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The Door Desk

posted 06.10.2007

I made myself a desk out of a door and concrete blocks. It supports all my computer stuff, and I can stand on it too. I bet you didn't know I had mad carpetry skills.

The Monty Hall Problem

posted 08.28.2006

The Monty Hall problem is posed as follows:

Say you're on a game show where they have three doors. One door has a car behind it, and the other two of the doors have goats. You randomly choose a door and the host opens one of the OTHER doors, and shows you that there is a goat behind it. Then he says, 'Do you want to pick the third door, or do you want to keep your origional choice?'. What do you pick and why?

When Alissa posed this problem to me, I figured out the answer using 'our friend' statistics, but I didn't really believe it. After an argument and some beers, I decided to prove that my answer was wrong. I wrote a MATLAB script that solves the problem, but instead I showed it was correct. Dang it. Anyway, after you understand the solution, it seems obvious.

PGP Key Added

posted 08.28.2006

I've added my public PGP key. Note that I'm also listed in the pgp.com directory, so you could just look me up there under "james beck".

New Site Design!

posted 08.02.2006

I've finally redone my website! All in CSS; check THAT out.

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