Poor User Experience of Self-Checkout Kiosks

I was paying a return visit to a local Safeway supermarket to buy a refreshing refreshe Apple Cider sparkling water to take sanctuary from the oppressive heat outside this afternoon. I was hopeful of scoring a powerful discount on two bottles because I had received a 50 cent off coupon (if you buy 2) earlier that day. My story turned to sour apples at the self-checkout kiosk.  Continue reading

An Infinite Sum Approximation of Pi

The value of Pi rounded to four decimal places is 3.1416, which makes today (3/14/16) one of the most prominent International Pi Days you’ll experience in your lifetime. This year I’m looking at Issac Newton’s infinite series approximation for π. Originating in the long ago 1730s, it’s still one of the fastest converging Pi approximations to this day. Continue reading

Finding the Golden Ratio from the Fibonacci Sequence

Technical analysis teaches traders to use Fibonacci retracement price levels (61.8%, 38.2%) when measuring possible pullbacks. If you couldn’t find these numbers when looking at the Fibonacci sequence—you wouldn’t be alone.

These ratios are drawn from another mathematical constant, the Golden Ratio Φ (also golden mean, golden section or divine proportion). How are these numbers connected?

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On Earth’s Cracks and Crevasses

Earth Day is a wonderful time for reflecting on our planet. In today’s post I wanted to avoid the temptation to simply post a picture of Earthrise, a momentous vista which showed us our fragile planet for the very first time from lunar orbit. Instead, I’ve taken a look at some of the Earth’s cracks and crevasses as seen by NASA’s Terra satellite. Continue reading

How Much Water for a Hamburger?

A hamburger takes 634 gallons (2400 liters) of water to make. That’s enough water to make more than six bathtubs overflow!

World Water Day promotional video claims a hamburger requires 634 gallons of water (0:50).How can a 1/3rd lb. (150 gram) hamburger patty, special sauce, lettuce, tomato all on a sesame-seed bun take so much water to produce, you ask? Since you can’t squeeze that much water out of your hamburger, it’s reasonable you should ask. Today is World Water Day, so I’m going to take a look at this question myself. Continue reading

Thinking About the Value of Pi

The number pi (π) is far more than just an esoteric button on calculator keypads, little used by everyday people on the street, and thought useful only to scientists accustomed to the Greek alphabet. March 14 (3/14) is Pi day, and a good day to remember a little of that grade school mathematics that plays such an important role in so much of the world around us. Have you ever wondered why does π have the value it does, 3.14159265…? Not a little bit more, or a little bit less?  In this Pi day adventure you will see for yourself with a little arithmetic, algebra and Euclidean geometry (of the sort learned in high school) just how π comes out to be the number it is. Continue reading

A New Year, A New Blog

Hello everybody, and welcome to my blog, Loresayer.com. This blog is born as we are all entering a promising new year, 2012, our eyes looking forward full of hopes and dreams.

Christening a New Blog

Sometime ago I was challenged by the WordPress installation prompt to give a name to associate with my blog, and I was profoundly at a loss.  People will have the names of their children picked out well in advance, but when you put them on-the-spot to name the virtual spigot of their mind they suddenly go mute.  I’ve had ideas for blogs in the past, for instance when I worked at Infragistics I had called my blog, “Changing the world, one pattern at a time.”  Nonetheless, I was at a momentary loss of words when it came to defining what I wanted this blog to say about me. Continue reading