jonp

>> "...but I can add value I think."

I think that's the point. The comment about the spelling mistake didn't add any value to the discussion. It was distracting and a little rude.

As to why yours was downvoted while others' similar comments weren't: I guess it's a bit random. Sometimes I'll downvote that sort of comment, sometimes I won't. But it's never based on username.

This sounds a little like http://stickk.com

The figure quoted of 78 is what's known as "period" life expectancy. It's life expectancy from birth based on mortality rates in 2008, without any future improvements.

In practice death rates are expected to continue falling over time. Looking at "cohort" life expectancy which allows for expected future improvements can give a considerably higher life expectancy.

Also, it's not enough to look at the average. If life expectancy is 85 then you shouldn't plan to die at 85. It's more like rolling a die and having an age of death of any of 66, 77, 82, 88, 92, or 100 [1]. Maybe you need no savings, maybe you need lots. It's hard to plan for this without an annuity.

[1] worked out a while ago so that it has the same mean, variance and four higher moments as life expectancy for a UK mortality table.

I like it.

One suggestion: on the "name your site" page tell people the rules for site names. I first tried a number and got told it had to start with a letter. Then after my second attempt I was told it had to be at least 6 letters. Third time lucky.

And me. I'm running a 10k race starting at 10am.

People regret things they didn't do more than things they did.

I can't tell if we're disagreeing or just at cross purposes.

In the code above the random number is uniform(0,1), the standard random number in most languages. So each individual death is Bernouilli, although you don't need to know the word Bernouilli. Then this leads to a binomial distribution for a hospital as a whole.

But the binomial assumption doesn't need to be known or explicitly built into the model. It's effectively an emergent property of the individual deaths.

I would. I've sent you an email.

I was thinking that they probably just simulated each individual patient by picking a random number and seeing if it's less than the death rate.

So the number of deaths in a hospital is just

  sum([random()<deathRate for i in range(numPeople)])

and they can do the analysis without needing to know what a Bernouilli or Binomial distribution is, even though these both feature in the problem.

I don't think there's anything particularly topical about death rates here in the UK right now. The author together with Michael Dilnot presented a radio show "More or Less" which covered lots of topics of this sort, showing how maths can aid an understanding of the world in general and current affairs in particular.

Their book "The Tiger That Isn't" (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tiger-That-Isnt-Through-Numbers/dp/1...) is excellent and includes some other examples around sample size and regression to mean.

One thing that struck me from the article was how computers and Monte Carlo simulations have lowered the barrier to entry for statistical understanding. It seems much simpler to run this sort of simulation than to understand the intricacies of different probability distributions.

PG's "The Power of the Marginal" (http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html).

Clickable links:

Sudoku solver: http://norvig.com/sudoku.html

Spelling corrector: http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

One book I'd recommend is "1089 and all that" (http://www.amazon.com/1089-All-That-Journey-Mathematics/dp/0...).

I've bought copies for friends and family whose maths backgrounds range from school to degree level and they've all enjoyed it.

It's not a textbook, more a conversational account of a few topics the author has found interesting through his life from a young boy to an Oxford don. It's very readable and the author's delight in maths and problem solving shine through

I was intrigued by the reference to "Ovid’s frank advice on meeting women at the theater". This seems to refer to the "Ars Amatoria" which is an interesting read in its own right.

Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Amatoria

Full text (English translation):http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Artoflovehome...

If I were 25 years younger I'd like to be introduced to Processing (http://processing.org/). I say that because my interest in programming developed because I wanted to know how how to draw interesting patterns on a screen; and I liked the mathematical aspects of that sort of program.

I think the answer in your case will similarly depend on the interest of the kids. Is the question for a general school class or for a few kids with particular interests?

He's a colleague of Kevin Warwick, someone who a former tutor of mine described as "a buffoon with a good line in hoodwinking the media into thinking that what he is doing is cutting-edge science". (http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2000/09/38467?cu...)

Croquet. When played properly/competitively it's very different to the casual backyard game. To play well requires a nice mix of physical skill with complex tactics and decision-making. A disproportionate number of serious players are scientists/engineers/mathematicians/etc.

"Despite its satirical nature, some of the things that have featured in Loony manifestos have become law, such as being able to vote at 18, "passports for pets", and all-day pub openings."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_P...

Since The Sheep Market http://www.thesheepmarket.com/ paid people on Mechanical Turk 2c each for their sheep drawings I guess this means he's got nearly $16,000 of free labour so far.

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuths_up-arrow_notation#Introd...) describes how it can be extended without limit. And there's are numerical examples at the end of that section demonstrating how. And this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentation) focusses specifically on the next step on "pentation".

I'm not aware of any "real-world" applications of tetration in the way that eg exponentials can describe certain physical or economic processes. But it does have some genuine uses in pure mathematics such as calculating the upper bound of some numbers. It's not just making big numbers for the sake of it.

Tetration is used to express Graham's number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grahams_number) which appeared in the Guinness book of records as the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof.

There's currently a 3 hours old story with 13 points in position 27; ie near the bottom of the front page.

I'm pleased he thinks that bees will survive.

Even 80 wasn't that exceptional.

In 1910 there were over 200,000 people in England & Wales aged over 80; about 1 in 170 of the population.

(Calculations based on data from http://www.mortality.org/)

That's really neat.

I hit the same problem of crossing edges when doing this a while ago (in Python rather than JavaScript).

Rather than trying to get everything done automatically by the code I added the ability to click and drag a point. So the algorithm gets you close to a good layout and you can then make adjustments to avoid unwanted crossings.

It reminds me of an old HN comment "think cyborg, not robot" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164833).

Help my understanding: is this really an example of game theory?

I thought that game theory was about making decisions in which your success depends on the choices of others.

In the original secretary/dowry problem the values of your choices are random. In this case the gas prices aren't random but the strategy doesn't depend on considering the choices made by the gas station owners in setting those prices.

So while it's a nice solution (and one I've used myself when looking for an apartment) it doesn't seem to me to be an example of game theory.

Or P=0.

The author's first two articles on Dubai:

http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N16/dubai.html

http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N17/dubai.html

Could someone explain what "recess on Thursday (yes, like elementary school)" means? Thanks.

29021960 appears starting at digit 713.

Wikipedia lists Khaled, Algerian raï musician; Richard Ramirez, American serial killer; Tony Robbins, American motivational speaker as being born on 29 February 1960.

Oddly searching for 29021960 doesn't return a result. But searching for 2902196 does and shows there's a zero after it.