Ensuring that something is genuinely random is a lot harder than people think. For example, I once managed to develop a technique for flipping a (50p) coin with sufficient consistency (of spin rate a… (View Post)

That's only true if the order of the cards is genuinely random. DJL's interesting point is that, in practice, poor shuffling technique is a very inefficient means of getting to a random dec… (View Post)

Twenty-nine (29) more ships and boats of various sorts (tankers, cargo ships, tug boats) hit in the waters around Crimea. One of the tug boats hit had a damaged vessel previously hit under tow. Russi… (View Post)

If someone falls behind on their mortgage and it is repossessed and sold, they may be left with enough capital that the state can avoid paying them many benefits for a while. And of course we're… (View Post)

It's a measure of how quickly things can change once a tipping point is passed. The difficult question is always, "how close is the tipping point?" We may soon see this with respect to… (View Post)