Meme Engine

Meme Engine "MIT blackjack team"

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What I've been thinking about...

Jun 17

Ira Glass, Andy Bloch
"How to Count Cards"
This American Life #466

100 seconds on how to count cards in Blackjack. Though this is a nefarious example, it seems to me a wonderful study on how to package something difficult (statistics) in an easy-to-use, user-friendly way without losing very much of the power in the original math.

This American Life host Ira Glass provides the explanation with help from Andy Bloch, of the MIT blackjack team. Find the full episode here.

Posted 11 months ago

audio, podcast, spoken word, this american life, ira glass, andy bloch, blackjack, tutorial, card counting, statistics, heuristics, MIT blackjack team,

Favorite Podcasts:

Ideas with Paul Kennedy on CBC
This American Life from WBEZ
Radiolab from WNYC
The Age of Persuasion from CBC and Pirate Toronto
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
Spark with Nora Young on CBC
99% Invisible with Roman Mars
The Partially Examined Life a philosophy podcast and blog
Suggest a Podcast. Heard any good memes lately?

Books I've Blogged About:

The Dune Saga by Frank Herbert. All the usual speculations about science fiction, plus some of the deepest thoughts about politics, society, and human destiny I've read anywhere.
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Morality from a psychologist's perspective, with a focus on major divides, like Liberal/Democrat, or Religious/Atheist. Haight sees through his self-delusions, and challenges us to do the same.
Microcosm by Carl Zimmer. A close look at what we can learn about ourselves inside our distant cousins, the single-celled organisms. Lots of evolutionary insight into what we are at this baser level!
Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie. A book about memes... ideas and how they participate in their own evolution within human mind and society.
Godel, Escher, Bach the titanic work on math, music, and human consciousness by Douglas Hofstadter.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. A favorite children's book that became an even more favorite adult book. Full of poetry, metaphor, and wisdom.
Out of Our Heads by Alva Noe. A book about consciousness, and idea that our conception of it should maybe cross the boundary of the skull!