What are you listening to these days? Working to some Mongolian folk? Unwinding with some cavernous black metal? Doing cardio to the latest Balkan brass playlist? Flugelhorns always get our blood pumping...
Chances are, you’re not. Despite the growing variety of music genres (filthstep, anyone?), discovering any of them in the age of Spotify can be a challenge. That’s because algorithms mostly recommend music similar to what we’re already listening to—a classic DJ faux pas (cue record scratch sound effect). |
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There’s a growing movement among music lovers to rage against the machine. Or, at least, subvert it. One new audio tool called Radiooooo takes you on a sonic journey through time and space. Another named Unchartify transforms your Spotify into a non-recommendation engine, making it easier to discover new tunes yourself. All of which is music to our non-digital ears.
So as algorithms get better at telling us what to hear, watch, read, buy, and even eat—we have to get better at not listening to them. And maybe listen to a few more flugelhorn solos, instead. |
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🌐 Don’t Stand So Close to Me. This new visualization of population density is one in a million. |
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Starting this month, we’ll be including two puzzles in each newsletter. The first may help you think through the second. Submit answers to one or both. Happy puzzling! |
A hot Mongolian folk band is playing tonight. The venue is a coffee house in the middle of a street that has 11 parking spots, as shown above, and each spot is open with probability p = 1/20.
If you approach from the right end of the street, what is the probability that the first open spot you encounter is zero or 1 spots away from the venue?
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The Mongolians are back and more popular than ever. They’re playing a bigger venue this time, and you want to park as close to the show as possible. The venue is in the middle of a very long one-way street—so you can’t return to a parking spot once you pass it. You also can’t see if a spot is open or not until you’re next to it and, as before, each spot is open with probability p = 1/20.
On average, how close can you park to the venue if you park optimally?
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We’ll randomly choose one correct respondent to each puzzle for a shout-out in next month’s email. |
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Trying to solve last month’s puzzle about the ratio of nurses at two regional hospitals might have left you feeling ill. That’s because we accidentally omitted an essential piece of information: the probability that a person would be a patient on any given day. Our sincere apologies. We’ve updated the original puzzle here and will accept answers through the end of September.
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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” |
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