Why did Bernoulli mention Plato’s Theory of Forms in Ars Conjectandi? What does this have to do with free will?
This video is a broad introduction to the Weak Law of Large Numbers, the Central Limit Theorem and how it all led to Markov Chains…
Next, play around with this interactive, graphical Markov simulator!
3 decades later, Claude Shannon famously applied this idea to generate “english looking” messages in his Mathematical Theory of Communication:
The following video/simulation was an attempt to bridge the gap between information as what we mean to say vs. information as what we could say. I view this as an important stepping stone towards Hartly, Nyquist and Shannon – which I will deal with next. It covers symbols, symbol rate (baud) and message space as an introduction to channel capacity. Featuring the Baudot multiplex system and Thomas Edison’s quadruplex telegraph.
Play with simulations used in video on Khan Academy:
Symbol Rate
I recently launched Art of the Problem on Kickstarter.com which is an interesting new crowd sourced funding network for creative projects. A total of 88 people pledged to the project and my $4,000 funding goal was reached. As of today (May 13th 2011) production work has commenced on the pilot episode titled ‘Gambling with Secrets’, soon to be available at www.youtube.com/artoftheproblem.
Brit Cruise 