Rain Cloud Cat

Nike USA Basketball Ad with Marvin Gaye

2008-08-18T10:07:00.001-07:00

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist

2008-08-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. It was published in 1995 but there is a new afterword by the author that was written in January of 2008.

This was a good book. The author put a lot of work into it. He says that it took him three years. It's long but he does a great job. So, if you're interested in Buffett, this is a good book to read.

I bought it for $19.00 at Borders but Amazon.com is selling it for less but their version doesn't have the afterword.

Buffet was not interviewed for this biography directly. It amazes me because there is just so much information the Roger Lowenstein compiled from numerous sources to create a flowing book.

Update: You can find the exact book at Amazon.

Flip a Coin or Take the $

2008-08-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

The findings are consistent with research on human behavior and responses to risk, said Martin A. Asher, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author. For example, psychologists have found that people are more averse to taking a risk when they are expecting to gain something, and more willing to take a risk when they have something to lose.
“If you approach a class of students and say, I’ll either write you a check for $200, or we can flip a coin and I will pay you nothing or $500,” most students will take the $200 rather than risk getting nothing, Mr. Asher said.
But reverse the situation, so that students have to write the check, and they will choose to flip the coin, risking a bigger loss because they hope to pay nothing at all, he continued. “They’ll take the gamble.”
The third co-author of the study was Blakeley B. McShane, a graduate student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

An interesting statistic that I found in this article.

Qik

2008-06-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

Qik is a cell phone video streaming site. Robert Scoble has made some interesting videos on his cell phone that are on the site. I like it because it plays so smoothly even though it's cell phone quality. [link]

Easy Problem

2008-06-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

You can do this one really fast in your head:

Haretown and Tortoiseville are 40 miles apart. A hare travels at 9 miles per hour from Haretown to Tortoiseville, while a tortoise travels at 1 miles per hour from Tortoiseville to Haretown.

If both set out at the same time, how many miles will the hare have to travel before meeting the tortoise en route?

Link

Answer in Comments

Math Proofs

2008-06-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

I'm reading this book called Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart and came across an interesting way to look at proofs.

Maybe you know the game, but at school in English we play this game where you start out with one word and try to make it another word by changing 1 letter at a time which will make an actual new word until you get to the word you're trying to make. Clear as mud?

Here's the example in the book. Go from SHIP to DOCK...

SHIP
SLIP
SLOP
SLOT
SOOT
LOOT
LOOK
LOCK
DOCK

I used to think of this as a word game but it's really a proof for changing ship into dock by making one letter changes and creating real words along the way. Mathematical!

Cool Birthday Puzzle

2008-06-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

Test your arithmetic skills with this series of calculations:

Write the number of the month in which you were born.
Multiply by 4.
Add 13.
Multiply by 25.
Subtract 200.
Add the day of the month you were born.
Multiply by 2.
Subtract 40.
Multiply by 50.
Add the last two digits of the year you were born.
Subtract 10,500.

If you made no mistakes, the answer should give your birthday in mmddyy format. Now test your algebra skills:

Can you explain why this works?

It worked for me..when I figure out how it works, I'll post a comment.
have a go at it!

you can probably find the answer by following this source link

Worlds Hardest Easy Geometry Problem

2008-06-02T21:39:00.001-07:00

Can sombody please help me out with this. I got it after hours of work a few months ago but now I can't seem to figure it out. You have to find x but you can't without drawing more lines. Also, you can't use trig. Here's the link to the source website: link