Wiki Christmas

Everybody in my family makes Christmas lists and then people buy things on those lists, but nobody who wants to buy things knows what the others are bought so far. For a procrastinator like me, this is an undesirable situation because I don't want to waste time bringing things back to the store in case somebody else has already bought it.

There ought to be some sort of website where people can go to make a Christmas list and then others can view it and if they purchase something on the list, they can flag that gift idea. The person who made the list wouldn't know, but any other people viewing the list would be able to see that that gift was taken already.

I hope that this is already invented somewhere in the vast reaches of the internet, and if it isn't, maybe I'll get around to it sometime.

UPDATE: There is such a tool!

Minimizing Memorization App Prototype

I've produced a prototype page to allow people to use my minimizing memorization calculator with more ease.

Prototype

Just enter the data as the form requests and click calculate! If you try different values for how many answers you know well, then you can figure out how little you actually have to learn to get the mark you want.

This is the url: http://doless.9k.com/

The calculator tells you the chance of getting at least a certain number right. The math works as I've described in my other post called "Minimizing Memorization."

Sorry for the ads on the calculator's page, they came with the free hosting!

If you have any comments about how I might improve the calculator, please leave them on this post.

UPDATE: The calculator is working well for all values which are not too big to overflow the variables. If that's the case, you'll get NaN% as your answer. That just means that I can't help you for that scenario. I'll try to figure out how to improve the range over time.

A death in the family

My computer monitor was tragically destroyed on the way back home.

I made this meme in its memory.

Applet for minimizing memorization

I've been talking to some friends who are far more skilled at programming than I to figure out how to make an applet for the minimizing memorization formula. I know that most people are not as enthusiastic about math as I am, so I want to have a nice GUI where users can enter how many questions are on the exam, how much material is examinable, how many questions they have to choose and what mark they want to get. Then it will just spit out the probability based on a certain amount of studying. Nice and simple... (and I want it to be free).

A good friend of mine created Cold Turkey, which I thought was pretty cool so I asked him what to do to make a GUI. He recommended Java Script, so I'm checking that out now. I'm looking for an easy WYSIWYG Java Script internet thing.

Directional Coupler

This is one of the circuits that my lab partner, Jessup, and I built in the microwave lab this year. It's a directional coupler. The lab tech spelled my name wrong (lol):