Comments for Arcsecond

Comment on 0*log(0) = 0 (for real) by Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 15:34:42 +0000

why not define log(0) as a new thing like square root of -1 if i ?

Comment on On the Height of a Field by Maxwellfire

Maxwellfire — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:14:26 +0000

How about taking a 5 gallon bucket of water, and dumping it on the field, then seeing where the water goes and how fast. That should pretty much tell you if it is angled.

Comment on Spinning Room (puzzle) by Paul

Paul — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:46:58 +0000

Op – never mind. All four off or all four on will release you. Got it.

Comment on Spinning Room (puzzle) by Paul

Paul — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:45:24 +0000

How come you don’t have a state for “all buttons wrong”? Oh right – its covered by that symmetry. But I don’t get it. 3/1 is very different from 1/3. One is at least 2 clicks away from freedom, the other isn’t. I like your diagram, but I see 6 states.

Comment on Spinning Room (puzzle) by yohbs

yohbs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 08:02:13 +0000

A frind told me this puzzle a few months ago, and upon solving he presented a follow-up: What if there were n buttons instead of 4 placed in circle? For which n is it solvable and what would be the strategy?

I struggled with this for a while and gave up, but I’d love to see a solution (I thought in the direction of representing the state by its Fourier coefficients – thus rotations are simpliy a global phase change shift)

Comment on 14 Billion Cupcakes, Or: Why You Don’t Know What To Do With Your Life by Mark Eichenlaub

Mark Eichenlaub — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 05:56:07 +0000

No, I’m just American. Americans do not generally make that distinction. In fact American dictionaries define “further” as meaning “farther”.

Comment on 14 Billion Cupcakes, Or: Why You Don’t Know What To Do With Your Life by Jim

Jim — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:39:17 +0000

Interesting site. I found it while reading an answer to a physics question on another site. In you answer you consistently made the error of using further instead of farther. Further is degree, farther is distance. Several science people made this mistake. Does further have a special meaning in physics?

Comment on On the Height of a Field by Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:23:23 +0000

Somthing that would be easier is to borrow a laser level, then measure the distance to ground.

Comment on On the Height of a Field by Matt Springer

Matt Springer — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 05:22:04 +0000

At least one hiking-style GPS I’ve used also has a little pressure altimeter which it uses to supplement the actual GPS height data.

Offhand I don’t know what the relative accuracy is for unassisted GPS, but it should be an easy and interesting exercise to find a known change in height measured with a tape measure and systematically use the GPS to make the same measurement. Then you can redo this on different days, and see how consistent it is.

Comment on On the Height of a Field by Mark Eichenlaub

Mark Eichenlaub — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 20:50:17 +0000

Yes, from the website for the GPS, it looks to me like they do compare to a database when recording heights.