Puzzle sunday (14)

Houses and schools, puzzles and tools, scaffolds and posts, maths and hosts that's what this blog's all about, and here is todays puzzle for you to check out.
I know, I've had a hard day and I'm sublimating.

what the hacks?

Part of my time as a blogger goes to read interesting technical blogs. Hacks is not about Psychology, not about Biology but it does say something about parenting, math and mind performance.
Do you understand this?
find . -name "*.php" xargs grep -i "special"
That'll find only the php files and grep them for special.
You could also pipe ps through awk and use xargs to kill all of a certain process...
But everybody probably already knew that.
Posted by: A.Nonny.Mouse on February 25, 2007 at 08:26 AM
I found this new speak on a topic about commands for programmers. Imagine how my spellchecker reacts...

binary principle and elephant puzzle

How is a puzzle like the elephant puzzle used to scaffold? (in education, but you can do it among friends too) Well, for one the trick is that you don't need to know how to solve every independent puzzle (exceptions disregarded) to know how to solve a puzzle. For some puzzles, understanding laws is necessary or useful. How switches can be written down as either on or off may be helpful for solving a binary puzzle. Also, the idea of how to list numbers may be important. 00001 comes before 00010 and after 00000.
In the list 00, 01, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111 notice that the last digit changes every time from 0 to 1, before the left digit can change. This also is the case with the elephant puzzle.
This is how a puzzle gives deep insight of maths and logic. Deep because it is a direct experience. It makes a connection between a concept in your head and a visual tactile experience in your hands.

Bayesian maths for intuition

I read an article today that reflects my ideas on thinking. Brain patterns make noise, says Pouget, but the noise makes sense, he calls it "variability". The noise follows a pattern that can be predicted through Bayesian mathematics. It would explain why intuition appears after some time. It would be the result of an accord between neurons. These Bayesian patterns would make sense without looking as if they make sense.
This remembers me the time I was learning mathematics. One teacher made me sigh and I didn't understand much that year. Another teacher was able to explain the amazing relationships that I failed to see the year before. I learned maths and I learned that who teaches makes a difference and changes whether you perceive yourself as a possible mathematician or not.