In my puzzle column this morning I set you the following puzzle from the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad: The Uros people live on artificial islands made from reeds on Lake Titicaca in South America. They speak Aymara. (This is all true) Below, seven Uros fishermen describe their catch in Aymara. Can you work out…
A Mobius strip. Credit: cosma/shutterstock.com You have most likely encountered one-sided objects hundreds of times in your daily life – like the universal symbol for recycling, found printed on the backs of aluminum cans and plastic bottles. This mathematical object is called a Mobius strip. It has fascinated environmentalists, artists, engineers, mathematicians and many others…
Probably the finest moment in the working life of Sir James Mirrlees came in 1968 when, he recalled, “I finally cracked the optimal tax problem … it came in a flash and was very satisfactory.” Mirrlees, who has died aged 82, arrived at his conclusions about taxation in the middle of Harold Wilson’s government, when…
Hi guzzlers, Today’s puzzle concerns the South American language Aymara. It’s testing you on the sort of linguistics skills that might help you get you a job at Google, according today’s article in which a Google exec says that an understanding of language is the key to the next giant leap in technology. The roughly…