This section lists all blog posts, regardless of topic.
Counting tricks / counting by instinctDecember 22, 2007
Something that I realized a few years ago is that there are some tricks to counting a small group of items much quicker than one at a time. For instance, how many X's are there on the next line?
XXXXXX
The only way to really know is to count them one by one, but if you let your instincts take over and just glance at them, your brain should be capable of coming up with the number 6 most of time. Apart from raw instinct, one trick is to use grouping, such as "how many sets of three does there look to be"? If there looks to be two sets of three, then you're dealing with 6. If there looks to be one more than two sets of three, you have seven, and if there looks to be one less than two sets of three, you have five.
Seven: XXXXXXX
Five: XXXXX
As for 1, 2, 3, and 4, you should be able to tell just by looking at the group of items.
For sets larger than 7, it gets more difficult, but with practice you can guess the size of sets less than 15 items about 40% of the time, and be at most one off 90% of the time.
Try these:
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
For the bigger ones you can't really rely on counting tricks, you just have to use your "jedi" instincts and make the best possible / most likely guess.
Hand go boomDecember 22, 2007
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Injuries suck. On Dec 13th I was playing basketball with some friends when I caught my finger on a guy as I was running past him and my ring finger got bent back past 90 degrees until it made a significant "pop". What I ended up with is basically a sprained hand and a useless finger... it took a week before I was able to type with my left hand, but it's looking like it will be another couple of weeks before I'm able to use my hand for any kind of exercise.
So after many months of steady progress towards reaching my goal of 100 pushups, this will be a significant set back. I wonder how much progress I'll lose over these three weeks and how quickly I'll be able to get back into it.
Coolest car on the planet: 300 MPGDecember 22, 2007
Checkout this wonderful
Popular Mechanics video interview with the makers of the Aptera Super-MPG electric car.
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