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2011/08/02

Neatorama

Neatorama

“What, Not How”: The Case of Specifications of the New York Bagel

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 05:02 AM PDT

by Daniel M. Berry
Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

In software engineering, we are told that a software requirements specification should specify what the desired software should do, not how the software should do it. This is often summarized as "What, not how." This paper explores the validity of the advice to specify "What, not how" for requirements, including quality requirements. In the domain of the New York bagel, it may be necessary to explain how in order to make the what precise enough.

In general, there are two ways to specify any system, software or otherwise:

1. a "what" specification describing what the system does, or

2. a "how" specification describing how the system does what it does.

A system may also be described by tests that are satisfied by the desired system.

A "what" specification and a test share the property that each leaves the question of how to implement the system up to the implementer. The freedom accorded to the implementer allows him or her to find the best technology to achieve the desired "what" or testing success.

Note that there can be no test specification for any but the most trivial systems, because no finite set of test cases can thoroughly test a non-trivial system for compliance to its requirements. Edsger Dijkstra once said, "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!"1

While the "what, not how" mantra seems clear enough, in practice it may be very difficult to separate the hows from the whats. Indeed, for some requirements, it may be impossible to specify "what" without saying something about "how." There are also requirements, usually called quality requirements, for which the "what" specification is simply not very useful, e.g., "The output shall look good," "The user interface shall be easy to use," or "The response time shall be fast." In some of these cases, the only way to make the requirement precise enough to be tested is to say something about how it will be met.

A prime example of a product requiring a detailed "how" specification is none other than the New York bagel, examples of which are shown in figure 1.2

Figure 1 (Image credit: Flickr user Ezra Wolfe)

New York Bagels

How many readers have ever really had one? A New York bagel, such as what you get at Zabar's, H&H, or Rise & Shine, is not just a baked good with a hole in it, despite the widespread proliferation of places that make a bread with a hole and call it a bagel in order to profit from the current bagelmania.3 A donut is another baked good with a hole in it, and we all know that a bagel and donut have little in common except the hole; indeed, a bagel and a donut have literally nothing in common.4

"What" Specification of a Bagel


A "what" specification of any object consists of a textual description of the object, often accompanied by diagrams. If, unlike software, the object has physical dimensions, the diagrams may include what are commonly called blueprints.

A bagel is a baked good in the approximate shape of a symmetric, regular torus. The torus has approximately a 4 inch (? 10 cm) outer diameter, a 1 inch (? 2.5 cm) inner diameter, and a 1.5 inch (? 3.8 cm) ring diameter. The interior of the bagel has air holes. Most of the outside surface of the bagel is a golden brown crust that is approximately .0625 inch (? 1.6 mm) thick. The part of the outside surface that comes in contact with the baking surface is dark brown and pockmarked.

Figure 2 shows a blueprint5 formed out of 5 photographs of various views of genuine New York bagels. Considering a bagel as it lies flat on a plate viewed from above the plate, the plan view is in the upper left-hand corner of the blueprint, and the elevation view is in the upper right-hand corner of the blueprint. The Line A-A in the plan view defines Section A-A shown in the lower left-hand corner of the blueprint, and the Line B-B in the elevation view defines Section B-B shown in the lower right-hand corner of the blueprint. The middle left-hand side of the blueprint shows Detail 1A-A, a blowup of the part of Section A-A that is delimited by a dashed-line rectangle in the section's left-hand side.

A donut satisfies the physical dimensions given in the blueprint, but a donut is not a bagel. To distinguish a New York bagel from any other baked good with a hole, Detail 1A-A of the blueprint, shown in Figure 3, has specifications of the elasticity of the surface and the moisture content of the interior. The surface should withstand 45 pounds per square inch (?3.17 kg per square cm), and the interior should have 20 to 25 percent moisture content. The surface elasticity and inner moisture content specifications together specify the chewiness of a New York bagel. A donut does not satisfy this chewiness specification. A piece of ordinary bread shaped into a ring of the right size also does not satisfy this chewiness specification.

Is this chewiness an essential, functional requirement of a New York bagel? Some think so, because without the chewiness, the baked good with a hole

in it is not a New York bagel. It is a bread with a hole, a donut, or perhaps another kind of bagel entirely, such as the Montréal bagel.

Figure 3. Detail 1A-A from blueprint in Figure 2.

"How" Specification of a Bagel

A "how" specification of a bagel is a recipe for making bagels:

1. Use high-gluten flour dough that has risen.

2. Make a ring with outer diameter 4 inches (? 10 cm) and inner diameter 1 inch (? 2.5 cm) and with a cross section of 1.5 inches (? 3.8 cm) in diameter.

3. Put the ring into boiling water for 30 seconds.6

4. Bake the ring on a corn-meal covered surface in a 400°F (? 200°C) oven until golden brown, usually for about 10 minutes.

The step that is left out or changed by the making of most poor imitations of New York bagels and of other kinds of bagels is Step 3.

This "how" specification, a recipe, is clearly an algorithm.7

Testing Properties of a Bagel

A test gives one way to determine whether a candidate system has the tested property. A standard test for New York bagelhood is that a proper genuine New York bagel can be used by a baby for teething for at least 10 minutes without disintegrating into a ball of mush.8 A donut clearly fails this test. In fact, all baked goods with holes that fail to meet the surface yield and interior moisture content specification fail this test. All the so-called bagels, including the steamed ones, described below, made without boiling fail this test.

Another test is that chewing a genuine New York bagel burns almost as many calories as are ingested by eating the bagel, particularly if the bagel is taken from someone else's plate.9

Figure 4: The Bagel Biter

Still another test is that only a genuine New York bagel stands up to and does not get squished by the Bagel Biter™ bagel cutting guillotine depicted in Figure 4. A steamed bagel gets crushed into a wad before the blade begins to cut.

Still another test is that if you bite down on a sandwich made with a genuine New York bagel, the filling squishes out. With a steamed bagel, the sandwich filling does not squish out; thus, a steamed bagel makes a great bun.

As mentioned, a test is similar to a "what" specification in the sense that it allows any implementation that achieves the test. Therefore, from here on, this paper compares only "what" and "how" specifications.

What, Not How

As mentioned above, a "what" specification is normally preferred to a "how" specification because the "what" specification says only what is desired and allows the implementer the freedom to achieve the requirements in any way he or she can. It spurs competition to find more efficient ways to achieve what is specified than originally conceived.

Some of the companies that fail to make genuine New York bagels do so because they have decided to make different kind of bagels. These companies include the makers of Montréal bagels, a different kind of bagel with its own fans.

Montreal Bagel (Image credit: Flickr user Sifu Renka)

Others that fail to make genuine New York bagels do so because they have decided that the high-gluten flour and the boiling are unnecessary. These bakers do not get the proper surface yield or interior moisture content. They make bread with a hole. Many supermarket-made bagels are in this category.

Some who do use high-gluten flour, e.g. McDonald's, have tried steaming in place of boiling. It almost works, but the surface yield is not high enough and the interior moisture content is too high. These steamed so-called bagels are clearly examples of trying to find a cheaper way to achieve the "what" specification than can be done by following the standard "how" method, or recipe. However, to date no recipe other than the standard recipe has succeeded in achieving the desired "what" specification. Saekel et al. 199510 quote Gary Goldstein, co-owner of the Bay Area's Holey Bagel, as insisting, "Steaming is for dry cleaning, not bagels." Even on the other side of the globe, the slogan of the Bagel House in Sydney, NSW, Australia, says it all: "If it's not boiled, it's not a bagel."

Others who boil their bagels before baking still fail to achieve the required chewiness because their flour does not have enough gluten. While the resulting bagels have the required surface strength, the interior is noticeably less moist. Thus, the chewiness is limited to the initial, surface-piercing bite, and does not extend to the interior. This author believes that most of the bagel houses in Israel make this kind of low-gluten bagels. Note that gluten cannot be eliminated entirely, because without some gluten, a ring of dough would simply disintegrate during its boiling.11

Finally, there are at least two companies whose bagels taste to this author like they have been steamed, namely Tim Hortons's and Noah's Bagels. A search for reviews confirms that others have come to the same conclusion regarding Noah's Bagels's bagels.12,13,14 Nevertheless, e-mail from an official of each company says that the company's bagels are boiled.11,15 Further investigation shows that Tim Hortons practices par-baking. At a central factory, high-gluten flour rings are boiled, baked to 85–90% of completion, and then frozen for delivery to individual stores. Each store then finishes off the baking locally. These bagels do have a freshly baked aroma, flavor, and feel, but they taste to this author like steamed bagels, with too soft a surface and too moist an interior. Perhaps the time lag between the two baking steps, during which the bagels are sent frozen from the central factory to the stores, accounts for the surface tension decrease and the interior moisture increase from those characteristic of boiled bagels to those characteristic of steamed bagels.

Thus, a bagel is an example of a project for which a "how" specification may be better than a "what" specification. A "how" specification is certainly simpler in the sense that it is easier to tell what needs to be done. In opting for this "how" specification, one is discouraging innovation. However, in the case of the New York bagel, perhaps innovation should be discouraged.

Boiling Bagels (Image credit: Flickr user Elizabeth Beers)

Could an expert baker deduce from the blueprint or an actual bagel that using high-gluten flour and boiling before baking is necessary? That is, can a domain expert deduce what is not explicit in a "what" specification so that it is not necessary to give "how" information? The answer to this question is probably "yes." This author is a sufficiently expert eater that he can tell from feeling or biting on a candidate bagel whether it has been boiled, and can tell by chewing it whether it has enough gluten. Moreover, he can tell when another kind of bread, e.g., the German Laugenbrot or Pletzl, has a lot of gluten and has been boiled before baking. Additionally, it is hard to imagine a baking expert who has not learned about the use of gluten and boiling before baking as a technique for achieving certain effects, namely those exhibited by New York bagels. More generally, the recipient of a specification must be considered when deciding what to leave implicit.

An algorithmic description is the clearest, simplest specification for a New York bagel. While it does prescribe how to make it, in principle anything that tastes and feels the same will be accepted as a bagel. Unfortunately for those who wish to optimize on the time to produce a bagel and to eliminate the need for high-gluten flour, for a boiling vat, or both, all other ways tried so far have yet to produce exactly the desired taste and feel.

Conclusion

This paper has considered one situation in which design and implementation details are necessary to resolve issues that should be resolved during specification. Space does not permit the exploration of other examples such as text formatters; robust, safe, secure, and survivable systems; and varying telephonic systems. The conclusion after consideration of these examples is that sometimes, a "how" specification is significantly more clear or brief than a "what" specification, and that sometimes, a "how" specification is needed for information that is not available in a "what" specification. Also, sometimes, a "how" specification is needed to make a quality requirement precise enough to be tested. Therefore, when it is appropriate to use a "how" specification, do so without guilt and in good health.

(Image credit: Flickr user Matthew Mendoza)

Acknowledgments

I thank Martin Feather for pointing out that the Bruegger's Bagel Bakery blueprint on my T-shirt, on which the blueprint of Figure 2 is based, constituted a "what" specification of bagels and that sometimes a "how" specification is better. I thank Michael Jackson for an interesting e-mail discussion on "what" vs. "how." I thank Brian Burechails and Reneé deHerrera-Brooks for teaching me some things about bagel making. I thank Vic DiCiccio for the mouth-watering photograph of the bagels. Finally, I thank Jo Atlee, Gunnar Begersen, Brian Berenbach, Nancy Day, Merlin Dorfman, Martin Feather, Mike Godfrey, and Leah Goldin for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper or during lecture presentations of the material in this paper.

References and notes

1 "Notes on Structured Programming," E.W. Dijkstra, in Structured Programming, O.-J. Dahl, E. W. Dijkstra, and C. A. R. Hoare, eds., Academic Press, London, 1972, ISBN 0122005503.

2 The subject bagels of the photograph of Figure 1 were so mouth-watering that the author and the photographer ended up eating the subjects immediately after the photograph was taken.

3 Bagelmania: The Hole Story, C. Berman and S. Munshower, HP Books, Tucson, 1987, ISBN 0895866242.

4 When the Israeli branches of Dunkin Donuts began to sell bagels as well as their traditional donuts, the author remarked that Dunkin Donuts was diversifying into other holey products in the Holy Land, even though its business was not wholly holey products.

5 This blueprint is modeled after a document entitled "Building a Better Bagel," produced by Bruegger's Bagel Bakery and, until a few years ago, used in their promotional activities. Breugger's Enterprises, Inc. declined a request for permission to publish a copy of that blueprint in this scholarly article.

6 The duration may have to be altered if atmospheric pressure differs substantially from that at sea level. In Denver, Colorado, USA, which is a mile (? 1.6 km) high, the ring must be boiled for 90 seconds.

7 There are a (w)hole host of details ignored in one or both of these specifications:
a) boiling time as a function of the altitude of the place of baking,
b) possible toppings, e.g., garlic, onion, poppy seed, salt, and sesame seed, and when and how to apply them, and
c) emotional issues9; after all, this paper does get a bit emotional about how a bagel is made.

8 Not really!

9 "Is Emotion Relevant to Requirements Engineering?" I. Ramos and D. M. Berry, Requirements Engineering Journal, vol. 10, no. 3, 2005, pp. 238–242.

10 "What's New," K. Saekel, M. Cianci, and M. A. Mariner, San Francisco Chronicle, April 19, 1995.

11 R. deHerrera-Brooks, Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, Inc., private communication by e-mail, August 2008.

12 "Noah's Bagels — Redwood City, CA," Yelp.com.

13 "Restaurant Review: Bagels: blurring the line between tradition and innovation," M. C. Peterson, Palo Alto Online, May 23, 1997.

14 "Noah's Bagels", Davis Wiki.

15 A. Ziemski, Tim Hortons (TDL Group Corp.), private communication by e-mail, August 2008.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the January-February 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

10 Reasons Bear Week Would Be Better

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:07 AM PDT

Shark Week is cool, but I’ve always thought that having a yearly shark week seemed a little silly -after all, how much more are you really going to learn from one year to the next? College Humor has 10 reasons why having Bear Week would be much better than Shark Week.

I can’t help but agree that it would be nice to see another predator get the attention, but what do you guys think?

Link

NatGeo Traveler Photo Contest Winners

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 03:45 AM PDT

National Geographic Traveler magazine has announced the winners of their 2011 photo contest! First place went to the photo shown here, taken by Ben Canales at Crater Lake National Park. Read the story behind the picture, and see ten other amazing winning photos at NatGeo (do not miss the Viewer’s Choice winner). Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Ben Canales)

Is Cancer A New Parasite Species?

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 03:29 AM PDT

According to a new scientific paper, cancer might actually be a newly evolved species of parasite based on the fact that the cells depend on their hosts for food, but otherwise act independently and to the detriment of their host.

Duesberg, a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues believe that carcinogenesis—the generation of cancer—is just another form of speciation, the evolution of new species.

"Cancer is comparable to a bacterial level of complexity, but still autonomous, that is, it doesn't depend on other cells for survival; it doesn't follow orders like other cells in the body, and it can grow where, when and how it likes," said Duesberg in a UC Berkeley press release. "That's what species are all about…Once a cell has crossed that barrier of autonomy, it's a new species.”

Researchers are hopeful that if this is true, the species might be defeated if we continue to force them to rapidly evolve through the use of increasingly powerful medicines. What do you think, is it a parasitic species or a disease?

Link

Super Super Mario Brothers Art

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 02:55 AM PDT

Every city has graffiti, but awesomely geeky street art like these ones on BuzzFeed are few and far between. Enjoy more skilled Mario graffiti at the link.

Link

Awesome Double Exposure Pics

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 02:50 AM PDT

Brighton artist Dan Mountford has quite a gift when it comes to creating double exposed images. Fubiz has a collection of his images for your viewing pleasure, many of which seem to say a whole lot about the people in the photo.

Link

Where Are They Now: 90's Nick Shows

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 02:19 AM PDT

You’ve probably already heard that Nickelodeon has started replaying their most popular 90’s shows again, but have you wondered whatever happened to the creators of the shows? Wonder no more with this great Split Sider article.

Did you know the guys who created Pete & Pete wrote Snow Day, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and The Tale of Despereaux since their show was cancelled?

Link

Trashed! Sticky Notepad

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 11:46 PM PDT

Trashed! Sticky Notepad - $9.95

There are days when a bright, perfectly smooth, yellow sticky note just doesn’t feel right.  For those days when nothing comes easy there is the Trashed! Sticky Notepad from the NeatoShop.

The Trashed! Sticky Notepad is a set of 4 hilarious self-stick pads printed to look like they have been crushed, crumpled and thrown away.  This is the perfect gift for that brilliantly messy person in your life.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Office & Desk items.

Link

Ancient Greek Winged Thunderbolt Sling Bullet Says "Take That"

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 11:46 PM PDT

Who says that Ancient Greeks don't have a sense of (lethal) humor? The lead sling bullets above have a winged thunderbolt engraved on one side and the inscription "take that" on the other side! Link - via the ragbag

Fire-Breathing LEGO Dragon

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 11:45 PM PDT


Photo: akama1_lego [Flickr]

Well, it's no fire-breathing pony, but it's still very impressive indeed. Aaron Amatnieks built this LEGO dragon that breathes fire: Link

iPad Head

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:27 PM PDT


(Video Link)

This viral marketing video by Thinkmodo shows a young woman walking around Bryant Park in New York City. Her head is encased in iPads, each of which shows one part of her head. It’s a promotional item for a new iPad magazine called Cosmo for Guys. Agency Website -via Doobybrain

Old Caboose Turned into a House

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 06:26 PM PDT

In 1975, Marcia Weber bought a caboose made in 1909. Over the past thirty-six years, she’s gradually turned it into a functional home with indoor heating and plumbing. There are beds, a full kitchen, and even a washer and dryer. See more photos of this amazing home conversion at the link. Link -via Craft | Photo: Marcia Weber

Hypnotic Tattoo

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 06:18 PM PDT

It’s a simple design, but there’s something mesmerizing about this tattoo by Xed Lehead. The shading is really nice work. Link -via F-Yeah Tattoos | Photo: Needles and Sins

Bird Shall Not Be Moved

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:57 PM PDT


(Video Link)

An active windshield wiper may not seem like a good place to perch, but this bird isn’t choosy. That, or he’s not going to let the humans push him off. -via Blame It on the Voices

Millennium Falcon School

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:49 PM PDT

You went to school at that place? You’re braver than I thought. redditor MrDrProfFrPatrick noticed that his school, Parkland High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is shaped like the Millennium Falcon. Link | Google Maps Link

The Cartoon Character Color Wheel

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:43 PM PDT

After considering the new Smurfs movie, the folks at Slate compiled an interactive color wheel to show the spectrum of colors by which we know our favorite cartoon characters. At the site, you can mouseover to enlarge and identify each character. Link -via Buzzfeed

Study Compares the Intelligence of Users of Different Web Browsers

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:25 PM PDT

A psychometric consulting firm named AptiQuant asked 100,000 people to take an online IQ test, and then correlated scores with the web browsers used to take them. The blue bars represent test results from 2006 and the red bars test results from 2011. The vertical axis represents IQ points. Link -via Geekologie

Castle Models Made from Human Hair

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 04:15 PM PDT

Agustina Woodgate, an artist from Argentina, works extensively with human hair. For her “I Wanted to Be a Princess” project, she crafted 3,000 bricks out of hair and then assembled them into two medieval-looking castles.

Link -via Geekosystem | Artist’s Website | Photo: Inhabitat

Lard Lad

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 04:07 PM PDT

Lard Lad – $24.95

Are you looking for the perfect gift for a die-hard Simpsons fan?  You need the Lard Lad collectible deluxe box set from the NeatoShop.  This great find features Lard Lad, Homer Simpson, and the infamous Pink Sedan.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Action Figures & Vinyl Toys!

Link

Doppelgänger Dinner for Vegetarians and Omnivores

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 03:10 PM PDT

Which is which? IMAGE: The twin tartares: for vegetarians, a spherified yellow pepper puree on a tomato, with a smudge of basil puree; for omnivores, smoked egg with beef and parsley. Photo: Steph Goralnick

Hold the tofurky! Mike Lee of Studiofeast created a sumptuous feast for 20 vegetarians and 20 omnivores featuring a twin set of dishes that looked (and I'm sure also tasted) awesome.

I had a thought once about couples where one person was a vegetarian and the other was a meat eater. It seemed like they could really never share a meal and have the same experience without one person–usually the omnivore–compromising to suit the mutually agreeable meal. To a normal, well adjusted human being, this is a totally banal observation that wouldn’t warrant losing sleep over.

But to us at Studiofeast, we thought it’d be cool to do a meal where an omnivore and a vegetarian could both share the same meal without the former forgoing meat or the latter having to try flesh. That was the seed of an idea that grew into our most recent dinner: a 7 course meal with an omnivore and vegetarian option where each corresponding course looked identical across the meat/vegetable line. And on July 17th, we seated 40 guests–20 omnivores on one side of the table, 20 vegetarians sitting opposite them–and served them our Doppelganger Dinner.

Link - via Nag on the Lake

Caspian Tern Seashell Nest

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 03:09 PM PDT


Photo: sbeals [Flickr]

For her new book Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them, San Francisco photographer Sharon Beals took this fantastic photo above of a nest of Caspian Terns. The terns, which nests in colonies near oceans, build their nests not out of twigs but out of seashells.

Environmental Graffiti has more photos: Link

Miraculous Healing Power of Dolphins

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 03:08 PM PDT

In the comic book series X-Men, Wolverine has a supernatural ability to heal. But Stan Lee and Jack Kirby might've picked the wrong name for the guy: it should've been Dolphin.

See, scientists have discovered the reason why dolphins are very hard to kill: they seem to have a miraculous healing power that let them survive what would seem to be lethal injuries, just like

Michael Zasloff has published a letter in the July 21 issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, in which he recounts several documented incidents of serious injuries to dolphins, presumably inflicted by sharks. These bites, some larger than a basketball, healed in weeks without leaving the dolphins disfigured, without causing them apparent pain, and without becoming visibly infected.

"If I saw this in a human being, I wouldn't believe it," Zasloff said. "It should awe us. You have an animal that has evolved in the ocean without hands or legs, which swims faster than we can, has intelligence that perhaps equals our social and emotional complexity, and its healing is almost alien compared to what we are capable of."

LiveScience explains the secret behind dolphin's miraculous healing power: Link (Photo: Trevor Hassard, Tangalooma Resort)

How to Beat the Lottery with Statistical Certainty

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 03:07 PM PDT

Someone very smart once told me that the lottery is like a tax for the mathematically stupid, but apparently you can make playing lottery a profitable venture ... if you're good at math (kids, this is why you should stay in school).

Here's the story of how a loophole in the Massachusetts lottery game Cash WinFall made it a surefire bet for some mathematically savvy gamblers:

Over the next three days, Selbee bought $307,000 worth of $2 tickets for a relatively obscure game called Cash WinFall, tying up the machine that spits out the pink tickets for hours at a time. Down the road at Jerry’s Place, a coffee shop in South Deerfield, Selbee’s husband, Gerald, was also spending $307,000 on Cash WinFall. Together, the couple bought more than 300,000 tickets for a game whose biggest prize - about $2 million - has been claimed exactly once in the game’s seven-year history.

But the Selbees, who run a gambling company called GS Investment Strategies, know a secret about the Massachusetts State Lottery: For a few days about every three months, Cash WinFall may be the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country. Because of a quirk in the rules, when the jackpot reaches roughly $2 million and no one wins, payoffs for smaller prizes swell dramatically, which statisticians say practically assures a profit to anyone who buys at least $100,000 worth of tickets.

During these brief periods - “rolldown weeks’’ in gambling parlance - a tiny group of savvy bettors, among them highly trained computer scientists from MIT and Northeastern University, virtually take over the game. Just three groups, including the Selbees, claimed 1,105 of the 1,605 winning Cash WinFall tickets statewide after the rolldown week in May, according to lottery records. They also appear to have purchased about half the tickets, based on reports from the stores that the top gamblers frequent most.

“Cash WinFall isn’t being played as a game of chance. Some smart people have figured out how to get rich while everyone else funds their winnings,’’ said Mohan Srivastava, an MIT-educated statistician who gained fame in gambling circles when he found a flaw in a Canadian scratch ticket game that allowed him to pick the winners more than 90 percent of the time.

Andrea Estes and Scott Allen of The Boston Globe has the story: Link

Previously on Neatorama: A Statistician Solves a Scratch Lottery Code

Alastair Mackie's Alternative Taxidermy Art

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 03:06 PM PDT


Photo: Tessa Angus

What do you do if you've got your hands on thousands of mouse skulls (rescued from owl excrements vomit, no less)? Well, taxidermy artist Alastair Mackie has got the elegant solution. Izzy Elstob of Don't Panic writes:

Downstairs again, Mackie uses the repetition of form to create the series Untitled (Sphere). These are four perfect spheres within thick-set display bell jars, apparently floating upon their plinths. I forgot to mention that these perfect spheres are meticulously composed of mouse skulls. I forgot to mention that these mouse skulls are meticulously extracted from owl shit. What you have is a skeletal ball of precise dimensions, the layers of the ball packed with equidistantly placed skulls of increasing or diminishing size dependent on whether the convex is moving towards or away from the poles.

Link - via Archie McPhee's Endless Geyser of Awesome

Alternative Opening Credits to Iconic TV Shows

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 02:44 PM PDT

Come Home To The Simpsons from devilfish on Vimeo.

Lost as a Friends-esque sitcom? The Simpsons as real people? It could have all happened if only producers had edited their opening credits a little differently. Check out these and a few more over at Shortlist. I didn’t quite buy the Lost as Friends, but I was amused. And the Gorillaz soundtrack coupled with original The Walking Dead comic book art is nothing short of amazing.

Link via Flavorwire

The Likability of Angry Birds

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 01:51 PM PDT


This poster from The Oatmeal ranks the Angry Birds from awesomely destructive to completely worthless. Where does your favorite rank? And do you think the boomerang bird is really that pathetic? I’ve had some limited success with it… in that one level… once…

Link via Buzzfeed

Exploring Space with Chip-sized Satellites

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:43 AM PDT

You have heard of space chimps, now it's time for space CHIPS. Could the future of space exploration be to create tiny micro-machine sized space craft? Some researchers feel this will be the more economical form of space flight.

Miniaturization will inevitably mean limitation—less power, fewer instruments, and reduced ability to store and broadcast data. But dust-mote-size spacecraft could do things that no current space probe can do: coast without a parachute onto the plains of Mars or float for weeks in the soupy atmosphere of Titan. They could be mass-produced and launched by the thousands to form vast space-based networks of sensors. And if the probes could be made thin and lightweight enough, alternative forms of propulsion could eventually send them to distant worlds, without the need for rocket fuel.

Link

Rorschmap Uses Google Maps to Make Crazy Kaleidoscopic Images

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:41 AM PDT

I have spent hours just typing in a random location and using Google Maps to "visit" it with the street view application. If that wasn't entertaining enough (don't knock it till you've tried it) Rorschmap is a website created by James Bridle which takes Google Maps and creates Kaleidoscope like images out of them.

Link

Plants Evolve Leaves Making Sounds Bats Enjoy

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:40 AM PDT

While plants normally have pretty colors in order to attract bugs and other pollinators, one type of plant has evolved to attract bats using sound. I wonder what's on its playlist?

The Marcgravia evenia plant relies on bats to pollinate its flowers. But given that their target animals rely on echolocation rather than eyesight, these plants have evolved leaves that are attractive audibly rather than visually. The plant’s leaves are uniquely dish-shaped, with almost hemispherical concave curves. When the bats go out flying, the leaves return an echo that’s louder and broader than other plants, making them easier for the bats to detect — and halving the time it takes to find the foliage.

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Stormtrooper Necklace

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:09 AM PDT

Stormtrooper Necklace – $11.95

Attention Star Wars fans! Are you on the hunt for the perfect everyday accessory?  Show your allegiance to the imperial army with this fabulous Stormtrooper Necklace from the NeatoShop.  The darkside will be pleased.

Darth Vader Necklace also available.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Star Wars items.

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