Showing posts with label Knowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knowledge. Show all posts

The thing about Random

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People understand the word random by itself. However, they tend to misuse the word, most notably in facebook; "random photo", "random uploads" etc.

A quick look at dictionary.com explain random as
"proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern: the random selection of numbers".
In statistics term, it means choosing an object from a pool of samples with each object having the same probability of being selected.

Now, if you were to upload some random photo, you should not be selecting the photo yourself. Instead, you could give each photo in a pool a number ranging from 0 to 66. Then throw a fair die twice and select the photo based on the outcome of the die i.e. First throw give you a 1, second give you a 5, you proceed to upload the photo with number 15 assigned to it previously. Of course, you would be nuts if you are doing this when uploading photos to facebook.

Now that you know you have been using the wrong word for quite some time (yes you, you and you.), time to kick away that habit; a better word might be miscellaneous instead.


 

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Draw on a donkey

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A young man bought a donkey for $100 from a farmer. The donkey died. The owner thought of a way to get his money back. He arranged a draw for the donkey, sold 100 tickets at $2 and collected $200.

The winner of the draw came to collect the donkey, found that the donkey was dead and made a complaint. The owner refunded back his $2.

The morale? Some insurance companies collect your premium. When you make a claim, they reject the claim (or refund back your premium) on the grounds of non-disclosure or other reasons. Look for an insurance company that is honorable in paying claims, and in treating customers fairly.

Source.

 

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Interesting Facts about Formula1 race

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Here are some interesting facts about Formula 1

1. An F1 car is made up of 80,000 components, if it were assembled 99.9% correctly, it would still start the race with 80 things wrong! 02. Formula 1 cars have over a kilometre of cable, linked to about 100 sensors and actuators which monitor and control many parts of the car. 03. An F1 car can go from 0 to 160 kph AND back to 0 in FOUR seconds !!!!!!!

2. F1 car engines last only for about 2 hours of racing mostly before blowing up on the other hand we expect our engines to last us for a decent 20yrs on an average and they quite faithfully DO....thats the extent to which the engines r pushed to perform...

3. When an F1 driver hits the brakes on his car he experiences retardation or deceleration comparable to a regular car driving through a BRICK wall at 300kmph !!!

4. An average F1 driver looses about 4kgs of weight after just one race due to the prolonged exposure to high G forces and temperatures for little over an hour (Yeah thats right!!!)

5. At 550kg a F1 car is less than half the weight of a Mini.

6. In an F1 car the engine typically revs upto 18000 rpm,(the piston travelling up and down 300 times a second!!) wheres cars like the palio, maruti 800,indica rev only upto 6000 rpm at max. Thats 3 times slower.

7. The brake discs in an F1 car have an operating temperature of approx 1000 degees Centigrade and they attain that temp while braking before almost every turn...that is why they r not made of steel but of carbon fibre which is much more harder and resistant to wear and tear and most of all has a higher melting point.

8. If a water hose were to blow off, the complete cooling system would empty in just over a second.

9. Gear cogs or ratios are used only for one race, and are replaced regularly to prevent failure, as they are subjected to very high degrees of stress.

10. The fit in the cockpit is so tight that the steering wheel must be removed for the driver to get in or out of the car. A small latch behind the wheel releases it from the column. Levers or paddles for changing gear are located on the back of the wheel. So no gearstick! The clutch levers are also on the steering wheel, located below the gear paddles.

11. To give you an idea of just how important aerodynamic design and added downforce can be, small planes can take off at slower speeds than F1 cars travel on the track.

12. Without aerodynamic downforce, high-performance racing cars have sufficient power to produce wheel spin and loss of control at 160 kph. They usually race at over 300 kph.

13. The amount of aerodynamic downforce produced by the front and rear wings and the car underbody is amazing. Once the car is travelling over 160 kph, an

14. F1 car can generate enough downforce to equal it's own weight. That means it could actually hold itself to the CEILING of a tunnel and drive UPSIDE down!

15. In a street course race like the monaco grand prix, the downforce provides enough suction to lift manhole covers. Before the race all of the manhole covers on the streets have to be welded down to preventthis from happening!

16. The refuelers used in F1 can supply 12 litres of fuel per second. This means it would take just 4 seconds to fill the tank of an average 50 litre family car.They use the same refueling rigs used on US military helicopters today.

17. TOP F1 pit crews can refuel and change tyres in around 3 seconds.

18. Race car tyres don't have air in them like normal car tyres. Most racing tyres have nitrogen in the tyres because nitrogen has a more consistent pressure compared to normal air. Air typically contains varying amounts of water vapour in it, which affects its expansion and contraction as a function of temperature, making the tyre pressure unpredictable.

19. During the race the tyres lose weight! Each tyre loses about 0.5 kg in weight due to wear.

20. Normal tyres last 60 000 - 100 000 km. Racing tyres are designed to last 90 - 120 km (That's Khandala and back).

21. A dry-weather F1 tyre reaches peak operating performance (best grip) when tread temperature is between 900C and 1200C.(Water boils boils at 100C remember) At top speed, F1 tyres rotate 50 times a second.

22. Ferrari is the best car ever designed and the team-up with Michael Schumacher is the best the sport has ever seen.

 

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Long Bets: The Arena for Accountable Prediction

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The purpose of Long Bets is to improve long–term thinking. Long Bets is a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake.

In a layman term, the foundation acts as a middle man to account for the stakes of a bet or prediction between two parties. For example, a Predictor can put up a bet of $1000 stating that in 20 years time, soccer will be replaced by chess (boring) as the most popular sport in the world. Then, he will wait for a Challenger to challenge him to the bet. And in 20 years time, whatever the results, the total bets will be donated to any organisation up to the winner's discrete.

One of the featured bet announced recently is the one made by Warren Buffet where he predicts that,

“Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S & P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses.”

The Challenger is made up of three people from Protege Partners, LLC which focus is on hedge fund.

You might ask, who is Warren Buffet and why is his bet featured here? Well have you been living in a cave?

Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist. He is regarded as one of the world's greatest stock market investors, and is the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. With an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world as of February 11, 2008.

 

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Have you heard of Oxbridge?

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I came across a forum thread where the question was asking the University we would choose if we are given a choice, notably the Harvest, Oxford or Cambridge.

One person mentioned that he could not get into a normal University, much less the Harvard and Oxbridge. He was "laughed" at by another forumer for using the word Oxbridge and indirectly signify that that was the reason he could not get into one.

Well, guess who has the last laugh?

Extracted from Wikipedia,

Oxbridge was originally a fictional composite of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the term is now used to refer them collectively, often with implications of their superior intellectual and social status.

The term 'Oxbridge' has arisen partly from the many characteristics that the two universities share. The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge are the two oldest universities in England. Both were founded more than 750 years ago, and between them have produced a large number of Britain's most prominent scientists, writers, and politicians, as well as noted figures in many other fields. Moreover they both share a similar collegiate system, whereby the University is a 'cooperative' of its constituent colleges. The competition between Oxford and Cambridge also has a long history, dating back to the days when Cambridge was founded by dissident scholars from Oxford.

 

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Thomas Schelling

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Wall Straits's "The Prehistoric Investor" book was written by its founder Curtis J. Montgomery. The book talks mostly about human's prehistoric mindset (i.e caveman) vis-a-vis modern stock market. How our mind works and how it did and did not evolve from our caveman mentality.

One of the many extracted quotes inside caught my attention. It is concept thats so true in human; beautifully explained and expressed by Thomas Schelling, an Economist.

How should we conceptualize this rational consumer whom all of us know and who some of us are, who in self-disgust grinds his cigarettes down the disposal swearing that this time he means never again to risk orphaning his children with lung cancer and is on the street three hours later looking for a store thats still open to buy cigarettes; who eats a high calorie lunch knowing that he will regret it, does regret it, cannot understand how he lost control, resolves to compensate with a low calorie dinner, eats a high calorie dinner knowing he will regret it, and does regret it; who sits glued to the TV knowing that again tomorrow he'll wake early in a cold sweat unprepared for that morning meeting on which so much of his career depends; who spoils the trip to Disneyland by losing his temper when his children do what he knew they were going to do when he resolved not to lose his temper when they did it?

People behave sometimes as if they had two selves, one who wants clean lungs and long life and another who adores tobacco, or one who wants a lean body and another who wants dessert, or one who yearns to improve himself by reading Adam Smith on self-command. The two are in continual contest for control.

Thomas Crombie "Tom" Schelling (born 14 April 1921) is an American economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (shared with Robert Aumann) for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis."

Schelling received his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1944. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1951.

 

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Re: Can we do away with street name when writing a letter?

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I did a little experiment in my previous post here if we can do away with the street name when mailing out a letter in Singapore.

I mailed out the letter on 19 Mar 08. Yesterday night, I received the same letter in my mailbox. Conclusion, it works.

For landed property address, you can just address the letter to the name of the addressee and the postal code. For HDB address, do not forget to write the house number.

Disclaimer: This is an orthodox way to testing the system. I would still suggest that you write out the full address when you are mailing out your important letter. Anyway, whats so difficult with writing few more words on the letter? lol

 

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Can we do away with street name when writing a letter?

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Singapore was originally divided into 28 postal districts in 1950, with a number being allocated to each district, for example, the Orchard Road area was in District 9.

277 Orchard Road
Singapore 9

This was superseded by a new four-digit system in 1979, with the last two digits representing a sector in each district. There were in total 81 sectors.

277 Orchard Road
Singapore 0923

In 1995, this was replaced by a six-digit system, in which every building was given its unique postcode, the first two digits of which represented the old sector.

277 Orchard Road
Singapore 238858

Now, usually when we mail out a letter we would write the address as such.

MoonHub Corporate Service Department
Hubbing Building
Ayer Rajah
S449335
I came across a blog that Singapore Post is so "advance" that it still manages to send the letter to the correct addressee if your address is as such.

MoonHub Corporate Service Department
S449335
Effectively eliminating the street name as it has the postal code.

I have decided to do a little experiment. This time round, with a HDB address, I will be mailing a letter to myself.

Collin Yeo
#xx-xx
Sxxxxxx
I will mail out the letter on 19 Mar 08 which is tomorrow. Stay tuned.

 

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