It seems quite easy to take a decisión when we know all data of the various offers.
But when we have only a part of them, if we don’t set out the problem in a correct way, we come across the ‘election paradox’.
In our story, Laudrup has to take a decision on two offers, but he only knows perfectly one of them. As we advance on the solution, the choice becomes more difficult.
It's a secret between the club owner and the director of a sports newspaper. But it begins to run by SMS.
All will lead us to the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio.
By the way, we'll find spirals, sunflowers, pine cones, shells, roots and leaves, methods to win on sport bettings, violins, the Vitruvian man... ah! and a bit of Maths, of course.
December is time for making calculations. We must add up the monthly incomes, and subtract the usual costs, and other expenses not so common: the Christmas dinner, the gifts for family...
To do this, we use calculating machines. This way our mind doesn't get tired, and we can devote our thoughts to higher things.
All of us may think that calculators were invented by Mr. Casio, Mr. IBM or Mr. Hewlett-Packard. Nevertheless, it was a Galician man, Ramon Verea, who invented and patented it, in 1878.
Do you think he received any help from the Spanish government? Any prize or distinction? Did he do the patent in Barcelona, La Coruña or Sevilla? Did he become a millionaire? Is his calculator of iron and steel, weighting 26 kg, and named Verea Direct Multiplier, exposed in the science museum at San Sebastian, or Valladolid?
It was two centuries ago, but things have not changed since then. Ramon, with a brilliant academic record, was denied the scholarship that allowed him to study in Santiago de Compostela. So in 1855 he emigrated to Cuba, and from there he moved later to New York, Guatemala and Buenos Aires. He never returned to his homeland, and he died destitute in Argentina.
During this journey around the world, he had time to work as an engineer, a journalist, a translator, and an inventor. He directed for more than 10 years a newspaper in New York.
His invention was patented in the U.S.A. He got the recognition of a medal at the World Exhibition of Inventions in Cuba. And his calculator (we couldn’t say it's a 'pocket ' calculator), is displayed at the headquarters of IBM in White Plains, New York.
So when you use a calculator machine this month, don’t forget about its magnificent inventor. It will be the best private tribute that we can do for him, because he hasn’t got any public one.
Friendship has been one of the areas
in which the extension of social networking has had the greatest impact.
The dictionary defines friendship as
"Personal affection, pure and selfless, shared with another person, which
is born and is strengthened by the deal". Maybe we should revise this
definition, or maybe not.
Today, thanks to Internet, we are
connected with our lifelong friends, and with the most recent ones. Friends who
have drunk with us many beers, and other ones with who we haven’t taken any at
all. Friends who were there in difficult times, and others that I’m sure they
will be there in the future. Friends who share likes, and others diametrically
different. Friends from the school, institute, college. Co-workers and family,
and in spite of it, folks. And some new acquaintances installed in the category
of friends, and may be they’ll be so, because of the definition.
From time to time we look askance at
the friends counter of our friends. Sometimes with curiosity, other times with
some envy, or indifference, or admiration. We are used to measure everything,
to quantify all aspects of life, as if the amount were the important, and
friendship doesn’t escape from this contemporary fashion.
Some people are even obsessed with
it. My new entry in Matifubol is dedicated to them, and to everybody in general.
Hope you like it: Breakfast at Les Deux Magots.
And thanks for being there, even if
you don’t feel like reading it. Or if you don’t like it.
Mathematical refreshment for summer Football and happiness. An easy and refreshing problem for this summer, that helps us not to forget exponentiation.
Weekofcloudsover Palestineclouds, cloudsaroundthe rescue, clouds over theeurozonerecession. And now somebody also manufacturesreal clouds indoors...
Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde has developed a way to create clouds indoors by carefully regulating the space’s humidity, temperature and light. The fluffy white clouds are summoned up temporarily using ...
a fog machine, creating a surreal experience in the middle of a room. Smilde has created his clouds inside different types of locations, ranging from corridors and hallways, to bedrooms and common spaces.
A new experiment confirms that light acts either like a particle or a wave at once. This is an important question, searched by scientists for decades, who tried to discover the dual behaviour or the light
One can only hopenow thatthis experimentresults inimprovementsbenefit thewhole population...
