A paradox that rocks the foundations of scientific reasoning! — The raven paradox knocks at the door of one of the most fundamental aspects of science. At its core, it stems from the following question: “What is evidence?” Logician and philosopher Carl Gustav Hempel formulated a playful-sounding logic puzzle in the 1940s to demonstrate how this paradox occurs. …

The psychology of stupidity! — We have all encountered situations where stupid people think they are smart. Thanks to the internet today, basic information about almost anything is accessible to almost anyone. So, most people know a little about many things; a good thing. But underneath this seemingly-beneficial dynamic, there is something seriously going wrong…

Test your algorithmic reasoning skills with this puzzle! — Welcome to the latest entry in the tricky logic puzzle series. This puzzle entry requires you to flex your algorithmic reasoning skills. The story begins one fine day, when Cheat discovers a mysterious box. Inside this box are two feeble looking opaque glass boxes and one mysterious note. The opaque…

The art of technical writing is not for everyone! — I have been working on “my” art of technical writing for a while now. After all this time, it has become abundantly clear to me that it is not everyone’s cup of tea. …

Story time: Back to the steam engine… — The concepts of entropy and heat share a subtle relationship that plays an important role in the uni-directional flow of time. While pop-science culture often refers to entropy as ‘disorder’ (which leads to misunderstandings), the relationship between entropy and heat almost never gets any love. It is perhaps the very…

The mathematical philosophy of numbers! — Do numbers really exist out there or are they just figments of our imagination? This is a question that philosophers of mathematics have pondered upon for ages. When one associates oneself with mathematics long enough or is curious enough, one eventually stumbles upon this question. When I stumbled upon this…

Discrete math makes this problem very simple to solve! — I recently came across this tricky math problem and found it interesting to solve. So, I thought I’d write about it. It has also been a while since I wrote about mathematics. So, here we are. To start, you are given the following equation: 2^x + 4^y + 8^z =…

If you are avid reader, you need to know about this issue! — The Ghostwriter problem is a writing industry epidemic that makes me feel sick. I get that there is a market for this sort of a thing. But still, it feels plain wrong no matter which way I look at it. To the uninitiated, ghostwriting is the practice of hiring a…

A precursor to the Dedekind cut! — I was never really taught the fundamentals of rational numbers in school. The more that I think about it, the more convinced I get that this is the sort of stuff that one cannot be taught. It is something that one ponders upon; something that one arrives on one’s own…