What people want to find but fail

Unless I would see it myself, I would never think that there is more interests in this two topics than coverage on the internet. But lets start from the beginning.

One of the first things I did when I started this blog was to add Google analytics code to it. To those who never heard about it - Google analytics is a hit tracker with a very nice GUI and simple installation. My traffic is very low now, so using hit tracker is more like getting use to see bad news - I even caught my self once worrying if my blog will get a negative number of visits tomorrow.... However even for a small blog like mine Analytics provides some useful information - what posts are more popular and from where my visitors come.

Unsurprisingly, most of my visitors are form the USA. What is interesting however is how they get to my blog. Analytics provides me with search terms which were clicked on - in my case this is too little to conclude anything, but it is also possible using Google webmaster tools to get the top 20 queries in which my blog showed up. This is still a small data pool, but it is possible to get two interesting results from it.
Almost all the search terms that return my blog in the first 10 results, are relatively long. But they can be easily divided into two groups:

1. Einstein connection to math or Einstein quotes.
2. The longest word in English.

I wrote about two of this subjects - a long time ago I wrote a short post about the longest word in english, which I expanded after noticing that it got visits from Google. I also wrote a post discussing some of Einstein quotes. Perhaps I will write also about Einstein connection to math some day. It is an interesting topic - but unfortunately it requires me to do a bit of research which I don't have time to do now.

I am of course very glad that what I wrote on Math Pages got to the first ten results in Google even for a long search term, but I am also surprised. Such result clearly suggests that while not many people are interested in this two subjects, those who are have problems finding what they want. If it would be easy to find what they were looking for they would not be using long search queris and my blog would in no way bee even near the top ten results. All of this clearly suggests that these topics are not well covered.

I don't think it is possible to add anything to my post about the longest word in English, but if you, my dear readers, want me to write something about Einstein, leave a comment on this post. If you want to write a post about Einstein yourself and submit it here you are also welcomed to contact me by leaving a comment.

Gift guide

I didn't post any jokes for sometime so here goes:
Especially for those who are not mathematicians but have friends who are obsessed with math - A detailed guide for buying presents:

First of all what not to buy:
1. Epsilons. While they are more than zero and are very useful, they are not good presents. First of all they are so small that that they are very easy to lose - moreover it is even difficult to see them. Besides, true mathematicians use their own personally made epsilons.

2. Empty set. It is important, but there is nothing in it. Don't be greedy.

3. Calculators. It may sound surprising to you but we have no use for them. For simple calculations we have our mind, and for difficult a powerful computer is needed. Besides, calculators are almost useless when writing proofs.

Now, lets look on some good ideas for a gift:
1. Mersenne prime poster. The Mersenne project attempts to find primes of the form . The currently largest known prime is a Mersenne prime. It is about 9.8 million digits long.
You can find the poster here.

2. A cake with a mathematical theme. See the image below for example:

original unknown

3. Something not connected to math!!!! For those mathematicians who feel that they have done too much math lately.

4. Moneyis a great present - perhaps not as personal as you would like, but still a good present. Especially if the person you want to give the present to is still a student. He will appreciate such a gift a lot...

The power of Google

Google is probably the most well known internet company in the world. They are the best search engine, but they are much more than just a search engine.

original unknown

This image is no more than a joke, but as time goes by it becomes more and more close to reality.
As of now there are 7 main pillars that make Google what it is now, and define its future:
1. Search
2. Gmail
3. Blogs
4. Video - Google video and Youtube
5. Adsense
6. iGoogle - combined with web history and bookmarks
7. Open source programs

There are more products by Google, but in my opinion these seven are the most important. It is easy to notice that they can can be further divided into 3 categories:

Money
Both Adsense and search are excellent tools for generating money. Google.com has about 75 million unique visitors each day. Adsense is shown to these visitors and is also displayed on millions of other pages in the internet.
In my opinion, Google does a great job in making their ads unobtrusive, and sometimes they are even useful. It is possible however to completely block them as well as other ads - you can read more about how to do it in my post about AdBlock. Not all people use ad blocking software, but this number is growing. Soon ads will either disappear or change there form into something less obtrusive.

Content
The main reason why sites like Blogger and Youtube exist is user generated content. They provide a simple and even free way to communicate your creativity to the world, and even make money from it. These both sites started as separate companies and were later acquired by Google. Why would a search company be interested in something like this?
Youtube is the most popular video site. I feel that Wordpress is better than Blogger, but it is also more complex. By owning these two sites Google owns a large share in the user generated content world.. And we shouldn't forget picasa. It is less popular than flickr, but it is better in some ways - mainly because it is firstly a program and not a web site.

Store 100% reality
You probably already know about this - Google apparently has a plan to store all your data on their servers effectively moving the whole world into the cloud computing. Presumably this new service will be called Gdrive. Even today, this is something we can only dream about. Probably it will happen in the next 10-15 years.
Even today, Google gives a 6.5 GB email account plus 1 GB for photos (with picasa web albums).
Google bookmarks and web history are another example of how our data (and information about us) is getting stored on Google servers.

The question is:

Why should we trust Google with all or even part of our data?

This is the weak link in Google plan - even if they will build a server capable to store 100% of all the data in the world, will people use it?
The answer is very simple - people will use it. I am not talking about some small percent of world population that don't mind posting personal photos on the internet. When Gdrive will appear, security experts will warn people about potential data/identity loss, but it will not stop the adoption of Gdrive.
The main strength of Google is in their motto - "Don't be evil." The motto is only words, but Google has actions to back it up. They give a lot of service for free, and people like free. They sponsor open source projects, and give grants for developing free software. They do a lot for the people.
All of this makes them a company people like and trust. Eventually this will be the true reason behind the success of Gdrive.

Hitler and creationism

I was very surprised to found out today that in fact Hitler didn't believe in evolution as presented by Darwin. It is well known that Hitler believed in the racial supremacy of German people, and it is often claimed that the basis for this idea was evolution. This claim is based on the definition of evolution as "the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life". It is very simple to get from this definition to racism and genocide. But this definition is not correct.

Photo by wrmlus

In fact, what Darwin said was the opposite of this definition. According to Darwin, it is not the best species that survive but the most adaptable. Moreover, there is no way to define what a "best" creature (or race) is from evolutionary point of view.
For example, scientists are pretty sure that dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 100 million years. It is logical to assume that they were the best product of evolution then. But they got extinct. Therefore, they were less adaptable than other creatures, and can no longer be considered "winners" in the race of evolution.
From this example it is clear that no specie can be defined as the best product of evolution - because it is fully possible that this particular specie will be extinct tomorrow.

As we now see, it is not correct that Hitler based his views on the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin. While he used the world evolution to justify his ideas, it was a different theory that was behind this word..

Surprisingly, it turns out that Hitler believed that the world was created by God and rejected Darwin theory of evolution. We can see this from the following quotes:

The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. xi

For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. x

From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us, that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump , as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today. - Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Tabletalk (Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier)

It it very clear that this quotes deny evolution. Moreover, they seem to suggest that he believed in God. But then, what was the evolution he spoke about?
As it seems from what he did, the evolution was not an evolution, but rather a place in a list. He simply decided what nations was more superior than other nations and than used historical connections to make a list - with German people on top of the list, and Jews somewhere near the end.
When you have such a list it is very easy to talk about evolution. Evolution becomes simply a movement in the list...

Why I use Linux

This is not a why "I hate windows" post - I see no reason for having such strong feelings to a software... This post is just a list of reasons that caused me to choose to use Linux and not windows, and a list of things that are missing in Linux.

Price
This one should be obvious - windows is simply too expensive. Perhaps its price is normal in the USA market, but it is too high for people living outside of the USA. Linux is free.
It is of course possible to download an illegal copy of windows and install it. Microsoft fights piracy as hard as it can, but this is simply not enough. But why bother? When I bought my new computer, I wanted to install windows on it. But when I started to install it turned out that I don't have the serial number... I wanted to dual-boot, and I already had a Linux CD laying on my desk. So I installed it. I thought to partition the disk, but for some reason the installer failed to partition the disk. So I was forced to install it on all of the disk.
While it may seem strange, but it is obvious from this story that the reason that caused me to use Linux was price and nothing else.

Performance
On the same hardware, Linux works better. This is partially due to the fact that there is no need in an antivirus on Linux. It also seems that the code is more efficient. My current computer is capable of running Compiz with all of its visual effects easily, but it would be too weak to run Aero (according to the official specs - my video card is too weak).

Applications
There are much more applications for windows than for Linux. Moreover there are applications whose performance or functions are unmatched by anything that you can install on a Linux only machine. For example - Rosetta stone. This is a very effective language learning program, but there is no way to run it on Linux. I used it to learn German - I finished level one and soon after it I was forced to switch to Linux...
On the other hand, it is much more simple to install applications in Linux. All you need to do is to make a search in the database of available applicators (a rather large database, by the way). Installing is as simple as pressing a button. Plus all the applications are free.

Games
I don't use computer to play games, so I don't care about it, but the choice of games for Linux is rather limited. So if you like to play games more advanced than tetris, this is not the right OS for you.

Conclusion
On a final note, Linux is a great OS, as long as you feel comfortable enough to use the command line from time to time... I am using Linux for over a year now, and I managed to break it only once - took one week to fully fix.
I will probably dual boot my computer at some point - mainly because of the Rosetta stone not working in Linux, and because some gadgets are also not working in Linux due to lack of drivers.
However, I am very happy with Linux - as of now the disto I am using is Ubuntu, and it is both very functional and has a nice GUI.

Fun and physics

I just found a rather interesting program, called phun. The main idea of the program is creating simple mechanical "creatures" cars, catapults and the like. I embedded a short video below:

I played with this little program a few hours yesterday.. There are also features not shown in the video - turning gravity off, water, chains and so on. I doubt it can be used to study physics - even for schoolchildren, but it is a good way to expose children to mechanics. Overall a very nice program - plus it is free.

You can see more about this program in the official video:

It is Pi day today...

From Wikipedia: "Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day are two holidays held to celebrate the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14 in American date format), due to π being equal to roughly 3.14. Sometimes it is celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m. (commonly known as Pi Minute). If π is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., Pi Second (or sometimes March 14, 1592 at 6:53:58 a.m.). Pi Approximation Day may be observed on any of several dates, most often July 22 (22/7 (European date format) is a popular approximation of π). March 14 also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday."

Photo by pauladamsmith

I totally miss the point of this holiday... It is always nice to have a reason for celebration, but this one seems a bit too odd even to me. Perhaps I will change my mind with time, but a celebration connected to the existence of math constant simply doesn't make sense to me. Although celebrating Einstein birthday does look like a good idea (by saying "good idea" I mean a good reason to eat a cake)...

Pi is a very fascinating number. It is also perhaps the most well known transcendental number, and it has a very long history. But there is no reason to regard it as anything more than a number, or make a celebration because of its existence.