Tuesday August 31, 2004

Solutions for problems or problems for solutions ?

I've always found it easier to discover problems that fit a known non-trivial solution methodology than to find a solution for a fixed problem. If you know some cool way of doing stuff, keep your eyes and ears open and find a good problem which can use it: it's unlikely people have tried to apply the same technique to the problem. On the other hand, if you start with a fixed problem, the obvious approaches have already been tried and the problem has either been solved or is very hard.

Carver Mead says the same thing in this interview

(2004-08-31 07:05:10.0) Permalink

Thursday August 19, 2004

W-by-Al ratio

here's a puzzle I asked our TSOtool team a few months ago:

Let there be 2 contestants in an election, say W and Al, and Al wins by getting n votes to W's m votes (n > m). What is the probability that as each vote is counted, Al is always ahead of W ? i.e. after every step of the counting, Al has to have more votes than W. Assume votes are counted in random order. Never mind that W becomes president instead.

(2004-08-19 23:26:24.0) Permalink

Saturday August 14, 2004

Henri Cartier-Bresson

I was not aware of Henri Cartier-Bresson before his death, but
read about him afterwards. The Hindu last week carried a
beautiful picture by him on page 1, showing Nehru announcing
Gandhi's death at Birla house in 1948.

Thanks to Tim Foster for this blog entry pointing to a
photograph collection by Cartier-Bresson. The Nehru picture
is on page 12, along with several other pictures from India
around this time.

(2004-08-14 00:07:34.0) Permalink