Area Illusionist Plays With Numbers, Viewers

A few days ago illusionist Derren Brown announced he was going to predict the results of the UK national lottery.

Here’s how it went down.

 

When the explanation came out for how it was supposedly done, it was laughably silly.

Brown claims he had a panel of 24 people write down their predictions, and he took the average. It’s the “wisdom of the crowd” theory, don’t you know.

Like all good scams there’s an element of truth to it. This “wisdom of the crowd” idea is real.

If you have a group of people guess (for example) a person’s age or the size of an object, then the average of the crowd’s guesses tends to be reasonably accurate. And the more people in the crowd the better it is.

Here’s why that won’t work for lottery numbers: the crowd can see the person or the object about which they’re guessing. And a person’s age and an object’s size are not random numbers generated after the guesses were made.

The lottery is random. Random guesses are random. The average of random guesses is still random.

If this method worked then you’d be able to pick the winning number each week by looking at previous results. There are any number of “systems” already based on this idea, for which any number of scammers will happily relieve you of your money. And none of them work.

So what does this mean? Not much. It means that Brown’s a clever illusionist and this was a clever illusion. And it means he hasn’t really revealed how he did it.

What he has done is create a market for scammers to take advantage of gullible people, by selling them number sets supposedly generated using this method. Expect to see those appearing in your spam filter very soon.

But I’ve got a better idea. Brown has apparently been told he’s not allowed to play the lottery anymore. If that’s true, and if he really thinks he can do this, then I’ll personally submit his next ticket for the modest fee of $100,000.

How about it, Derren?

Mathematical Proof of Republican Ignorance

This time they’ve gone too far.

On Thursday, 10 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against an official (but non-binding) resolution declaring today, March 14, 2009 (3/14/09) as Pi day.

You can read the whole sad story here.

Screwing up the world economy is one thing, but really. This is just a travesty.

It’s nothing more than a Luddite knee-capping of a noble attempt to bring an awareness of Math to the Masses.

What do we expect though, from the crowd that gave us eight years of anti-science medievalism and Sarah Palin?

Never mind. It’ll always be Pi day in our hearts.

Joyful Symmetry

I received some very cool gifts this Christmas.

My lovely wife got me Death From The Skies, the new book by the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait. And my friend Shannon got me Of Pandas and People, the Intelligent Design textbook at the centre of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial.

I’ll be providing reviews of these separately once I’ve finished them. A preview: I liked one more than the other. I’ll let you guess which.

The prize for nerdiest gift goes to my sister, who made a donation to the charity Common Hope, and thereby got the right to name a mathematical symmetry group. Which she named after me.

A symmetry group is the collection of operations on a shape that preserve its symmetry: like reflections and rotations.

For example a square has symmetry under 90° rotation, and vertical and horizontal reflection:

(The darkened wedge is just to show the new position of the square after each movement).

Of course once you get beyond simple geometric shapes like squares and triangles it all starts getting a bit complicated. And all the simple ones have names already.

So my symmetry group corresponds to the elliptic curve described by the formula:

y² + 769xy + 773y = x³ + 787x .

Truly.

It’s called the Matthew Kippen Group.

I was toying with the idea of putting a picture of the curve here, but it’s tricky rendering a 2-dimensional picture of a 3-dimensional object embedded in a 4-dimensional space.

If anyone out there does know how to do this, please let me know. I'd be most interested.

Until then, you’ll just have to use your imagination. I’m sure it’s very pretty.

A Very Probable Controversy

Brisbane schoolteacher Jim Dooley has taken a group of kids to the races as part of a maths lesson on risk and probability.

What a truly brilliant idea.

Horse-racing odds are a fascinating application of probability theory. And where better to learn about how it works, and how much it's a mug's game, than there in the midst of sweaty panic and soul-crushing dismay that is the pointy end of the gambling world?

He should follow it up with a trip to the casino.

They can talk about the probabilities of the roulette wheel, the fact that in the long run the house will always win, and point out the desperation in the eyes of the pensioner feeding the last of her housekeeping money into a poker machine.

If it's done right the kids will learn a bit of maths, and learn a lot about the risks, personal and financial, of gambling.

But like so many brilliant ideas, it's been roundly criticised by self-appointed moral crusaders.

In easily one of the most inane comments I've ever heard on this topic, Australian Family Association state secretary Michael Ord said "one may question why you would need to involve gambling to teach maths".

Has this guy ever studied maths? If he has, he clearly wasn't paying attention.

Probability theory is all about flipping coins, choosing lottery numbers and the chances of getting a Royal Flush.

You can't study probability without studying gambling. Gambling is why probability theory was invented in the first place.

And when you get down to it, it's just about the only practical application it actually has.

Tattoo

Here's a photo of the tattoo I got in Byron Bay last week.



It's a Möbius strip, one of my favourite mathematical constructs.

My first tattoo, but probably not my last.

Much thanks to Dave at Sharky's for his sterling work.

Lock up your calculators

Our company actuarial dinner was held last night at the Westin hotel in the city. The purpose of this annual event is to celebrate those who have completed their actuarial exams in the past year, and to welcome actuaries new to the company.

These poor unfortunate souls are "celebrated" by being required to provide the entertainment for the evening. In the past, this has included recreations of films such as Star Wars and The Da Vinci Code, some occasionally inspired but generally lame comedy, and more than a little cross-dressing.

Last night the entertainment took the form of game shows, namely The Rich List, Spicks and Specks and The Amazing Race. All rendered with a unique actuarial (read: nerdy) bent.

Eg for The Rich List, we had to list the digits of π. One person could actually recite 17, and no, it wasn't me. For Spicks and Specks there was a rousing game of "Actuary or Serial Killer" and for The Amazing Race . . . um, well I'd kind of stopped paying attention by then. It was some kind of charades thing, I think.

Anyway, after a couple of hours it was about as raucous as a room full of actuaries tends to get. Which is, you know, not particularly.

Having said that, I'm told the dregs were kicked out of the downstairs bar at around 2am. And on a school night too. Tsk tsk.

News For Nerds

Here's some of the interesting things that got my attention this week.

The Atlantis mission is up there sticking some solar panels on the International Space Station. And they took a copy of Firefly with them. Well, you would, wouldn't you. Nothing to look at out the windows.
Link

Now this is cool. The kilogram, which for years has been defined by a lump of metal sitting in a Paris vault, is to be redefined as the mass of a specific number of silicon atoms. My rough calc puts the number at about 21 septillion (that's 24 zeroes, kids).
Link

Some uber-geeks are working on producing wireless electricity. Because apparently we need more electromagnetic radiation in the air.
Link

Some new and interesting uses for mathematics this week. Now it can be used to predict the outcome of war. I wonder if we can rig the methodology so it always works out that both sides lose.
Link

And finally . . .

A second season of Jericho has been officially confirmed after CBS caved in to formidable fan pressure. Well, it's sort of a half-second-season. Hooray.
Link