draw five circles over a grid of 5x5 points so that at least one circle passes through every point?

May 2015

April 2015

Geometry Puzzle
What are the dimensions of an inscribed rectangle with the same area as an inscribed equilateral triangle?

March 2015

January 2015

Buckets
What is the optimal shape for a bucket?

CES 2015
Notes from my visit to the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show.

December 2014

Deal or No Deal?
Is there an optimal strategy for playing this game?

100 prisoner escape
A classic prison escape puzzle featuring 100 prisoners, 100 boxes and 100 tickets.

Dealer Button Bias
How much bias is there in selecting the position of the dealer by the first person to turn over an ace?

Impossible escape?
Can you use math to escape from, what seems like, an impossible prison escape problem based on coins and a chessboard?

November 2014

Shuffling Algorithms
Have you been writing shuffling algorithms incorrectly your entire life?

Gray Codes
What are Gray codes, and why are they so useful?

Giant iPad
If all the iPads in the World were combined into one giant device, what would it look like?

Triangular Trusses
What is the minimum number of crosses braces you need to make a rectangular grid stable?

October 2014

Red/Black Gambling Game
If you draw cards from a shuffled deck, earning $1 for every black card turned over, and losing $1 for every red card, when should you stop?

Langford's Sequences
Arranging pairs of numbers so that the gap between them is distinct.

Angle of Repose
Why are volcanoes and sand dunes shaped the way they are?

September 2014

Jello and Lasers
If you shine a laser through a grid of Jello cubes, how many does it pass through?

Optimal Rope Swing
Where should you let go of a rope swing to get the furthest distance into a lake?

Flag of the World
If we merged together all the flags in the World, what would it look like?

Message in a bottle
Send and receive one-time anonymous fortune cookies to random people in the World.

August 2014

July 2014

Carving Cylinders from Spheres
What is the largest volume cylinder it is possible to carve from a solid sphere? Also, so you know about the napkin ring problem?

Bad Hashing Function
Random trivia about converting words to numbers using the substitution cypher A=1, B=2 ...

June 2014

Optimal Packing
How to efficiently tessellate various numbers of circles into a square.

Coffee Time Challenges
Bite sized problems just hard enough to be tackled over a good cup of coffee.

May 2014

DataGenetics Greatest Hits
I've been writing my blog for three and a half years. Here are the top ten most read articles (per year).

Why do I blog?
I've been writing my blog for three and a half years. Why do I do it? How do I do it?

Amidakuji
Known as 'Amidakuji' or 'Ghost Leg' - The clever way that Asian nations randomly shuffle outcomes using just pen a paper.

Friday the 13th
The 13th of any month is more likely to fall on a Friday than any other day of the week!

April 2014

Holographic Replicators
What is the chance of escaping from a pack of angry, laser toting, monsters using a holographic replicator?

Geometric Mean
Calculating geometric means in SQL server without using aggregate functions, and why widescreen TV aspect ratio is 16:9

Minimum Jeopardy
What is the lowest, theoretical, score it is possible to score in a game of Jeopardy?

Compound Interest
How long does it take to double your money, and just what is 'The rule of 72'?

Fuel Consumption
Why we should really be quoting fuel consumption figures as 'gallons per mile' and not 'miles per gallon'.

March 2014

Roller Coasters
Why are the loops on roller coasters never circular?

The Beauty in Mathematics
What is the connection between Moby Dick, accurate clocks, ski-jumps, roller coasters and cog wheels?

Bounding Rectangles
The mathematics of repairing bullet holes in a wall using the smallest rectangle of drywall.

February 2014

January 2014

Our Atmosphere
How the density of our atmosphere changes with altitude.

CES 2014
Notes from my visit to the Consumer Electronics Show 2014, in Las Vegas.

Escaping from a monster in dark room
How do you escape from a monster in a dark room who has handcuffed you and given the key to a rat who runs off?

December 2013

Mind Reading Card Trick
Can your computer read your mind and make a card you were thinking about disappear?

Pixel Scalars
What algorithms do video game emulators utilize to scale up the low-res images, used on old computing devices, to modern hi-res standards?

November 2013

Dumbwatches
I don't want a smartwatch, I want a dumbwatch!

Visual Cryptography
How to create perfect secret messages that can be decoded using just your eyes.

Monster Soup
How to avoid being turned into monster soup.

QR Codes
How do QR codes work? How much is it possible to distort one and still have it readable?

October 2013

How to escape a monster (using calculus)
You are sitting in a rowing boat in the middle of a circular lake. How do you escape from a smart monster on the shore who can run four times faster than you can row?