Prime numbers

So much to write, so little time, no? 
I have an essay on primes that I first worked out last year, and which I will soooon post.  I'm not even an expert in number theory, so I don't know if the essay is saying anything new. 

It'll start with simple stuff like how many prime numbers are there and proceed to something more interesting like what are they then.  Neither of these questions is very simple, neither is entirely complex.  But I think it requires creativity (in the sense of new viewpoints) to give new answers and someday make the complex simple. 

And that is the march of science, n'est-ce pas?

Roland Garros (French Open) tennis is on

Upside-down t-shirt

 4 out of 3 people struggle with math.  Sure. 

Teaching ICT in Lagos

My recent teaching website is bellseng on googlesites.  OK, the school is not exactly in Lagos, it's an hour drive from Ikeja.  

I only have one course to teach this semester, and fewer than 100 students.  Objectives include brushing up on math for some, open-ended math analysis for some others, and discussions of information and communication technology for most.  We'll have fun.  

Mahjong - I really didn't expect this high score

First you learn to win the game, then you find tricks to raise your score, but then you start losing because in chasing the high score you get stray off the straight and narrow path that leads to winning.

Hence I started once again to play plain vanilla mahjong titans, and guess what I just did: scored my highest ever in Fortress.

I wasn't even thinking about the scores, Man!

 Last time I looked, a couple of months ago, here were my high scores:
Interestingly, my absolute highest scores in four layouts (all except Crab and Spider) occurred between 16 and 25 July 2012.  For Crab, the second highest score was 18th July, and the 3rd, 4th, and 5th highest were all in the month before.  I recommend playing for high scores with the Crab layout as it responds well to the score-raising tricks.  
 Contrast this with Spider, for which the five highest scores all came before this score-raising season. 

My Mahjong solitaire scores for different layouts, as at late 2012

For an ordering of how well the score-raising tricks seem to have helped:  
Let high scores in June/July 2012 yield 5points for 1st, 4 for 2nd, ..., 1 for 5th, and add them up.  The totals are Turtle 6, Dragon 10, Cat 9, Fortress 12, Crab 10, Spider 0.  Therefore we have: Fortress, Crab/Dragon, Cat, Turtle, Spider

The tricks raise your score alright, but how much have you hurt the bottomline (win rate?)
What do you make of the fact that win percentages in early 2012 are roughly the same as in late 2012 above, except for Crab and Turtle which gained?  I say without the score-raising experiments, the win rates went up.  Then the sre hurt (caused losses) least in these two layouts.  In the other layouts, the sre-related losses possibly canceled out other increases in win rate. 

I'm officially bored done writing about Mahjong solitaire. What is exciting how many have used my tips to aid their play. Love it.