Monday 10 September 2018

AfterBurner

[Updated 25 September 2018 with some info on the 747 Art Car at the end]
[Updated 20 September 2018 with some more Thoughts at the end]

Impressions from Burning Man 2018





I just returned from Burning Man 2018. Here are my videos, photos, and thoughts...

Videos


Sailing on The Monaco past the giant Polar Bear [unedited]

Photos


Some highlights...







Thoughts

It was mental. Here are some impressions and observations.

Math Camp

As summarised in this nice article there was a "Math Camp" located at "3.14, P". We enjoyed listening to ad hoc presentations on topics such as "the mathematics of the doubling cube in Backgammon". But the highlight was a presentation by a PhD student from Canada (his area of expertise was probability theory and Monte Carlo analysis) who explained the (counterintuitive) strategy of using a random-number-generator to beat the 50:50 odds of guessing a coin-toss !

Also, at the "Math Camp" we mentioned our longstanding surprise with the fact that the perimeter of an ellipse cannot be written in simple "closed-form" (unlike for a  circle: 2 times Pi times radius), but instead requires the use of elliptic integrals. Discussion ensued, and we acquiesced: accepting that since the elliptic integral can be computed to any desired precision, it is as good as a simple "closed form". Same goes for the error function or the Gaussian distribution etc. So, all good : )

747 Art Car

One of the most impressive Art Cars was the Boeing 747 partial fuselage re-purposed as a dance venue: 


… to be continued (when I have time)