Sleepy Sunday

After the busyness of yesterday, I needed a break. Today was much calmer, though still interesting. I slept in until about 9. Brunch was served starting at 11, so I spent the next two hours reading. For brunch, I had some bagels and some conversation. The person I was talking to had gone into the Church of Scientology yesterday. We talked about religion. If religion makes you feel better, that's just fine. If, however religion becomes an excuse to hurt people or to take their money, that is wrong. Killing people for religious reasons is still killing people. The person I was talking to was from India. Religion has become a major factor in the conflict between India and Pakistan. 

After brunch, I did my laundry. Unfortunately, everybody else had the same thought. I had to wait a long time for a washing machine, and then for a dryer. During the wait, I read. I read The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Not only did it have these rewritten legends, but also discussion of them. After I did my laundry, there was a safety meeting. It was, in my opinion, not very useful. Most of the points had already been covered. I already knew that it was a bad idea to leave expensive electronics sitting around unattended. I already knew that the campus police could help. Perhaps these points had not been made clear to other people somehow, but I personally felt that the time spent in the meeting could have been better spent elsewhere.

Over dinner, I talked with a fellow student, Connor, about various logic problems. Here are two of the ones mentioned.

• There are four people, each with either a black or a white hat. There are two with black hats and two with white hats. Three of them are in a line on one side of a wall; each can only see the people in front of them, and not their own hat. The fourth person is on the other side of the wall. One person can say what color their own hat is; if they are right, all of them go free. If that person is wrong, all of them die. How can all of them survive? (no communicating)
• There are 12 steel balls. One of them is a different weight than the others. It can be either heavier or lighter. There is a balance that can tell you whether one side is heavier or lighter, but nothing more than that. Using the balance only three times, how can you tell which ball is different?

It was interesting to puzzle these out. I also talked a bit about a few economics games. The first is the St. Petersburg Paradox. In the St. Petersburg paradox, a coin is flipped. If it is heads, your reward doubles (it starts from $1) and you flip again. If it’s tails, you collect your money. If you flipped three tails and then a heads, you would earn $8. The paradox is one of statistics, as the probable amount you would win is a diverging series. How much would you pay to enter this game? The other economics game talked about is unofficially titled Flip. In Flip, you are given a deck of cards. You can either quit or draw another card. For each red card, you earn a dollar; for each black card you lose a dollar. Again, the question is how much you should pay to play this. I will let you figure out the answer on your own.

A piece of the buoyancy calculations

Various other variables are declared previously, in a different scope

After dinner, we talked about physics. I am currently making a game in which there is a sailing stage. We developed an algorithm for buoyancy, so that the boat bobs in the water. We also created some less accurately modeled equations for drag (We abstracted the real-world equations, because they are complex and annoying. Instead, we just have it asymptotically approach the maximum speed). It was extremely nice to talk to another person at a high level.