Category Archives: Miscellaneous

In a recent blog post, I described an algorithm that involved 10 rooms in a sultan’s harem. A mathematician had to visit each room. I wondered how many moves would be required, on average, for the mathematician to visit all … Continue reading →

One of the ways I keep up with the blazing pace of new developments in technology is by doing technical reviews of journal articles (such as those in Microsoft MSDN Magazine) and technical books (such as the series of free … Continue reading →

Here’s an old problem. A mathematician is in a harem with 10 rooms. Each room has a different number of girls in it. The mathematician is blindfolded but has a magic parrot that knows probability. The mathematician needs to estimate … Continue reading →

Here are my two favorite chess checkmate-in-one-move positions. Checkmate in one move? How hard can it be? All you have to do is try every possible move, right? Maybe. White to move. The first position is an artificial composition by … Continue reading →

A combination is a subset of n items taken k at a time. For example, if n = 5 and k = 3, the possible combination elements are: 0: [0 1 2] 1: [0 1 3] 2: [0 1 4] … Continue reading →

First, let me immediately say that the title of this blog post is almost click-bait. I do prefer virtual machines to Docker containers but this is due almost entirely to what I use VMs and containers for. Briefly, a virtual … Continue reading →