Here is evidence that the ancient Britons not only knew of Pi, but had also had contact with the ancient Chinese. Or is it ancient southern Americans?. Some time travel may have been involved.
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
Effect of month of birth on later life - Oilers example
Here is a graph that I saw on X recently:
It is an example of how the month of birth can affect one's chances of participating in the higher levels of various activities. As you can see, the majority of Oilers were born in the last half of the year. Obviously, this is a small sample, but the effect has been reproduced in much larger samples in a large number of sports.
In both cases, it is thought that the children born near the end of the cut-off data for a given activity are disadvantaged compared to children born near the beginning of the cut-off. In sports that would mean kids born near the start of the calendar year have an advantage over those born near the end of the calendar year (e.g. in minor league hockey that would give more time for physical, intellectual and emotional development). Similarly for school, though the timing of the effect may differ, depending on when the school intake happens to be.
It is quite an intractable problem. Efforts have been made to address it by changing the timing of intake to the activity, but that just tends to move the problem to different parts of the year. Having two intake periods can help, but that creates administrative problems and cost issues (e.g. the need for more teachers).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It would be interesting to know if this applies to horse racing. A race for three-year-olds could have some horses that were just barely 3, and others might be almost 4. In horse physiology, that could make a big difference.
Anyway, that's my lead-in to flog a horse-racing related short story on Amazon.
A Dark Horse
The story is just $0.99 U.S. (equivalent in other currencies) and about 8000 words. It is also available on Kindle Unlimited and is occasionally on free promotion.
U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
U.K.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Spain:https://www.amazon.es/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01MDMY2BR
Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Here’s an interesting review from Goodreads:
(BTW, the writer has never met the reviewer and was not even aware of the review until very recently – You can look up the review on Goodreads, if you like)
A Dark Horse
Every gambler is
bound to run out of luck eventually, right?
By far my
favourite type of horror is psychological horror. I was quite pleased
with how Mr. Olausen frightened his audience without spilling a
single drop of blood or so much as hinting at anything gory. He knew
exactly what hints to drop for us that made us deliciously dread the
next scene simply by throwing out hints about who or what the dark
horse might actually represent. This is the kind of stuff I love
getting scared by, especially as Halloween approaches.
It
would have been helpful to have more character development in this
short story. While I certainly wouldn’t expect to see as much time
spent on this as I would for a full-length novel, I did have trouble
connecting to the main characters due to how little I knew about them
and how much their personalities seemed to remain the same no matter
what happened to them. If not for this issue, I would have felt
comfortable choosing a much higher rating as the plot itself was well
done.
I must admit to not knowing much about gambling at
all, so I appreciated the brief explanations the narrator shared
about how placing bets works and why some people have so much trouble
walking away from a bet. While I will leave it up to experts on these
topics to say how accurate everything was, I did enjoy learning more
about the main character’s addiction and what he hoped to gain from
betting on just one more game or race. It gave me a stronger sense of
empathy for folks in his position.
A Dark Horse – A
Gothic Tale was a deliciously chilling story for the Halloween season
and beyond.
Monday, 6 January 2025
Why were Geoffrey Hinton and John H. Field (Computing Science Researchers) awarded a Nobel Prize in physics
Why were Geoffrey Hinton and John H. Field (Computing Science Researchers) awarded a Nobel Prize in physics ?
Probably the simplest answer is that AI has a huge hype train rolling along, with upwards of a trillion dollars having been invested in the technology. Investors are beginning to have serious doubts about when and if the technology will ever pay off, in terms of doing useful things cheaper than can be done with current methods and technology.
A Nobel Prize is a high status award, which is great PR for whatever research project is under consideration, especially one that requires huge infusions of cash. There is no Nobel Prize for Computing Science; physics seems to be the category that comes closest (think of all the physics grads that work in AI and data science in general). The Nobel Prize in physics therefore gives reassurance to all those investors that AI is the real thing, and is is worth continuing to pour money into it. It also gives reassurance to all those students, to keep enrolling in the field (and the professors).
Does the Nobel Committee actually think this way? Maybe not, at least overtly. But they care about maintaining the Nobel Prize as something that the population in general cares about and hears a lot about (AI is always in the news). So, it makes sense for them to take a seat on they hype train too.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: This was originally a Quora post, but it did pretty well, so I thought I should make a blog of it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am presently working on a novel where AI plays a major role (about 80% finished). This short story is now the first chapter of that book. Just a FYI.
The Magnetic Anomaly: A Science Fiction Story
“A geophysical crew went into the Canadian north. There were some regrettable accidents among a few ex-military who had become geophysical contractors after their service in the forces. A young man and young woman went temporarily mad from the stress of seeing that. They imagined things, terrible things. But both are known to have vivid imaginations; we have childhood records to verify that. It was all very sad. That’s the official story.”
promotions, which occur periodically. Or, get it with Kindle Unlimited.
Amazon:
U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0176H22B4
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0176H22B4
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0176H22B4
France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0176H22B4
Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0176H22B4
Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0176H22B4
Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0176H22B4
Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0176H22B4
Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B0176H22B4
Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0176H22B4
Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0176H22B4
India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0176H22B4
Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B0176H22B4
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)