mpotd
okay so here's the math problem of the day. b has a very precise stopwatch. exactly periodically, he pinches g. a short random time thereafter g yowls. you don't see b pinch g. you only hear g yowl. the problem is to figure out exactly when b is going to pinch g. for that you will need to know the interval between pinches and the phase relative to your own stopwatch. okay, so the easy part of the problem is when the delay between b's pinch and g's yowl is some sort of nice poisson distribution. where most delays are significantly shorter than the pinch period. no sweat. linear regression over a large number of pinches should work just fine. that predicts the yowl. so the pinch happens a standard deviation or two beforehand. done. okay, so let's toughen things up a bit. i can momentarily give b super strength. so his pinches hurt more. or would if i can predict when they're going to happen. this motivates g to delay yowling. to make it more difficult for me to predict when to super the pinch. sometimes he can delay long enough that he gets pinched twice but only yowls once. this is a much harder problem. working solutions obliviate the need for a resume. timmer for employer.