Lebron's choice: One three pointer? or Three free throws?

Lebron James(to those who don't know) is a professional basketball player who plays in the American basketball league NBA for the team Cleveland Cavaliers.



Now the question is:

Should he take a three pointer? or instead Take three free throws?



The point labelled 5 is the free throw line.
The points 1,2,3 and 4 form the semicircle called the three point line.

As seen from the picture above the free throw line is much closer to the hoop than the three point line is.
But we must keep in mind that Lebron James must shoot from the free throw line three times but only once from the three point line.

So assuming we decide that the three free throws are better then let's calculate the % of successfully scoring the shot.

The average free throw % of the NBA is 75.7%

So for the first shot the % is 75.7
Similarly it will be so for the remaining two shots.
The chance of converting all the three free throws is 43.3%
The three point average is a meagre 35.4%
So it is much better to take three free throws than to take a single three pointer.

In my next blog I will be calculating this % with specific players, thus getting an understanding of how a player plays.

ASCII : Alphabets in Computers

 ASCII : Alphabets in Computers

The storage of numbers is relatively easy to understand as, computers are very simple at the basic level. Computers use Base - 2, meaning they count in powers of two. This also means that computers have only Humans on the other hand count in Base - 10, meaning we  two digits, namely 0 & 1. Humans count in the powers of 10, so we have 10 digits (0-9). For example,

32 = 3 x 10^1  +2 x 10^0 ("^" means raised to the power of)

For computers,

32 = 1 x 2^5 + 0 x 2^ 4 + 0 x 2^3 + 0 x 2^2 + 0 x 2^1 + 0 x 2^0

Each 2^x represents a "bit". Think of each bit as a slot. In this slot a zero or one can be placed. The bits are also represented as powers of two in their order. For example : the fourth bit is 0 or 1 into 2^4. Nowadays, computers have either 32 bits or 64 bits meaning the maximum value that can be stored is 2,147,483,647. Note : we can DISPLAY numbers greater than this. But on a 32 bit computer, this is the maximum value you can STORE.

So, if every possible configuration of the bits (slots) is used up to represent unique numbers, where is the place for letters? Computers need to be able to process letters for being useful to us, otherwise, the are just expensive calculators.

Here is where ASCII comes in. ASCII stands for  American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASCII helps us to store and display letters on our screens.

In the ASCII encoding (fancy term for saying configuration of letters), a letter is given a unique numerical value. When the computer receives this value, it processes it as a letter. The value of "a" is given a value of 97. Note : "a" is different from "A" as they are considered as different characters.

You must be wondering, if every possible binary value is represented as a number, and each letter is represented by a number, how does a computer know weather we mean "a" or just 97?

Actually, your computer doesn't .

In reality, your computer is just hardware. What makes it really run is your operating system or software. The Operating System is the main piece of software. Windows, OSX and Linux are all operating systems. Now if you open your web-browser like Chrome or IE (Why do you still use this?) you are running another piece of software on top of your operating system.

Think of it as a cake  : Your hardware is the base, your operating system is like frosting and applications are like the cherry on top.

So, when you press the KEY on your keyboard, your operating system identifies it either as a number or a letter, while your HARDWARE processes it as a number/alphabet. In this way computers can identify numbers and letters uniquely and helps you type. 

When you open notepad, you can be sure that whatever you want to write actually happens.

-Raghav M

Will You Take The Bet?

Today's blog is sort of different. It works on mathematics and requires a bit of logic. This question was posed by minutephysics and I thought that I would elaborate on it a bit.
The Questions is quite simple: There are a hundred people standing in a line in a room. Each of you take a one dollar bill and write your number(in the row) on the one dollar bill and hand it to me. Now I take these 100 one dollar bills and randomly put them in boxes also numbered from one to hundred. One by one you enter the room and are allowed to look in 50 of the boxes. Now here's the deal. If you all happen to find the one dollar bill with your number marked on it I give you each a hundred dollars.





A few rules however apply:
1. All of you are allowed to discuss a strategy to win
2. You will enter the room in one way and leave another
3. Once you come out of the room you are not allowed to tell the others what you saw.

So the question is:

Will you take the bet and hope to get a $101 profit?

The choice is yours.........

Comment your answer below.