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While having a conversation with a friend yesterday, I was reminded of a video I had seen a few years ago about giving real time feedback to Microsoft software developers when they introduce bugs into code.
A quick search on YouTube and I was able to find someone who had posted it.
A couple of weeks ago I posted another one of those picture algebra maths puzzles. This time it was the Witches, Wands and Brooms Puzzle which had been doing the rounds on the Book of Face and the Interwebs in general.
If you have not had a go at solving the puzzle and registering your answer on the poll; Stop reading the solution, click on the link above and go do it now. 🙂
It has been a while since I posted one of these numeric picture maths puzzles. That is mainly because I have not seen any good or original ones recently.
Anyhow, this one came across the interwebs and it should make you think. Study the image carefully before you work out your solution.
I hope everyone had a lovely Easter Weekend, even if you probably had to stay home by yourselves.
The COVID-19 situation has changed the world we live in for the time being, but it has been an opportunity for people to find other ways to amuse themselves.
After 14 days, the Tour de Quarantine finishes. If you missed the previous days’ footage, check it out on the links below:
Thanks Brad Sohner on YouTube for making us laugh. Keep safe and well everyone.
Following on from last week’s Friday Funny: Tour de Quarantine: Stages 1 – 5, we have the next five stages for your viewing pleasure.
While none of us like the need for isolation and quarantine, it has given many creative people too much free time and the result is the many really funny videos are doing the rounds on the interwebs.
This series tickled my fancy as each year I become a Tour de France widower as my wife, Jennifer, watches the race footage every night. Credit to Brad Sohner on YouTube for making us laugh.
The current world situation has brought out some of the best online humour that we have seen in recent times.
You all know that my wife, Jennifer, and I love cycling and we recently found this hilarious series created by Brad Sohner on YouTube.
I saw this great video yesterday and had to share it.
Danny MacAskill is an amazing mountain bike cyclist who turns freestyle riding into an art form. His videos are always awe inspiring and funny (especially the bloopers at the end).
Earlier this month (a few days after May the Fourth) the team from the YouTube Channel FXitinPost released an unofficial short of their version of the lightsaber battle between Darth Vader and Obi Wan (Ben) Kenobi on the Death Star as Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca (RIP: Peter Mayhew) and C3PO & R2D2 escape.
If you have seen the movie Rogue One, the ending scene finally shows why Darth Vader was feared. Watching the original version of the fight between Vader and Kenobi, the fight seems pretty boring by today’s standards. This fan created reimagining is amazing and a much more in line with the recent movies.
Following on from last week’s Friday Funny: How do you like your Toast? here is another silly waste of time. Hey, but it’s fun.
This week’s question is “How do you draw a capital X?”
What is the most popular method…. let’s find out.
This is completely off topic, but a fun way to end the week.
So the question is “How do you like your Toast?”.
Do you like warm soft bread, burnt smoldering charcoal or something in between?
Happy Easter everyone. In Australia, Easter is accompanied by a four day long weekend, so hopefully everyone will get a break from work.
You would have seen that I recently served on Jury Duty. I was lucky to be assigned to a short three day case and was able to get back to work fairly quickly.
Last week, I mentioned having a chat with Jim in the US about Order of Operations and algebra mathematics problems. He sent me a link to a video on Order of Operations title “The Order of Operations is Wrong”. The video description does go on to explain that Order of Operations is “Morally Wrong, that is…”.
I actually agree which much of what the video says and wanted to clarify what I see as the issue with blindly (and sometimes incorrectly) following the Order of Operations mnemonic that you were taught at primary/elementary school.
This week started for me with a very interesting phone call. It was from a gentleman from the United States looking for algebra based educational materials. I thought he must have the wrong number and forwarded him to Winthrop Australia (a Perth based computer firm associated with the University of WA)*. I thought that they would be able to assist due to their association with the university and education.
Anyhow, they sent him back to me and during the second call, I realized that the caller, Jim, was talking about my Friday Funny posts which sometimes included algebra problems! Once we had worked out the common ground, Jim and I had a long chat about Order of Operations and adding negative numbers. Jim is part of a Facebook group and often posts puzzles for the others to solve.
He found the same problems that I found. Many people don’t know about Order of Operations, or do know, but cannot implement them correctly or just cannot add negative numbers. For more information see: Answer: Only for genius ?? 3 – 3 x 6 + 2 = ??.
That phone call prompted me to find a new graphic algebra problem for you to solve….
Today for the Friday Funny article I have decided to revisit a topic I posted about three years ago…. Our national sport: AFL or Australian Football League or Australian Rules Football or Aussie Rules or just Footy.
I am originally from the UK and was only introduced to AFL when I arrived in Australia as a 13 year old in 1981. I have never been a huge sports fan, but enjoy watching skilful athletes playing regardless of the discipline or code. FYI: We have seven football codes in Australia: Aussie Rules, Rugby Union, Rugby League, Football (Soccer), Gird Iron (American Football), Gaelic Football and International Rules (a Gaelic football & AFL mashup).
I wanted to share AFL with you again after my recent trip to Fargo when I showed some videos to one of the staff at the hotel and he was amazed by what he saw. It seems that many people outside of Australia mistakenly believe that Rugby is the biggest football code in Australia and don’t realise that AFL is completely different from Rugby (even if the ball is a similar shape).
I believe that by now most of you should know that I love Lego. I have always had Lego in my life as a kid and also as an adult.
In recent years I have used Lego Mindstorms to design and build robots to help me be a better robotics mentor for the school my son’s went to.
Even though both my sons have left the school for university, I still mentor for the robotics club and am also on the Robocup Junior Australia Western Australia committee.
For many years, when I have visited the US for conferences, there is always someone who makes a joke about the toilets flowing in the other direction in Australia. I am not talking about back up (unless there is really bad flooding), but the direction of the rotation as the water flows down.
The answer is yes, it does flow the other way. It is called the Coriolis Effect or Coriolis Force after the French Scientist, Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis who wrote a paper on the topic in 1835.
After all the fun on Twitter after the last Friday Funny: Sporting Maths Puzzle, I have found another one to challenge you with.
This one also comes from the Book of Face and showed up because some of my friends had commented on it.
Now, I will not say whether their answers are correct or not because last time I missed something and so what I thought was the answer was incorrect initially.
As usual, there is another mathematics and reasoning problem doing the rounds on the Book of Face. It showed up on my feed because some of my friends had responded on it.
Funnily enough a number of them commented with the incorrect answer. Looking at the other comments, there is a massive range of incorrect answers.
After the amazing success of my series of articles on the last maths problem to go viral, I thought it was time for another.
If you did not see the last one, check out the links below. The first link has the question and the answer poll, the rest were trying to explain the solution:
I am still amazed that only 56% percent of the almost 4,000 people who responded on the previous problem got it right.