A movie

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Back in 1966 The Beach Boys have asked Wouldn't it be nice if we were older. I bet it would – if we could do that for a moment and then come back to our original surroundings. But here are some more thoughts –
Wouldn’t it be nice to calculate how much would it cost to enable our customers to have 2 hour time slots instead of 4 hours?
Wouldn’t it be nice to learn how many new employees you need to introduce a new line of service?
Wouldn’t it be nice to know whether you should approve a vacation request or not, making sure that your service level does not go down?
Wouldn’t it be nice to foresee the expected demand in the upcoming year and be able to plan accordingly?
Well – it is nice. Once you have the ability to automate scheduling, forecasting and planning, you also have the ability to test case scenarios and see what happens if…
What does automatic scheduling have to do with the ability to foresee how would a change of the slot window affect the business? Well that’s easy – an automatic process can be used to simulate different scenarios and compare them. It can also be used to tune the configuration so that it fits the ever changing business goals.
Integrated automatic processes, starting from forecast, going into planning, then scheduling and/or rostering and finally getting into analyzed results enables the ability to foresee how a new line of service might affect the bottom line. Wouldn’t that be nice…

The financial crisis - in a way even YOU can understand

Everybody knows about the financial crisis the world is going through, but I am sure at least some of you don't really understand why it all started, right?

Well the following article explains exactly how it all started in a way even a 14 year old 'pokemon' fan girl can understand.

Enjoy - The article

The American debt clock

The American debt is basically the amount of money owed by the American government to U.S debt instruments, such as treasury bills, bonds etc. You can read more about it here.

As of three weeks ago, the American debt passed the 10 trillion $ (!!!) mark. The interesting thing is that the American debt clock in Times Square, which shows the current debt, was not built to hold such huge numbers. As you can see in the picture, the $ sign now also holds the tens of trillions digit. Try this out for more insights.

If this recession will last as long as expected, the debt will probably increase much more, and there will be no other option but to build another clock, with a few more digits...

Amazing 20 questions on the Internet

Everybody knows the game "20 questions" in which someone chooses a figure (real or fiction) and the others need to guess who the figure is using only 20 right or wrong questions. Adapting it to the Internet looks trivial - all you need is a database of figures and questions. I already did something similar about 25 years ago, trying to guess an animal that my father/mother picked (in Basic!!!).

Well actually it is not that trivial - you need to have a very big database and find the correct questions to ask to be able to divide the vast information quickly enough so that you are able to guess the correct figure after only 20 questions.

                             

Akinator (http://www.devinettor.com/#) does it incredibly well! I played it about 10 times until I succeeded to win (meaning he couldn't guess my figure, which by the way was Doug from the time tunnel...). In the homepage you can see the last 10 games it played, and it seems that the statistics are almost always 9 to 1 (i.e. 9 out of 10 games, Akinator succeeds).

                  

You can also view the top characters that were picked from the beginning of the web site. Interestingly, this web site is played mostly by Israeli's - Bar Refaeli, Ninet Tayeb and Tzipi Livni are all in the top 10 ever... Apart from them you have You, your mother and Akinator, the 'always click on yes', 'always click on no' and 'always click on don't know'. The only non Israeli and actual named figure is Angelina Jolie. Interesting. Could it be that Brad Pit also plays here often?...

43.7

מה חשב לעצמו שאול מופז? כל אחד מאיתנו שאל את עצמו אתהשאלה הזו בשבוע האחרון. מילא לנבא שתנצח (הרי צריך להחדיר רוח קרב ואופטימיות) אבל למה לנבא בכמה? מה הסיכוי שמופז יקבל בדיוק 43.7 אחוזים מהבוחרים?

43.7

והנה, לאחר קבלת תוצאות האמת מסתבר שמופז לא היה רחוק כל כך. אולי זה אומר שאפשר להתנבא על 43.7 אחוז ולהיות מאד קרוב? בוא ננסה...

43.7

אני אומר שהסיכוי שארה"ב תבחר נשיא שחור הוא 43.7 אחוז. נשמע הגיוני, לא? אני גם חושב שהסיכוי שלבני לא תצליח להקים ממשלה ואנחנו עומדים בפני בחירות הוא 43.7. כמו כן, הסיכוי שמכבי תל אביב בכדורסל לא תיקח השנה את כל התארים בישראל הוא 43.7. בוא'נה - זה ממש כיף העניין הזה של להתנבא. אף אחד לא יכול לסתור אותך וכל מה שתגיד יהיה נכון באותה מידה שהוא לא נכון.

43.7

גאון המופז הזה...

Beware - email

If you are reading this post from an email - then I am sorry, I didn't mean to disturb. But since you are already concentrating on this, then keep on reading.

What was I doing just now?

The Sidney Morning Herald paper has published the conclusions of a research that was done in the UK, among which it was discovered that it takes roughly 64 seconds on average for someone to get back to what he was doing before a new email has popped into his inbox.

So how much time do we spend on emails?

The meaning of this is that for people who check their inbox every 5 minutes, will waste more than 8 hours a week wondering what they were doing seconds before they got an email... Think about it - 20% of the time spent at work is spent on thinking "hell, what was I doing a minute ago?". If you add to this another minute of reading and replying to emails, you get more than 50% wasted on moving into and from your inbox.

How much time does it take to reply to a message?

It was also discovered that although emails are thought to be non disturbing (especially compared to the annoying messengers), people tend to reply to emails 1 minute and 44 seconds, on average, after a new email was received.

What can we do about it?

One very simple thing is not to have an icon displayed (and of course not to have anything popping up) when an email has arrived. This small thing can lead into the ability to work without the interference of emails, at least not when you are concentrating on a specific task.

But what can we do about phone calls, SMS, messenger and calling my name in the hallway?

Maybe I will have a second post on this, depends on how much I get disturbed...

Riddle 7 - Glass balls

Here we go again - audience participation time! Yes, it's time for a new riddle. As usual, we will first review the solution to the riddle before. The solution is very basic - you just need to count the numbers from left to right... Each time we simply write down the number of appearances of the digit and the digit itself. For example, let's take the one before last row:

4 2 1 3 1 1

The first digit is 4, how many appearances? 1. Therefore we write 1 4
Now 2 which appears once, therefore 1 2
Now 1 which appears 3 times, 3 1 and last 1 3. So the result is:

1 4 1 2 3 1 1 3

The next row will be:
4 1 1 4 1 2 2 3, which is almost what Alex has wrote...


Riddle 7 - glass balls



Imagine you have a single glass ball and a 100 stories high building. You want to know what is the highest story from which you can throw the ball and still it will not shatter. Since you have only one ball, you must start from the first floor and go up one by one, or else you might find yourself with a shattered ball and no idea of the exact floor from which you can throw balls (if you had any...) and still admire the view...


So if I ask you how many trials you need in the worst case, the answer is 100. You can't do better.

But what if you had 2 balls? What is the minimal number of trials, worst case, that you need to do to find the exact spot?

What about 3 balls? 4 balls? Is there a pattern here?