Tautochrone Curve

A tautochrone (or Isochrone) is a curve for which all frictionless bodies, sliding under uniform gravity, will reach the bottom at the same time regardless of starting position. Wikipedia

Arrow's Paradox

Arrow's Paradox says there is no 'good' voting system. There is an excellent writeup on it here.

Festschrift

A volume of learned articles or essays by colleagues and admirers, serving as a tribute or memorial especially to a scholar. (from: thefreedictionary.com)

Incunabula

A book printed before 1500.

I have just started reading 'Between Silk and Cyanide' by Leo Marks and when the author was asked his hobbies,  he replied: "Incunabula and intercourse, sir"... "I suspected he wasn't sure what incunabula was and added: and chess too, sir, when there's time -- which proved a better gambit".

Mersenne Primes

A Mersenne Prime is a prime number p which is of the form 2ⁿ-1. 7 is an example (2³-1). I learnt about Mersenne Primes a long time ago. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) was one of the early examples of using spare cycles on peoples computers to find these numbers.

What I learnt today, though, is that nobody knows if there are an infinite number of these objects. So far we have found 47 of these with the largest one being 2^43,112,609 -1.

As we search for the next one, I find it quite weird... like looking for some animal that is becoming extinct. I hope we will someday be able to prove that there are infinitely many of them.

This is the blog where I read today that we have not yet proven that they are infinite.

The McGurk Effect

The McGurk effect is the phenomenom where what we hear is affected by what we see. There is an excellent illustration of it here. Obligatory Wikipedia link.

078-05-1120

This number is also known as the most misused social security number of all time. It was used as a dummy insert for wallets in 1938.

I came across this number reading this cartoon on xkcd.

Group Polarisation

Group polarisation is the tendency of a group of people to make a decision that is more extreme than the initial inclination of its members.

I came across the idea in this blog where the author discusses its effect on groups of software developers.

Wikipedia

Law of the Instrument

There is a popular saying: "If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". If you haven't heard it, then you're probably not a software developer. I've heard and used it regularly over the years. What I did not know, though, was that it was attributed to Maslow and that it's also known as "the Law of the Instrument", The Golden Hammer or Maslow's Hammer.

Wikipedia

Schelling point

The Schelling point, named after Nobel prize winning economist Thomas Schelling, is a solution that people will tend to use in the absence of communication.

Wikipedia

Hofmeister Kink

The Hofmeister Kink is the characteristic curve on the C-pillar of BMWs.

Wikipedia

Shibboleth

A shibboleth is a word or phrase that can be used to determine a speaker's social or regional origins.

I remember my father once telling me that Germans asked people to pronounce the word Kirche, which apparently those who are not native Germans find difficult to prounounce.

Although I've known the concept for a long time, I never knew the term that described the concept - and learnt it while watching an episode of The West Wing

Wikipedia

Iconoclast

The iconoclasts were people who went around (in Ancient Greece, probably) destroying religious statues and icons. Nowadays it refers to people who challenge established dogma or convention.

The word has always had a special resonance for me - Although I cannot imagine myself in running around Ancient Greece in toga and thongs pulling down statues, it's nice that there is a Greek sounding word for being just a little sceptical at times.

Wikipedia

Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law is the observation which was made in the 1990s that as an online discussion or thread grows, the probability of a comparison being made to Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1.

I was reminded of Godwin's law this morning while listening to a Background Briefing podcast about Lord Monckton who compared those who accept climate change as Fascists (and made references to 1930s Germany).

Wikipedia

Borsuk-Ulam Theorem

The Borsuk-Ulam Theorem states that every continuous function from a n-sphere into Euclidean n-space maps maps some pair of antipodal points onto the same point.

A nice illustration of this (and the example that made this theorem interesting to me), is that at any point in time, there are two points exactly opposite each other (antipodal) on the earths surface that have exactly the same temperature and atmospheric pressure.

Wikipedia

Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the phenomenon where people who are less skilled at something tend to overestimate their abilities and people who are more skilled tend to underestimate their abilities.

This is one of the reasons why I think it is very unfair when people ask me in an interview to assess my programming ability.

A lot has been written about the Dunning-Kruger Effect and its role in the climate debate.

Wikipedia

Banach-Tarski paradox

The Banach-Tarski paradox is a mathematical theorem that states that a solid sphere can be cut into a finite number of pieces which can then be put together again in a different way to yield two spheres of identical size.

Wikipedia

Milgram Experiment

The Milgram Experiment was a psychological experiment that looked at how people responded to authority. It was conducted by Stanley Milgram at Yale University.

I first heard about this experiment after the Abu Ghraib incident during the Iraq war.

Wikipedia

Skeuomorph

A skeuomorph is an object that retains design features that are no longer needed. A typical example would be pillars on the front of a building where the pillars are no longer needed for structural integrity.

In user interfaces, we sometimes see screens that are mocked up to look like antique screens or the interfaces they replace (e.g. a radio).

Wikipedia