I doubt that story about the theme. I have trouble believing the same man who wrote the music for Enter the Dragon and Cool Hand Luke (and arranged the theme for "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." prior to working on Mission: Impossible) would think that's incidental music.
@Matt #59: "The MLA is nice, if you're formatting a newspaper and need every space. If you actually care about readability, use two spaces."
The readability hit is unlikely to be too much. Virtually every book published uses a single space after sentences, and they don't have the same space constraints as newspapers. (Pull a couple down from your bookshelf and see for yourself). We'd have to believe that pretty much every publisher of every novel, newspaper, and magazine are all super space conscious enough to degrade the readability of their own product.
They actually made it with a clear plastic ball, and they didn't bother to film it with the clear ball so people could see what's going on iside? Seriously? Sheesh.
I also disagree with any characterization of this study as "pigeons are smarter than humans", when in fact all it shows is that "some humans are dumber than pigeons". A subtle but important distinction.
I think the article was poorly worded. The first time I read it, I read this sentence: "If the pigeon pecked the right key of the remaining two, it earned some grain." to mean "If the pigeon pecked the key on the right hand side, it earned grain. Which isn't a correct model of the MH problem. I think it's safe to assume the researchers did correctly understand and model the MH problem, and it is the article that is ambiguous in the description, it should have stated "If the pigeon pecked the correct key of the remaining two, it earned some grain."
0.3333... is not 1/3rd and 2/3rd is not 0.66666 - those are just an approximates we use for convenience.
No, they're exactly equal to 1/3 & 2/3. That is the entire purpose the bar notation was created, to allow an exact notation for fractions like 1/3 in decimal notation. If bar notation was not used in that way, mathematicians would have had to invent some other way to represent 1/3 in decimal.
Furthermore they are not "approximates we use for convenience". Approximates are decidedly inconvenient for countless engineering and scientific problems. Significant digits are important.
The readability hit is unlikely to be too much. Virtually every book published uses a single space after sentences, and they don't have the same space constraints as newspapers. (Pull a couple down from your bookshelf and see for yourself). We'd have to believe that pretty much every publisher of every novel, newspaper, and magazine are all super space conscious enough to degrade the readability of their own product.
Shame on Henry for his lack of class.
I think the article was poorly worded. The first time I read it, I read this sentence: "If the pigeon pecked the right key of the remaining two, it earned some grain." to mean "If the pigeon pecked the key on the right hand side, it earned grain. Which isn't a correct model of the MH problem. I think it's safe to assume the researchers did correctly understand and model the MH problem, and it is the article that is ambiguous in the description, it should have stated "If the pigeon pecked the correct key of the remaining two, it earned some grain."
0.3333... is not 1/3rd and 2/3rd is not 0.66666 - those are just an approximates we use for convenience.
No, they're exactly equal to 1/3 & 2/3. That is the entire purpose the bar notation was created, to allow an exact notation for fractions like 1/3 in decimal notation. If bar notation was not used in that way, mathematicians would have had to invent some other way to represent 1/3 in decimal.
Furthermore they are not "approximates we use for convenience". Approximates are decidedly inconvenient for countless engineering and scientific problems. Significant digits are important.