Category Archives: Idea Polish Level: 1

Interesting Observation: Average Day

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,
When someone asks you what you like to do, you usually don’t reply with the things you do most often, whether because they’re not fun (school, work), everyday (eat, sleep), or boring to talk about (watch TV, use the computer, play outside, etc., although they can be interesting to talk about, they aren’t very noteworthy). The more usual reply would be something more specific and interesting, like I would say “Swim Team and Piano”, because those are more interesting replies than “using the computer”. In general, it’s the highlights that we talk about, because for the average person the average day is merely average : )
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(Yes, I wrote this whole thing primarily so that I could say that last line 🙂 )
 ~ George

Money Code

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,

Just a little idea I had a bit ago

In a movie about two criminals, one criminal send the date of the next heist to the other using a money based code. They send a check with the date of their next heist in the check’s value (e.g. $6.23 – 6/23/__). At the end of the movie, after pulling off an elaborate heist, one criminal opens his vault to find a that everything is gone besides a check for $4.01. April Fools Day.

Ponderings from Math Class

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas, , ,

One of the things that has me so tied up for time is my math class, precal/trig in one semester (5 credits!). However, during class I often think of random questions or observations, and I think that instead of making a post for every single one, it’d be better if I just make this single post and keep updating it. If I make a post based on something in here, even better! Quite a few of these will probably only make much sense in my head, but since half the point of this blog is to make people think about things they wouldn’t usually think about, I think it’ll work :). Anyhow, on to the ponderings…

(1) First off, every time I hear the word “pondering” I think of a joking definition made by a past teacher of it. Someone asked what pondering meant, and he replied something like, “pondering is what it’s called when someone wanders around making ponds, the word explains itself, you see.” 🙂

(2) What if 4 > 4 was somehow a valid statement? (((I actually have a way to make it so, but it involves something that I’m not anywhere near posting)))

(3) 1 = 1/1 = 2/2 = 3/3… Somewhat similar to the last question, what if it wasn’t exactly equal, or in some way it wasn’t true. They actually aren’t exactly the same, after all; you type them different, so if you were to measure the bit count of them they wouldn’t be equal

(4) How can you have $i ? Is it equal to $1? $-1?

(5) A joking quote from the teacher: “I’m pointing big!”. What would that actually mean? “Point” means a specific place, but point “big” could mean a general direction, or what?

(6) Interesting Observation: It is impossible to plot a perfect graph, because there is always a smaller number to calculate

(7) Interesting Observation: In precal, you are told that the only numbers you have to worry about being undefined are dividing by zero (infinity), even roots of a negative number (i), taking log of a negative number (also i), and taking log of zero (infinity again). However, you also can’t do this: 0^0, which is undefined (note: not infinity or i, “indeterminate”; even Wolfram Alpha can’t figure it out: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0%5E0). So if you had a problem in which you needed to find the domain of 0^x, the answer would be {x|x<>0}. Also, a^0 = 1 = a/a, so 0^0 = 0/0, which is also indeterminate.

 

(8) Funny comment my teacher made: “Now back to more pleasant things, like math!” (after a conversation about exponential growth and Ebola)

 

(9) log base a of x = y is equivalent to a^x=y, so long as x>0 and x≠1, both of which are impossible (at this level of math?), for example, log 0 = y would mean that 10^SomeRealNumber = 0, but what if it worked? Same with log (-100) = x, which means 10^x=-100, although I think that one is possible with imaginary numbers

 

(10) Interesting Observation (that I’m positive lots of people know): You can have any base for a number system (ours is base-10) and still use decimals, it just depends on when you shift over a decimal. For example, our base 10: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (one 10), 11 (1 and one 10), 12 (2 and one 10)…; base 8: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (one 8), 11 (1 and one 8), 12 (2 and one 8), 13, (3 and one 8)…; also, base 12: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c (one c), 11 (1 and one c), 12 (2 and one c)….

It can get pretty hard to imagine, but you could do it, especially if you were raised on it

 

(11) 0 < 8 > 0 is a perfectly valid statement, but is there any context in which it would be useful? At the very least it’s symmetrical 🙂

 

(12) It’d be interesting to create a problem that has an exact answer and is made up of whole numbers, yet the exact answer is 20 digits long (and not just a irrational number, like e, or a fraction, like 1/3). Also, if you wanted to be mean, you could say that the answer has to be exact, and nobody would trust that their calculator wasn’t just rounding to the 20th decimal, causing everybody would think they just had to restate the problem instead of giving an exact decimal.

 

More to Come!

~ George

Story Idea: The Hidden Extra

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,

What if someone got the rights to a bunch of different popular books and inserted the same extra into each book? No one would know where in the book the extra is, and perhaps they wouldn’t even know which books have the extra in it! It would become a little “Easter egg” for those who found the “Hidden Extra” in their book, especially since not all the books would necessarily have it (if it was inserted after the book became popular). Eventually, maybe the hidden extra guy could create a story that somehow links all the books and hidden extras together. Also, who knows? Someone might have already done this, but hasn’t revealed it yet. Brandon Sanderson has started something like this, inserting the (extra) character Hoid into at least three of his different book series, and (I hope) is planning to explain how they connect. As cool as it may be for Sanderson to be connecting his own books’ universes together, imagine how awesome it would be to have the universes of the books of several different authors all connected!

~ George

Story Idea: “Spoiler:…” part 2 of 2 – “…Everyone Dies”

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,

Please read part one before reading this, so you can understand the conversation this came out of.

After thinking about the last idea, the “Spoiler: Someone Lives”, this came to mind. What if there was a book which had a cliffhanger in which everyone is about to die, then the book ends. Actually, there are a number of books like that, and when you read one you just have to wait for the next book to see how they save themselves from dying. But what if the sequel, when published, was simply “They all died” or something similar. Then there was never another book afterwards, and “They all died” was simply the ending, not a fake ending. Perhaps the book would have a preview of the next book at the end, and it was simply:

  • TITLE: They all died.

Or perhaps:

  • THEY ALL DIED: The End.

I can just imagine how horrible that would be. I don’t know what the story would be like, but it’d sill be interesting to see if someone could pull it off. Perhaps the story was about a bunch of immortals who’s dearest wish was to die. Then at least the ending would be good. Either way, “Spoiler: They all die” would indeed be a huge spoiler.

~ George

 

Story Idea: “Spoiler:…” part 1 of 2 – “…Someone Lives”

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,

While me and a few friends were talking about the Ranger’s Apprentice books, someone said “Spoiler: Someone Dies”. If you’ve read the books, then this would be an extremely obvious spoiler, because the series has many wars and fights. I then said “Spoiler: Someone Lives”. After laughing, I thought: What sort of book, outside of the horror genre, would it be a spoiler that someone lives? How could you craft the book in such a way that at any point in the book it is a legitimate spoiler that someone actually lives? Remember, this isn’t a horror book, and in general most people think that the hero will do something miraculous and they will all be saved. How could you trash that thought, without making the book a horror book? I don’t know, but it’d be interesting.

~ George