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Best of 2013

I've been blogging now for about three and half years. Here are a list of the top ten most read articles per year. Maybe you missed a couple of them when they were first published?


1		Wheel of Fortune Puzzle Solver Want to practice for the final spin? Using this tool you can enter letters you know are in the solution, those you know are not, and get returned all possible English words that match this pattern.
2		How far can you overhang blocks? How hung over can you get? How far out is it theoretically possible to stack and overhang blocks from the edge of table?
3		Visual Cryptography How to store hidden messages in images that can be decoded using just your eyes.
4		How to elegantly rotate images How to rotate a bitmap an arbitrary angle using just a combination of three shear transformations.
5		Wounded QR codes Experimentation about just how badly you can destort, damage, and obfuscate a QR code and still get it to read correctly.
6		How credit card numbers work Investigation into the formation of credit card numbers, parity, and check digits.
7		How to escape a monster using calculus Part one of a serries of ongoing monster escape problems. In this one you are sitting in a rowing boat in the center of a circular lake
8		Linear Regression Derivation of how to calculate a best-fit line. Includes interactive examples.
9		Rock, Paper, Scissors An interesting look about how different concentrations of starting conditions can affect outcomes in non-obvious ways.
10		World"s Fastest Man How fast does Usain Bolt run and, theoretically, how much faster could he run?

Editors Pick 2013

Is a writer, I love all my children equally. There are a couple of articles each year, however, that I'm particularly proud of and did not feature in the most popular ten. Here are a couple of them:


E1		Why do frozen water pipes burst the way they do? Expanding water, hoop stress, and longitudinal stress.
E2		Privacy is dead. Long live Trust! A brutally honest explanation of why being trustworthy with data is very important.
E3		TEDx Seattle A proud (and humbling) day for me. Giving a TED talk. The video and some before and after pictures.

Best of 2012


1		Is your password too predictable? An analysis of millions of PIN codes.
2		The two eggs interview question How to (optimally) determine the highest floor from which you can drop an egg without it breaking using no more than two eggs.
3		Benford's Law The curious way that the first digit of a collection of continuous data follows a (scale invarient) logarthimic distribution. How to detect frauds in accouting.
4		You've probably been playing Hangman wrong your entire life A detailed analysis of the distribution of letters in words and how guessing one letter (correct or not) affects the distribution of words not yet seen.
5		Probability of a Yahtzee! Using Markov Chains to calculate the probability of rolling a Yahtzee!
6		Space, it's mindboggling big Space, is big. Really big. You just wont believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think its a long way down the road to the chemists, but thats just peanuts to space!
7		A geek plays darts Where is the best location to aim on a dartboard to maximize your chance of scoring the most? The true answer, is that it depends on how good you are.
8		Parrondo's Paradox How two ugly parents can make a beautiful baby. How alternating between two losing games can be turned into a winning proposition.
9		Advanced Minesweeper Where is the best place to click on a game of classic minesweeper to maximize the chances of opening up the board?
10		Elemental Words How many English words can be made using just the symbols of chemical elements?

Editors Pick 2012


E1		Distributing passwords How to break secrets into pieces so that an arbitrary subset of people can get together to recreate the answer.
E2		Domain names An analysis of the common substrings used in internet domain names.
E3		Consequences of a living on a sphere Did you know the Golden Gate Bridge is almost two inches wider at the top than the bottom because the Earth is round?

Best of 2011


1		Battleship! An analysis of various AI techniques that can be used to play Battleship!
2		What is a body worth? What is the value of the human body if broken down into elements?
3		Risk Analysis What is the optimal attack/defence strategy when playing the dice game Risk?
4		Chutes and Ladders Monte-Carlo and Markov chain analysis on the classic kids board game.
5		Candyland Monte-Carlo and Markov chain analysis on the classic kids board game.
6		Price of Soda Normalized costs of various liquids, per volume. Why does replacement Ink Jet Ink cost so much!
7		A study of names Part one of a three episode article analysing the frequency of names. Part 2 and Part 3 are here. You can also read about the application of this to the White House Visitor Logs.
8		National Pi Day Searching for Pi inside of Pi (sort of).
9		Why are social games so popular? They are fun. Discoverability is easy, they are accessible, and there is camaraderie.
10		Microsoft you suck! A vent at the Draconian (and sad) way the Microsoft would not give out free WiFi to visiting guests (Thankfully now changed).

You can find a complete list of all the articles here. Click here to receive email alerts on new articles.