Monthly Archives: April 2019

More than you wanted to know about e – part 2

Part One of this post looked at the mysterious number called e, also called Euler’s number, a transcendental number (never resolving in our decimal numbering system) with a value of approximately 2.71828. That prior post showed examples of this value occurring repeatedly in nature and in the world of finance. This post gets a bit more technical to present perspectives… Read more »

More than you wanted to know about e – part 1

Chambered nautilus

If you ever owned a scientific calculator or used one on your computer, it is still likely that you have never used the button that reads ex. One of the most interesting secrets of the universe is evoked by pressing that button, but I have never heard it explained well. This post will likely add little to help that situation…. Read more »

Worth a read: Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz

“At their deepest level, the laws of nature are expressed in terms of derivatives. It’s as if the universe knew about rates of change before we did.” – Steven Strogatz, Infinite Powers It is very hard to get non-math-inclined people to read a book about math. But I will try, because this is a really good one, accessible to even… Read more »

Why you don’t want “across-state-lines” health insurance

One of the first recommendations Republicans typically make in their “Replace ObamaCare” proposals is to give the health insurance companies the ability to “sell across state lines,” which they are convinced will drive down premiums. Insurers are already free to do this, but they need to live by the local regulations in each state in which they sell. There’s the… Read more »

Why Republicans want to drive the ACA off the cliff

The Republican Party, from the White House to the Congress to the “red” state houses, remains bound and determined to crash President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. They could not accomplish this through repeated congressional repeal votes, so their last hope is a multi-state lawsuit which the Barr Department of Justice has determined not to fight, in an alarming abrogation… Read more »