Sun Tzu

I approached reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu with a bit of hesitiation mostly because I didn't know what to expect from a 2500 year old document on of all things warfare. I have heard lots of people in the corporate world talk about this book and its timelessness and how it is about warfare and more importantly overcoming adversity and challenges. I got a copy of the book a few weeks back and must say I was pleasantly surprised.

Little is known about Sun Tzu except that he lived in 6th century China about the same time as Confucius. He was a military strategist and came from a warrior class in ancient China.

Here are some verses from The Art of War that struck a chord with me :

• If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
• Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.

---

On a unrelated note, here is an interesting article I read on the googleblog .

Expanding girls' horizons

Recently I was one of several Googlers who volunteered at the Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics conference at Mills, where I also teach. This annual event provides career panels and hands-on workshops to encourage middle-school girls to keep studying science and mathematics as they enter high school. I led a workshop, "How to Build a Computer," in which the students learned binary arithmetic and built a half-adder.

I don't know who had more fun, the girls or the volunteers! Google is a sponsor of the national Expanding Your Horizons Network, whose workshops have reached over 625,000 girls.

Pi

I had dinner with David and his family this weekend and his youngest son mentioned that "Pi day" was just celebrated at his school this past week (3/14) over dinner. In the midst of our conversation about Quantum computing and quantum communications, his 12 year old son exclaims "If I calculate Pi, will I unlock the secrets to the universe ?" That certainly caught me off guard but I thought about it for a moment and I didn't have an answer except that perhaps quantum computation might help him just find the answer some day.

Pi is a constant calcuated by the ratio of the circumference of any circle to it's diameter. Most of us have learned that the area of a circle was Pi multiplied by the radius of the circle squared (A= π*r²⁾. I just had a grade school flashback. I remember using the approximation 3.14159 for most of my calculations and this special number has some properties that make it unique. For starters, Pi is always the same number for any size circle and the perhaps the most interesting property is that it is an infinite decimal meaning that the decimal portion of Pi can be calculated forever without repition. This is very different than say a decimal like 1.33333 which repeats infinately but with predictable patterns of numbers. Pi for example never repeats patterns and has been calculated to 50 million decimal places so far. The decimal appears to be infinite and beyond modern computation methods. It is considered an irrational number and was approximated by the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and the Greeks.

Perhaps a quantum computer can calcuate Pi some day or at least reveal if it is in fact an infinite decimal. The answer to that question just might reveal something about the universe after all.

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944
592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647...

Schrödinger's Cat

I revisted the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiement this afternoon while telling the missus that I had finished the chocolate chips she was going to use to make cookies this afternoon . "If you don't open the kitchen cabinet and collapse the wave function, the chocolate chips are perfectly superpositioned -- meaning the chocolate chips are both there and not there (at least from her perspective). She did'nt buy it and just as she opened the cabinet, I felt the wave function collapse and my midnight snacking from last week was revealed.

Schrödinger was a nobel prize winner in Physics in the early 1930's and his thought experiment helps one understand the concept of superposition. The experiement begins with a box and a live cat. You place the cat in the box, close the lid and the cat is in one of two states alive or dead. Obviously the cat is alive, because we just observed it. Next, some harmful material (this material, if consumed is fatal to the cat) is placed into the box with the cat and the lid is closed once again. At this point let's assume we don't know if the cat has consumed the fatal material and has perished, or if it is still alive. Our rational mind would say that the cat is is either dead or alive at this point and we cannot know for sure until we remove the lid. Enter quantum theory and the concept of superposition which says that until we have opened the lid, the cat has satisfied both states or is both dead and alive in terms of possibilities. Superposition happens when we cannot observe the state of an object and there are multiple plausible explanations of its state. The moment we open the lid, superposition disolves into the magic ether and the cat is forced into a state of being either alive or dead. Life in the quantum world is chock full of these types of possibilities.

O

I was fortunate enough to see not 1, but 2 different Cirque Du Soleil performances in Vegas this past week. O was a great show and the water acrobats and the synchronized swimmers were quite impressive. I liked the story line of the "twins" on a journey in "KA" and the influence of elements like wind, earth, and fire, were a nice addition to the story line.

The influence of gaming and money on this city is quite prominent. There are resort casinos all up and down the strip and new constuction is everywhere. Big casinos like MGM, Paris, and Bellagio draw in many tourists and the casinos are designed such that you'll never need to leave.

As long as you have the money to spend, Las Vegas has a dream to sell you. I found this place unique in its purpose and an experiment in capitalism unlike any I have experienced before. It was an interesting place to visit and why not take a seat at a blackjack table while you're here - it just might be your lucky day.