DataGenetics

I'm a lawyer. A highly specialized lawyer. I will share what I know about this question.

1. This is a problem for me too. Even though I have been doing this for a long time there are a lot of situations where I am asked for a referral and I don't know anyone good. Sometimes I don't know anyone at all.

2. When this occurs the first default thought is "Go to a Juggernaut Law Factory". All of them claim to have the best people in the world in every possible specialty. You pay through the nose. You hold your nose and hope that the work product is adequate. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is astonishingly good. Sometimes it's embarrassing as hell how badly the work is done. (The same goes for hiring the Big 4 accounting firms).

3. If you don't want to go that route, your next job is to identify your problem as precisely as possible so you can start to find your way down the referral chain until you find someone you want to hire.

4. I will make reference to my specialty to give you an example, but in any area of law the same concepts hold true.

5. I am an international tax lawyer. I do primarily inbound (foreign money, companies, and humans entering the United States) work. To find me it is not sufficient to specify "tax" as your problem. That's like saying "I need some code" in software land, I'm guessing. You need to be highly specific. "I have a U.S. company that will sell 50% of itself to a foreign investor. My foreign investor needs a U.S. tax advisor…

I write the blog: http://DataGenetics.com

1. Process: I keep a task list (using google tools) with a list of topic ideas. When I think of something I want to write about, or find interesting links, I place them there. There's typically about two dozen ideas at any time incubating.

2. Start: I started the blog about a dozen years ago as a way to add depth to my website that was the front-end for my consulting business. I stopped consulting shortly after starting, and am now retired, but I keep the blog up on that site; I've built a following. It was easy to start. Ideas are easy; the hard part is finding the free time to write!

3. Motivation. I love doing it. I get pleasure from writing. When I was a kid, I loved reading the works of Martin Gardner. I hope my blog could be seen some way as an homage to his works.

4. No real struggles, but I made a conscious choice to not enable comments on my site. Comments will get you down. Everyone is a critic. Jerks will say "that's not special, I could have don that" (hmmm, but you didn't). My email address is not hard to find on the site if you want to get in contact with me. Don't fret too much about publishing; do what is right for you. There is a whole spectrum of 'advice' from people saying regular rapid cadence (even if you have nothing to say), through to only publish gems. I typically average about one post a week. Some of my posts are lightweight, others are heavyweights.

Monty Hall himself wrote to the Harvard C.S. Professor Lawrence Denenberg questioning the counter-intuitive logic:

> https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/373/the-monty-hall-problem-where-does-our-intuition-fail-us/23674#23674

____

The topic of the counter-intuitive nature of probability reminds of Newton's letter to Pepys - "In 1693, Isaac Newton answered a query from Samuel Pepys about a problem involving dice. Newton’s analysis is discussed and attention is drawn to an error he made."

Here is the classic Newton-Pepys Problem http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/february12014/

Here is the Newton-Pepys problem explained by Professor Joe Blitzstein in the Harvard class Stats110: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7NE4WF8j-Q&feature=youtu.be...

Here is further discussion about the logical error Newton made in his solution: http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0701089.pdf

For some mental fun, try these values for the angle and see what observations you can make about the results:

76.34541

126.869896

137.50777

However, I find it a bit bothersome that the input field doesn't properly accept floats, and the floats get rounded unnecessarily. Please don't do that, or have an option to customize it.

Also, you miss the more obscure trigonometry values:

http://datagenetics.com/blog/march22017/index.html

Namely, to quote from the above page:

Versine, Vercosine, Coversine, Covercosine, Exsecant, Excosecant, Haversince, Havercosine, Hacoversine, Hacovercosine

You might also wish to expand this by adding, in addition to the already shown degrees & radians, the following angle measures:

* Gradian
* Turns
* Arcminutes/Arcseconds

Two things:

1) You don't take your number when you find it. I guess my brain assumed "find" meant "find and take with you to prove you found it." Perhaps a better term might be "encounter."

2) Here's a much better explanation (thanks micaeked): http://datagenetics.com/blog/december42014/index.html. Essentially, the algorithm works because following numbers to drawers will eventually create a loop (e.g., drawer 2 points to 4 points to 6 points to 2). By starting with the drawer with your number, you're guaranteed to be in a loop with your number. The only question is whether your loop is less than 50 drawers long...

Furthermore, this confirms that there IS no transfer of information from previous prisoners in any way.

1. How many people do there need to be in a room so the there is a greater than 50% chance of at least two of them sharing the same birthday?

2. How many numbers we have to draw from 365 so the there is a greater than 50% chance of at least two of them are the same?

3. How many numbers we have to draw from X so the there is a greater than Y% chance of at least Z of them are the same?

I think X,Y,Z are enough parameters:

Drawing from X=1000 numbers, what is the chance Y that Z=(5,6,7,8...) is the same?

Sorry, I'm not a matematician, just some breakfast ideas ;)

Edit: Inspired by http://datagenetics.com/blog/february72019/index.html