#15 See things which seem complex
in the simple way they really are
The Irrational World Blog 2011

Simple explanation of BBC More Or Less Poker Cardtrick
The prog on the BBC website
- OK how many different types of cards are involved in this trick 10, 20, 8 maybe?
... NO there are only 2
i.e. - the targets : "the poker cards" AND - all the other cards
(..and it's a question of placing these 2 types in different postions & we hide this position in an odd/even pattern)

- Now we end the trick with the targets facing up and the others facing down .. just as if we had gone thru the pack and tuned them over

- but we didn't exactly do that did we ? Cos as the penultimate part of the trick we'd dealt the cards into 2 stacks and then turned one stack over
- So we want targets to be facedown on the first stack and face up on the second stack
- ie. in the original pack the targets face DOWN if odd and UP if even

- but the magician asked the guy about each pair "flip or not" ..so what ? that made no difference. If a target was an odd it would have been facing down, but flipped it becomes an even, so it stays in the "right" position anyway
- Now when we deal the cards into 2 stacks the first stack has "targets" facing down and second stack has them facing up. Flip the second stack add it too the first & voila all the targets are in face down position.

- A way of simplifying the trick is to forget about the poker hand and just think about red or black ... Begin the trick, for odd cards flip if red, for even cards (i.e. 2nd, 4th, etc.) flip if black
- when you deal it into 2 stacks reds will all be facing down in the first stack and up in the second. Flip the second stack and add to the first and in the whole pile reds will be facing down.

- The talk of a poker hand is a standard conjurer con, to make the trick seem very complex ..when in fact the trick is schoolboy simple.. "The poker cards" are just 5 cards different to the others ..it's not like you make them come out in any specific order or anything.
- A complex maths explanation is just not necessary, cos there is no complicated arrangement, you've just hidden the flipping inside the odd/even pattern.

- Development - We could now develop a much more complex trick by hiding the arrangement in a triple or 5 card pattern instead of the just the double odd/even pattern.

Coincidence is Common
interesting video explaining that bizarre things that happen are mostly just coincidence, cos life is a series of huge data sets and in large data datasets coincidences are bound to happen. ..325,201 views

Beware ransomware : PC Virus impersonating the police
- You get a message on your screen e.g."This is the Metropolitan police .. this computer will be locked until the fine is paid..call this number" - ransomware , PC world

That Calculator Question from 5 Live Science Night
- dividing a repeated 3 digit number ABCABC by 13, 11, 7
he asked why the answer is always ABC
- well basically 13x11x7=1001 so you are dividing the number by 1001
- can you see that the 6 digit number can be expressed
ABCABC= ABC(1000+1)
dividing both sides by 1001
- so ABCABC/1001 = ABC(1000+1)/1001 =ABC
voila
- the same would work for 4 digit numbers if you used 101
- or 8 digit number if you used 10001 etc.

BBC Bias : not impartial anymore : Sticks to a line
- The BBC got caught napping on the MMR scare when it should have taken the side of science. So ever since it seems management has decided the BBC must take a line on social issues e.g. racism, politically correct speech, CACC (catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change)

- the hyped item on the news website : the green message of Eden project man UK 'must believe in energy revolution' http://bbc.in/tJPBbd they wouldn't do this if he was a skeptic.

- biased-bbc.blogspot.com has good info BUT a pity it regards fair criticism of Israel ..where the whole state was started by terrorism & terror is the mainstay of it's defence policy.. of course it's not the worst country in the world ..many states e.g. African & Iran persecute their own people worse.

- BBC's reputation for telling HALF the story ALL the time.

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