In honor of Honest Abe’s birthday today (2/12), we pose the following essay question regarding the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the most famous executive orders of all time. Was President Lincoln’s historic proclamation constitutional? That is, did Lincoln have the constitutional or legal authority to liberate the slaves without direct authorization from the Congress?
As part of his PhD dissertation in urban planning, Geoff Boeing has developed a computer program that visualizes one-square mile of the road network of any major city in the world. (Check out his cool website here.) By way of example, below are the square-mile street network visualizations of midtown Manhattan, the central Place de l’Étoile in Paris, the medina quarter of the ancient city of Tunis in North Africa, and downtown Atlanta:
Image Credit: Geoff Boeing
In honor of Black History Month, we are reposting this hand-drawn visualization of demographic data created by W. E. B. Du Bois in the year 1900. You can find more such turn-of-the-century data visualizations here. (Hat tip: digg.)
Credit: W. E. B. Du Bois
Why do the designs of the Dr Pepper and Squirt soda cans change less frequently (i.e. are more stable over time) than the designs of Pepsi and Coke cans?
Hat tip: Michael Sandberg
Monday Math Day?! Meet Robert Fathauer and Henry Segerman, authors of the Dice Lab and creators of “skew dice” (pictured below)–strange-looking dice that still generate fair odds. In their words: “When tossed, a fair die yields its various numbers or symbols with equal probability, regardless of details of the surface or the toss. The shapes of dice are based on polyhedra, solids whose faces are polygons. To ensure fairness, each face of the polyhedron should have an identical relationship to the other faces …”
Just in case, here is a short explanation of the mathematics of their skew dice: “Considerable thought went into the numbering of the dice. The starting point was locating the largest number opposite the smallest number (on opposing faces), the next largest opposite the next smallest, etc. This convention is widely followed in dice design. The next priority was to distribute the numbers as uniformly as possible. That was accomplished by balancing the sums of the numbers on each group of faces surrounding a vertex … Note that the average numerical value per face for an n-sided die is (n + 1)/2.” (Hat tip: Cliff Pickover.)
Facebook was launched from Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room 13 years ago today (it was called thefacebook back then), yet there is still no DISLIKE button after all these years. But when should the billionaire CEO celebrate Facebook’s birthday: when he first registered the URL for thefacebook.com, when he created the first Facebook profile while the site was in beta, or when Zuckerberg and his fellow cofounders filed the legal paperwork to incorporate their company. (Thanks to Dino Grandoni for pointing out these alternative Facebook birthdays to us.)
One out of twelve ain’t bad? (via tumblr)
In our next class, we will consider the law and ethics of two separate promises depicted in the movie “The Social Network”–the informal coding agreement between the Winklevoss twins and Mark Zuckerberg as well as the informal partnership between Zuckerberg and his best friend Eduardo Saverin. In summary, the movie “The Social Network” depicts two ill-fated promises. Soon after the Facemash fiasco, the Winklevoss twins and their partner Divya Narendra introduce themselves to their fellow classmate Mark Zuckerberg, and they proceed to pitch him an idea for an online social network/dating website: the Harvard Connection (later renamed ConnectU). In the movie version of these events, Zuck tells them “I’m in” without hesitation, but then, in the very next scene (!), Mark and Eduardo negotiate an informal partnership agreement with the purpose of launching a “clean and simple” social network, a rival website that Mark would eventually christen “thefacebook.” Assuming the veracity of the movie version of these promissory events, the key question is thus this: are either of these oral agreements legally binding? In addition, we will also debate whether humans should be allowed to sell blood to vampires. (FYI: check out this podcast on this esoteric topic.) That is, are there any voluntary and consensual contracts that the law should refuse to enforce as a matter of policy? If so, how should courts draw this legal line?
Image Credit: Pearson Education
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BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH
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Making it big in business after age 40
Reasoning about reasoning, mathematically.
I don't mean to sound critical, but I am; so that's how it comes across
remember the good old days...
"Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences." - Sylvia Plath
a personal view of the theory of computation
Logic at Columbia University
Just like the Thesis Whisperer - but with more money
the sky is no longer the limit
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