Comments on: Episode 011: Learning How To Count – Let My Primates Go!

By: jesper hogstrom

jesper hogstrom — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:37:34 +0000

I listened through all episodes after a friend recommended them to me. I liked them all, though I must admit I liked the later – soundscaped – ones better in terms of production quality – and the earlier more in terms of intellectual content. I am also a big fan of RadioLab, so I might be biased

Regarding combinatorials, I have a question I first thought of several years back, and I still haven’t figured it out, maybe you guys can help.

The simplest way to explain it is: Assume an alarm system with a 4 digit code from a 10 digit alphabet. When pushing in digits to enter the code the keypad is satisfied with the correct 4-digit code, disregarding if something came before it. Thus, keying in 12345 the keypad “sees” the code 1234 and 2345.

All 4^10 codes produce a 40000 string. Clearly entering that string would produce duplicates. (even after 2 tries, “0000 0001″ you’ve entered “0000″ three times).

First question: What length is the shortest string that would produce all n-digit combinations from a k sized alphabet?

Second question: What is that string?

–Jesper

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:17:35 +0000

All of the music sounds good, but it takes up a lot of time. The intro is great, and interludes make sense at some points in time, but are too long, and the background music is distracting. Keep the intro, do short transitions, and more precise transitions. Other wise I love it, love the podcast good luck on the math punx stuff too.

By: John Done

John Done — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:01 +0000

The music is great: Please post the artists and titles! John Done, Kingston, Ontario

By: erisian23

erisian23 — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:53:26 +0000

kill the background audio.. downtempo is a poor choice.
felt like i was on a newage website, prepping to mainline kambutcha…
obviously, i need to keep in better touch, this awesomeness caught me off guard!

By: Nick Horton

Nick Horton — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:19:32 +0000

Ah, NPR. I see what you’re saying about the expectations. When you listen to the radio you automatically expect something quite different than with a podcast.

By: Nick Horton

Nick Horton — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:17:51 +0000

You know we’d be wanted to get rid of that background hum ourselves. The primary reason it’s gone is indeed an upgrade in equipment. But, the background music would drown out anything left over for sure.

Audio bed in our new episode is more consistently leveled. But, listen to that one and tell me what you think. I like the background music, but we need to make sure that it is not so loud that it is distracting from the content. Having multiple ears helps.

thanks!

By: Nick Horton

Nick Horton — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:15:40 +0000

In our next episode (# 013), we did exactly that: we recorded in segments so that the breaks were well defined before hand. Great minds think alike!

By: Nick Horton

Nick Horton — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:11:49 +0000

Great! Thanks, brother. This is a great quote btw, “Then, as the podcast continued I found that someone had slipped chunks of feta cheese and bits of jalapeno in my yogurt. Gluck! ”

Ya I loved the intro myself. And we agree that sometimes the interludes became jarring, or the background music was a bit loud. We’re still playing with it, so stay tuned!

By: Andrew K.

Andrew K. — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:10:28 +0000

I agree with working on where the breaks are going to happen beforehand, so that the breaks are more natural. They seemed to be cutting you guys off mid-thought this time around, which actually made it harder to follow you. Also, they should be short, maybe 5-10 seconds. In my head, musical interludes act kind of like the extra spacing between paragraphs; they let you know that the topic is going to change slightly. (The Sporkful comes to mind as a podcast that does this well.) If I want more time to think about what you guys just said, I pause the podcast. I may be an n of 1 that likes podcasts when they're rougher and less produced--more a conversation amongst friends and less Radio Lab--so I really liked your old format. But a bit of production is fine if it makes it more fun for you guys and helps get the word out. The one thing I have to put my foot down about, so to speak, is repeating a bit of what you just said in a whispery voice during the musical interludes. It's distracting, and it makes you sound like some sort of New Age "gurus" rather than the guys who explain graph theory with bonobo humpin'. That said, I love Math for Primates. The first episode I listened to was the one on gauge theory and applying it to economics, which hooked me completely. I've been thinking about economics from the "softer" side of psychology and neurology, so finding out that there is a way to model people's fuzzy preferences in math was great. Keep up the good work!

By: Samuel Hansen

Samuel Hansen — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:38:45 +0000

One thing that I thought was very positive is that the slight background buzz from your previous shows was gone, I do not know if that was from the music or an equipment upgrade though. The bed music worked quite well but sometimes the music levels would spike during your conversations and drown out the words which was distracting. I agree with Mike C. that the use of it as a break between two divergent ideas works quite well and is a great addition to the show. Thanks for your work.