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I promised this article in a previous one, but I can’t remember which.

Actually no I can remember which, it was (On Sunday night, I was in Euston train station with Katherine and we spotted an unattended bag. ) and this article is about memory. Do you see what I’ve done there? My cunning trick? Well of course you do.

The particular aspect of memory that I wanted to talk about was the retroactive correction. The moment when you realise that everything that came before has to now be reappraised in light of new information.

It’s an odd thing when it happens. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the moment in Star wars Episode VI: The Empire Strikes Back * when we found out that Darth Vader was, in fact, Luke’s father. A key moment that made you want to go and re-watch the previous movie and see if it was now possible to guess this from subtle signs left before that out of context you had missed.

It’s a very fun trick. You can also see it in Return of the Jedi, The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense.

But is it honest? Is it fair? Well in fiction no trick should be off limits I suppose. So why should it be banned? Maybe it won’t.

Actually there is another version of this which is very similar but not quite the same. This is caused by revealing an earlier scene after the main event and thereby changing everything. This is like Memento. Or what would have happened if they were to put a scene in the prequels to Star Wars which changed the previous films.

They seem different because we seem the action. But actually how different are they? The scene where Darth tells Luke that he is his father alludes to a scene where Darth is having sex with Luke’s mother. We just don’t see it.

* Why does this sound much more ridiculous now?

What an interesting thing being colour blind is. We’ve heard about it and we know about it. But all we really know about are two types of colour blindness. Either you can’t see a certain colour or range of colours at all and only perceive grey instead of colour. Or you can not perceive the difference between two different colours and so, for example, you would see both green things and red things as red things.

But there is another type which not much gets done about because, mainly, it doesn’t cause much of a problem.

How do you know that the colour green you see is the same colour green everyone else sees? You can’t know. You could be seeing what everyone else sees as red as green ad you wouldn’t know.

How could somebody explain it to you? If red and green were swapped how could they say it to you?

“Green is the colour of grass”, is something you have been told since being a child. It doesn’t matter if you are seeing a different colour than everybody else as long as everybody calls whatever colour they see when they see grass green nobody will every be any the wiser.

It is, I think, a rather unsettling thought that we don’t just all figuratively see the world differently. We might all literally see the world differently.

Maybe the really angry people see a nature full of what peaceful people call red?

“Don’t touch, check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999”.

This is the suggestion, made by London Underground staff of what to do, or rather not do, if you see a suspect package.

Of course the problem is that they mean something different from what they have written. The easiest way to get a sense of it is to read the phrase out loud.

Some people still argue that the phrase is correct. But it isn’t. The sentence is simply an extended version of this “Don’t do this or that”.

Perhaps the best alternative would be this. “Don’t touch. Check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999”.

We seem to be doing better in London now – security wise. It’s an odd thing because before I just sort of assumed we were doing things properly but now I can tell they’ve improved and that’s coloured my opinion of what things were like before.*

On Sunday night, I was in Euston train station with Katherine and we spotted an unattended bag.

We quickly and dutifully found a member of staff and informed him of this bag. But he knew about it already. Several people had informed him of it. Apparently the bag had been left by a rowing couple.** But security was rounding them up and reuniting them with their bag.

Now, well just five minutes ago, in the very tube carriage that I’m sitting in as I write this article had an unattended bag in it. Some attentive citizen had spotted it and alerted the station staff. The underground staff arrived within seconds and came onto the train looking for the bag. Just at this moment he owner of the bag woke up. And was able to, if you’ll allow me, diffuse the situation.

* I like to think there will be an article on this at some point soon.

** Originally when I read this back I thought I was suggesting that the couple were rowing in a boat. I can them now as they go paddling up platform 11.

I wrote an article the other day (I’m fascinated by board games) on the subject of games. And in it I mentioned the man John Nash, the subject of the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. This reminded me of a peculiar situation that occurred to me a few years back.

I had for some time been trying to find Sylvia Nasar’s book “A Beautiful Mind” which the movie was to be based on. When I had first started looking, as far as I know there was no movie planned.

Now I know that books can be found on the internet and I will sometimes employ that method but only in very specialist circumstances. Generally however I prefer to have a mental list in my head and then look around every bookshop I come near until I find it. This way it a) takes longer and b) costs more because generally I find may other books I didn’t really know I needed until I held them in my hands. But somehow I feel this is still the better method.

I suddenly found the book completely unexpectedly in the Waterstone’s on Charring Cross Road. I was amazed to discover that they had a dedicated mathematical biography section. And lo the book was there. As I went to the front desk clutching the last copy they had, I decided to mention something to the salesperson.

“This book,” I said, “is very difficult to find.”
“Oh,” she asked, “where did you find it.”
“Mathematical biography.” I replied. I’m sure it wasn’t a trick of the light there was pity in her eyes.

“No, no!”, I said, “this book may be in ‘mathematical biography’ in only one bookshop in the whole of London right now, but within a year I promise you this book will be in the bestseller section of every bookshop in the land.” I was warming to my subject now.
“Um, why?”
“Well, this morning I saw that Brian Grazer had secured the rights to this book. And Brian Grazer is Ron Howard’s favoured producer. So it’s very likely that this movie will make it big.”

And it was true, I had seen that piece of news that morning on the internet before I had gone out shopping. It was an incredible co-incidence, and for a time I believed that perhaps some ambitious bookseller had realised the rights had been sold and had started stocking the book. But then why only 1 copy? How so fast? It must just have been a co-incidence.

Anyway despite all of this the teller looked sceptical. I paid my money. And I left the shop.

Three years later I returned. Well I had probably returned in between but I don’t remember any of those times. Anyway as I was paying for my purchases this time the sales person suddenly said to me, “hey you’re that beautiful mind guy”.

How odd, I thought, this girl has confused me with John Nash, a septuagenarian of some repute. You see although these incidents have been brought together in this article at the time they did not seem connected at all. In fact I am pretty sure that I hadn’t thought of the incident since it had occurred.

She could clearly see the confusion in my eyes so she added, “No you’re the guy who came in here and told me that ‘A beautiful mind’ was going to be a big seller. And you were right. It was”.

Suddenly the original incident came back to me. The improbability of the whole set of coincidences on top of other coincidences seems astronomical. Although I’m sure if we were to ask Mr Nash he would be able to show that actually wasn’t as unlikely as all that.

Hair is a very odd thing.

I know that’s not really enough. But it’s true.

I’m going to try to avoid observations like: “well it’s dead but we find it attractive”.

Well obviously, rather than avoid them completely I’d rather mention them like I’m not making the observation while still feeling able to actually, you know, mention it.

Hair styles are very cyclical I believe. It’s true in women’s styles and in men’s.

In women’s fashion the ability to do the hair toss is paramount. And in second place is the ability to be different. But only just. It seems that at certain points, and we’re in one now, hair is pretty evenly split (and I’m not talking about split ends – bada boom) between long and short. We have lots of short hair around, and lots of long. But slowly but surely the long hair is starting to win out because of the tair toss. The hair toss is key.

People really like it. Women like to do it. Men like to observe it.

At certain times however too many people can do it. And do it they will. And once everyone is doing it it starts to be less exciting and so it seems to be that people restrict themselves from being even able to do it. And everyone gently shifts to the shorter cut. Well not quite everyone. Some people stick with the longer cut, maybe they use a pony tail to hide it but it’s still there. In fact the pony tail is perfect for the hair toss because all you need do is to untie it and naturally you get the whole hair toss effect without any need to even exert your neck muscles.

For men there’s a whole different thing going on. For a long while it was cool to have long hair, sophisticated to have a decent amount of hair, odd to have clipped hair and a bit sad to be bald.

But something interesting has been happening over the last few years. I think the key trend is that the ad executives who have been in charge since advertising became properly professional have reached middle age. They’ve reached middle age and have started losing their hair. Suddenly having very short hair is cool. Hair so short that a small bald patch is hardly noticeable. This may not be a coincidence.

Now over this time I have resisted all calls of a change in hair style. Before my cousins told me I needed to grow my hair if I wanted to look cool. And now I should be cutting it shorter.

There doesn’t seem to be much that’s sensible about hair.

It’s Thursday! It’s February! It’s Monopoly time!

Or rather not. In an article the other week my mathematical skills were called into question. I made the claim that the number 7 was the most likely number to come up on the combination of dice. People have claimed to me that this is faulty logic because if the dice are random then there is no way they could conspire to give you a more likely number. But they do and they can. Here’s a handy table which proves it all for you:

Dice 1 Dice 2 Total Possible Totals Occurrence
1 1 2 2 1
1 2 3 3 2
1 3 4 4 3
1 4 5 5 4
1 5 6 6 5
1 6 7 7 6
2 1 3 8 5
2 2 4 9 4
2 3 5 10 3
2 4 6 11 2
2 5 7 12 1
2 6 8
3 1 4
3 2 5
3 3 6
3 4 7
3 5 8
3 6 9
4 1 5
4 2 6
4 3 7
4 4 8
4 5 9
4 6 10
5 1 6
5 2 7
5 3 8
5 4 9
5 5 10
5 6 11
6 1 7
6 2 8
6 3 9
6 4 10
6 5 11
6 6 12

See! Maths is fun!

A situation has arisen simply because of the opacity of my own notes again.

The other day I wrote an article about being in the background of other people’s photographs. (The people at the next table are taking a picture).

The reason for my confusion stems from the note I wrote to remind myself to write the article. The note I wrote was “stranger in the background”.

When I first read it I truly thought I was trying to suggest that people who were in the background tended to be stranger.

Well, maybe they are. Who am I to say really?

Writing Friday’s article (The people at the next table are taking a picture) reminded me of something. I was once walking along a bridge in London and I stopped because a picture was clearly being taken in front of me. If I had kept going I would have been in their shot.

I stood, waiting, and looked around the place. Along the river was St. Paul’s. Suddenly I realised that the people on the bridge wanted my attention.

At first I thought that I might be being asked to help take a picture but no! Something quite different was being requested. They wanted me to “ruin” their picture. They wanted me to walk through it.

As they saw it, it couldn’t be a real portrait of London without a couple of natives wondering around in the front of the shot. I, of course, was happy to oblige.

In today’s monopoly column I am going to talk about the importance of the trade. The trade is key for survival in monopoly. It is very rare for a player to go around the board and simply collect a set, unless there are only two players taking part.

You need houses and hotels to move the game forward but you aren’t allowed them until you have a complete set. So what are you going to do?

Now some players won’t trade until all of the property has been sold to the players. This is just one of the tactics used while, as it’s known, slowgaming. This practice can sometimes be difficult to deal with especially if you have several slowgamers at your table. However if successful deals are struck without them they may quickly cave to protect some kind of position.

It does sometimes happen that one player at the table has one set already. This player is the strongest. And by sets here, and in the rest of the article I am talking about development property not railroads or utilities. These other types are referred to as ballast and come in handy as we will see later.

Triangulation deals are key and if you pull one off then you may well win the game.

In a straight deal all the angles will seem obvious. It can work when both of you have two properties from a set in which each of you have one property that the other needs. Then you will both be getting a complete set. Then you can use some ballast to equal up the values of the sets.

This is all very well but the best situation is to do a deal like the one above but in which the ballast is being a potentially developable property.

Then you complete this set by making a deal with another player.

This is a risky strategy but, potentially, it is very advantageous. One of the key pitfalls are that the second player feels you have already become two powerful from the first deal and therefore won’t do a deal which leaves them with only one set, but you with two.

They may very well be right not to do a deal with you. It’s a difficult set of odds to compute. But at the same point that the deal is made you may very well be offering them the chance at second place or coming last.