“ok is this math really useful though what’s the point of it existing does it matter or is there no practical application” alright. if you write a poem does it matter? Is there an application? What if I killed you
If the last digit of the notes when you see this is 0, vote option A. If it’s 1 or 2, vote option B. If it’s 3, 4, or 5, vote option C. If it’s 6, 7, 8, or 9, vote option D.
Saw (and reblogged) a Benfords Law post going around asking people to vote the first digit of the current number of votes, which is cool! There's something deterministic about it, though (explanation below cut).
So let's do a more chaotic (less predictable) version and see if it still works:
Please vote the first digit of the number of notes on the post directly above this one on your dash.
So if the previous post has 213 notes, vote 2. If there is no previous post or it has no notes, use the post below. If that also has no notes or would take too much scrolling, vote None.
Benford's Law (less deterministic version: please vote for the first digit of the number of notes on the post ABOVE this one on your dash)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
None
Voting ended onFeb 14, 2023
Then please reblog so more people can see this and we can try to get a better distribution!
Explanation:
For the version where you vote the first digit of the number of votes on the current poll, it's deterministic (up to human/computer error) because:
Based on the total number of votes at the end, say N, you can predict (without Benford's Law) how many votes each digit should have, assuming everyone votes correctly, because you know how many numbers less than N have each digit as their first digit.
For example, when I voted and reblogged there were roughly 28000 votes, and the numbers for digits 3-9 were the same, which could have been predicted from the fact that the number of numbers <28000 that start with a 3 is the same as the number of them that start with a 4, etc: they are all 1,111:
For 3 it's 1000 (for numbers 3000-3999) + 100 (for numbers 300-399) + 10 (for numbers 30-39) + 1 (for the number 3), so 1111.
Same for those that start with 4: 1000 (for numbers 4000-4999) + 100 (for numbers 400-499) + 10 (for numbers 40-49) + 1 (for the number 3), so 1111.
The number for 1 would be the same 1,111 as above except with an extra 10,000 for numbers 10,000-20,000, so total 11,111.
And for 2 would be 81,111, for the same 1111 as before but plus 80,000 for 20,000-28,000 (where 28,000 is the total number of votes).
There would be some error due to people voting incorrectly, or timing issues (someone voting before seeing the page update from the previous person's vote), but the distribution would be mostly predictable.
(Though this is not exactly the right distribution, because in the poll they all basically had 6% and the calculation says it should be 4%; I wonder if a nontrivial number of people are accidentally clicking last digit instead?)
Story time: So I had just recently discovered that dyscalculia (or math dyslexia) is a thing, which is a learning disability that affects your ability to do math and other number-related things. I’m definitely sure that I have it, but I didn’t tell anyone about it. I didn’t think anyone would know what I was talking about, and I’ve been out for school for a while and have never needed to use math.
Anyway, I’m working at the movies one day and I’m ringing up this woman’s popcorn order. The computers we use at the register will automatically calculate the change for you (which was a life saver for me!) But one day I hit the wrong button or something. I asked my coworker what to do and he said that it was fine, but I would just have to calculate the change myself.
Now the woman in line must have seen the look of horror on my face because she says to me “You can do it! I’m a math teacher, you can do it!”
I thought this was very sweet but also hilarious. I don’t know how she thought telling me she was a math teacher was going to help me, also I appreciated her belief in me but she has not seen me do math!
So I laughed it off and said “Yeah, numbers are definitely not my strong suit. If math dyslexia was a thing I’m sure I have it.” To which my new math teacher friend very confidently replied “It is.”
My coworker ended up doing the calculation for me and we just moved on. I am still terrible at making change and I have no intentions on practicing. But the point of this story is that I’m just glad that that math teacher is out there. Because I’m not sure how many math teachers will actually acknowledge that dyscalculia exists. For my whole life I struggled with math classes and didn’t learn about this disability until after I graduated college. If I had known before, if my teachers had known before, it probably would have saved me a lot of struggle.
So to that math teacher who so strongly believed in me that day, I just wanna say thanks. Your students are very lucky to have you.
if you ever feel like you're not "smart enough" for STEM or didn't do that great in school, i just wanna let you know that i failed algebra 2 THREE TIMES and dropped my high school physics class the FIRST WEEK...
and NASA chose me to student research with them.
so what i'm trying to say is that STEM is for EVERYONE. if school wasn't the easiest for you and you're not the strongest in math, don't let that stop you from pursuing STEM. working hard for goals makes you a great scientist.
screw that stereotype that all STEM majors are geniuses who were building robots and knew how to work a microscope at 3 years old.
STEM IS FOR EVERYONE! BECOME A FREAKING SCIENTIST! YOU CAN DO IT!
... if you wonder where I started to doodle the drawing of schröinger's cat in the klein bottle...
... It was on that non-linear regression visualization.
Just as I indulged in thinking about what this non-linear regression thing might depict in real life (hint: some non-linear causality stuff... so to speak.. errr... primarily conservation of momentum... ) I started to randomly draw a möbius strip.
And then I somewhat imagined a cat in that möbius strip and drew that cat body above the part of the möbius strip. (That's one of the pragmatic reasons why the cat is very dark there. The other reason is for pure aesthetical aspects... )
And then I had a cat floating in a möbius strip.
This led me to adding a klein bottle around the cat-möbius strip bundle.
This is literally recursive mindfucks...
The way this drawing of Schrödingers cat in a klein bottle emerged (process of creating it) is more art than the actual resulting artwork/drawing (the created/creation)
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This train of thought partially reminds me of the aphorism:
'The whole is more than the sum of its parts, as it contains both the parts as well as the interaction patterns between the parts.'
all the photos of him are like this, I love that this guy understood he had been born with the face of a wizard or axe murderer and just leaned fully into it
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jacobvanloon
