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Eudaemons
The Eudaemons were a small group headed by graduate physics students J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard at the University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1970s. The group's immediate objective was to find a way to beat roulette using a concealed computer, but a loftier objective was to use the money made from roulette to fund a scientific community. The name of the group was inspired by the eudaimonism philosophy. History During a summer the two students started doing their own research on a roulette wheel which they had bought. Using instruments including a camera and an oscilloscope to keep track of the motion of the roulette wheel, they eventually figured out a formula involving trigonometric functions and four variables, among them the period of rotation of the roulette wheel and the period of rotation of the ball around the roulette wheel. Since the calculations were very complicated, they decided to build a computer customized for the purpose of being fed data a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Packard
Norman Harry Packard (born 1954 in Billings, Montana) is a chaos theory physicist and one of the founders of the Prediction Company and ProtoLife. He is an alumnus of Reed College and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Packard is known for his contributions to chaos theory, complex systems, and artificial life. He coined the phrase "the edge of chaos". Biography Between 1976 and 1981, Packard formed the Dynamical Systems Collective at UC Santa Cruz with fellow physics graduate students, Rob Shaw, Doyne Farmer, and James Crutchfield. The collective was best known for its work in probing chaotic systems for signs of order. Around the same time, he worked with Doyne Farmer and other friends in Santa Cruz, California to form the Eudaemons collective , to develop a strategy for beating the roulette wheel using a toe-operated computer. The computer could, in theory, predict in what area a roulette ball would land on a wheel, giving the player a significant statistical a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roulette
Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning ''little wheel'' which was likely developed from the Italian game Biribi''.'' In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the numbers are high (19–36) or low (1–18). To determine the winning number, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum, passes through an area of deflectors, and falls onto the wheel and into one of thirty-seven (single-zero, French or European style roulette) or thirty-eight (double-zero, American style roulette) or thirty-nine (triple-zero, "Sands Roulette") colored and numbered pockets on the wheel. The winnings are then paid to anyone who has placed a successful bet. History The first form of roulette was devised in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eudaimonism
Eudaimonia (Greek: εὐδαιμονία ; sometimes anglicized as eudaemonia or eudemonia, ) is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of 'good spirit', and which is commonly translated as 'happiness' or 'welfare'. In works of Aristotle, ''eudaimonia'' was the term for the highest human good in older Greek tradition. It is the aim of practical philosophy-prudence, including ethics and political philosophy, to consider and experience what this state really is, and how it can be achieved. It is thus a central concept in Aristotelian ethics and subsequent Hellenistic philosophy, along with the terms ''aretē'' (most often translated as 'virtue' or 'excellence') and ''phronesis'' ('practical or ethical wisdom'). Discussion of the links between ''ēthikē aretē'' (virtue of character) and ''eudaimonia'' (happiness) is one of the central concerns of ancient ethics, and a subject of much disagreement. As a result, there are many varieties of eudaimonism. Def ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laplace's Demon
In the history of science, Laplace's demon was a notable published articulation of causal determinism on a scientific basis by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics. This idea states that “free will” is merely an illusion, and that every action previously taken, currently being taken, or that will take place was destined to happen from the instant of the big bang. Discoveries and theories in the decades following suggest that some elements of Laplace's original writing are wrong or incompatible with our universe. For example, irreversible processes in thermodynamics suggest that Laplace's "demon" could not reconstruct past positions and momenta from the current state. English translation This intellect is often referred to as ''Laplace's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Eudaemonic Pie
''The Eudaemonic Pie'' is a non-fiction book about gambling by American author Thomas A. Bass. The book was initially published in April 1985 by Houghton Mifflin. Overview The book focuses on a group of University of California, Santa Cruz, physics graduate students (known as the Eudaemons) who in the late 1970s and early 1980s designed and employed miniaturized computers, hidden in specially modified platform soled shoes, to help predict the outcome of casino roulette games. The players knew, presumably from the earlier work of Shannon and Thorp, that by capturing the state of the ball and wheel and taking into account peculiarities of the particular wheels being played they could increase their odds of selecting a winning number to gain a 44 percent advantage over the casinos.''The Eudaemonic Pie'', page 59. Authors Guild backprint edition, 2000. British edition A British edition was published under the title ''The Newtonian Casino''. Sequel The major players in ''The Eudae ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
No More Bets
The fourth season of '' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'' premiered on CBS on September 25, 2003, and ended May 20, 2004. The series stars William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger. Plot Nick accidentally leaks information to a news reporter ("Assume Nothing"), and Catherine tries to discover how a body ended up in a bathtub ("All for Our Country") during the fourth season of ''CSI''. Supervised by Grissom and Willows, the Las Vegas CSIs are tasked with investigating the bizarre, the unlikely, and the unprecedented, including a disappearing gun ("Homebodies"), the death of a baby during a heatwave ("Feeling the Heat"), a case of raccoon versus big rig ("Fur and Loathing"), a car-bombing ("Grissom Versus the Volcano"), and the derailment of a roller-coaster ("Turn of the Screws"). Meanwhile, Catherine usurps a case from Nick and Sara ("After the Show"), the team have to re-investigate a rape-murder ("Invisible Evidence"), Grissom heads to Jackpot, Nevada ("Jackpot"), and team take part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Data Science
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a broad range of application domains. Data science is related to data mining, machine learning, big data, computational statistics and analytics. Data science is a "concept to unify statistics, data analysis, informatics, and their related methods" in order to "understand and analyse actual phenomena" with data. It uses techniques and theories drawn from many fields within the context of mathematics, statistics, computer science, information science, and domain knowledge. However, data science is different from computer science and information science. Turing Award winner Jim Gray imagined data science as a "fourth paradigm" of science (empirical, theoretical, computational, and now data-driven) and asserted that "everything about scien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism) or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.For example, see Determinism is often used to mean ''causal determinism'', which in physics is known as cause-and-effect. This is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state of an object or event is completely determined by its prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below. Debates about determinism often concern the scope of determined systems; some maintain that the entire universe is a single determ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Making A New Science
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Breaking Vegas
''Breaking Vegas'' is a television series that premiered on The History Channel in the United States in 2004. The series covers the great lengths people have gone to make money, sometimes illegally, from casinos. Many episodes have to do with cheats who illegally take money from the casino using sleight-of-hand tricks or some sort of gizmo. Namely, these scams include pastposting and card marking. Other episodes include famous examples of legal money-making techniques such as card counting. Some episodes are about legal strategies like winning at the craps table by throwing at certain angles using a certain grip with certain numbers at the top, or taking advantage of a worn-out ball bearing and a thus tilted roulette wheel. The series was inspired by the two-hour History Channel movie entitled ''Breaking Vegas: The True Story of the MIT Blackjack Team'', written and directed by Bruce David Klein and produced by Atlas Media Corp. The episode "Professor Blackjack" is about MIT pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History (U
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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