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Friday, June 24, 2016

Definition of Definition

One Stop OneLook


A plethora of punditry

"If you have a word for which you'd like a definition or translation, we'll quickly shuttle you to the web-based dictionaries that define or translate that word. If you don't know how to spell the word, we'll help you do that too. No word is too obscure: More than 21 million words in more than 1096 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook search engine.

What can you do at OneLook.com?
Define words:
Type a word into the search box on the front page to retrieve a list of dictionary web sites that define that word. Be sure "Find definitions" is selected.

Translate words:
Type a word into the search box and select "Find translations" to retrieve a list of dictionary web sites that have translations of that word into other languages.

Find words:
Type a pattern consisting of letters and the wildcards * and ? to retrieve a list of words matching your pattern."


OneLook.com


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Monday, June 20, 2016

Does Butter Fly?

Not Birders - Butters?


North American Butterfly Association
The North American Butterfly Association (NABA) is, by far, the largest group of people in North America (Canada, United States, and Mexico) interested in butterflies.

[Butterflies - North American Butterfly Association Home Page Graphic]

Here are some quotes from the FAQ:
How many kinds of butterflies are there?
There are approximately 20,000 species of butterflies in the world. About 725 species have occurred in North American north of Mexico, with about 575 of these occurring regularly in the lower 48 states of the United States, and with about 275 species occurring regularly in Canada. Roughly 2000 species are found in Mexico.
How many kinds of butterflies can I find near where I live?
In most parts of the United States, you can find roughly 100 species of butterflies near your home. The number is higher in the Rio Grande Valley and some parts of the West, somewhat less in New England. As one goes northward into Canada the number decreases, while as one goes southward into Mexico the number greatly increases.
How long does a butterfly live?
An adult butterfly probably has an average life-span of approximately one month. In the wild, most butterflies' lives are shorter than this because of the dangers provided by predators, disease, and large objects, such as automobiles. The smallest butterflies may live only a week or so, while a few butterflies, such as Monarchs, Mourning Cloaks and tropical heliconians, can live up to nine months.

Also See:
An Obsession with Butterflies

"Just living is not enough, said the Butterfly. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. "

-Hans Christian Anderson (1805-1875)



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Friday, June 17, 2016

Unicode is Huge

More symbols and letters


This free download lets you see and select more characters in the Unicode set. The Unicode Character Grid shows all assigned characters and private use characters in Unicode 6+.



BablePad

Here's a blog covering Scripts, Unicode, Character Encoding and BabelStone Stuff
BableStone Blog


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Thursday, June 16, 2016

Gambling for Tuition

Casino tutoring


An education will probably increase your lifetime earnings. Why not make that probability work for you? Or not.


Teaching probability can be challenging because the mathematical formulas often are too abstract and complex for the students to fully grasp the underlying meaning and effect of the concepts. Games can provide a way to address this issue. For example, the game of roulette can be an exciting application for teaching probability concepts.
In this paper, we implement a model of roulette in a spreadsheet that can simulate outcomes of various betting strategies. The simulations can be analyzed to gain better insights into the corresponding probability structures. We use the model to simulate a particular betting strategy known as the bet-doubling, or Martingale, strategy. This strategy is quite popular and is often erroneously perceived as a winning strategy even though the probability analysis shows that such a perception is incorrect.

The simulation allows us to present the true implications of such a strategy for a player with a limited betting budget and relate the results to the underlying theoretical probability structure. The overall validation of the model, its use for teaching, including its application to analyze other types of betting strategies are discussed.


Illustrating Probability through Roulette


More Roulette strategy and statistics:
To Be Ahead And Quit


The Laymans Guide to Probability
"An in-depth but easily readable guide on probability theory, covering various aspects of the theory with a bias to gambling games and strategies. Includes working examples in an excel spreadsheet."



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Thursday, June 09, 2016

Hold the Book in Your Hand

DaVinci and friends


It's close to impossible to be able to physically handle a classic text by Mozart, Jane Austin or others.

There is a way to get pretty close. Look at:
Turning the Page



This was brought to my attention by
BookofJoe.com


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