When I finished writing about the Zeno wagering game recently, I had some trees left over, so I thought I would try planting them here.
In the Zeno article I was trying to understand and explain the structure of this peculiar-looking tree, which I’ll call the tangled tree:

As a warmup exercise, I started out with […]

From the Associated Press, via the New York Times:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said in the first statewide temblor forecast.
New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 […]

The latest issue of American Scientist is just out, both on the newsstand and on the web. My “Computing Science” column is titled “Wagering with Zeno”; it returns to a subject mentioned briefly in an earlier column, “Follow the Money.”
Consider a random walk on the interval (0,1), where the walker moves according to these […]

My new book has come out this week: Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions, Hill and Wang, xi+269 pages, $25. ISBN-10: 0-8090-5219-9, ISBN-13: 978-0-8090-5219-9, Library of Congress Call Number: T185.H39 2008.
This is a collection of essays on themes that will be familiar to many readers of bit-player.org. Indeed, the essays themselves […]