Monge’s Theorem, stated informally, says that regardless of the size or location of the three circles depicted above, the points A, B, and C will form a straight line. Prove it.
Send your solutions to this problem (with proofs) to midnight.math@outlook.com. If you are correct, you will be given the highest of accolades: your name mentioned here, next issue.
On September 20th, Frankly Speaking posed to the student body of Olin the question: “What is ‘not-so-well-known’ that you think people should know more of? Can you tell us about it? Why is it important?” We received the following three fairly different responses:
There are at least 258 public mailing lists serviced by Olin’s Mailman system. Included in this vast number of lists for a student body of under 400 is everything from classes to clubs, politics to Pokémon. Yet, a huge portion of the students’ inboxes are taken by just two mailing lists: carpediem and helpme. Given these lists’ powerful place in our daily lives, a survey was sent out in June to subscribers of these lists in an attempt to define public opinion and guidelines about them, and our email system in general.
The quantitative portion of the survey, where respondants rated their agreement with statements on a scale of 1 to 10, seemed to show that users were dissatisfied with the existing use of carpediem and helpme. Although they sometimes felt like they could not contribute to the lists, almost all users felt invested in the lists’ success. The sheer number of emails was percieved to be too much across the board. Despite these feelings and apparent mood of annoyance, most respondents thought that emails should be sent to the lists that currently receive them.
I have watched human facsimiles
wither and fade with the passing of the hours Seen glittering neon how-do-you-do’s fade like news past its years and yellow like that great amorphous mist
Watched myself, the perpetual vinyl
turning, turning, turning to a stop
With all the click and clacks and scratches and screams of an honest and proper player
Felt the gurgling-churning of the yet-to-be and watched the horizon before itself floating over and past the glitzy Hasidics.
Known the weniger-mensch in its rise
and grasped the undertow as it did the same Contemplating freeform in a spiral of time Floating under and over and through, though never really breaking, and always truly bound
Little known facts about Alison:
Meet the Oliner is a new monthly column written by Jessica Diller. If you are interested in being interviewed for the column, contact Jessica or any of the Frankly Speaking editors.
This past summer, I had an internship with Shareaholic – a small (less than 10 person) startup that provides a free app you can add to your blog. The app allows viewers to share a webpage to many different social media services across the globe and provides the viewer with recommendations for other pages on the website they might also join. About 1 month after I started, Shareaholic released an “upgrade” of this app in their Word Press plugin.
You all know the burning wrath of change. Innocent people are suddenly swept into a raging panic. Where did their app go? How were they supposed to edit things? Why was nothing working? Why did we ruin a perfectly good plugin?!?! So when the customer service inbox shot from 20 to 200 emails in just one night, Shareaholic stuck me on customer support duty. For two months.
Imagine answering emails for 7-8 straight hours per day from people all over the world. I have never met them before, nor will I likely ever come in contact with them again. Some speak English, some barely speak English, some send you emails in their native language, requiring “Google translate” before I can continue.
Welcome back, everyone! The SERV board is incredibly excited for another great year as we support, encourage and recognize volunteerism, in case you forgot where the acronym comes from. Beginning this semester, we will be publishing an article in Frankly Speaking each month to keep you better informed about our accomplishments and upcoming events.
A Candid Conversation with Jialiya Huang about hardware development, working with co-founders, and what it feels like to get a company off the ground.
Jialiya Huang, class of 2013.5, founded Technical Machine with Tim Ryan, class of ‘13.5, and Jon McKay, class of ’13, this summer. The company launched Tessel, their first product on September 5th, and is both thrilled and innervated by all the interest the Tessel has received already on Hacker News, Hackaday, and Japanese Slashdot.
Full disclosure, I’m working for Technical Machine too– mostly on press and marketing at the moment. But it was still a great opportunity to speak with Jialiya at length about the future of hardware development and her personal goals in starting a company.
When I took The Entrepreneurial Initiative in Spring 2012, it solidified my intention to start a company. However, I was convinced that waiting until school was over was a good idea. As it turns out, starting a company while still in school was a much better idea. Here’s why: