factoids

My uneven collection of facts, quotations, and other miscellaneous scraps, that don’t naturally fit anywhere else. I used to keep them in a shoebox, until I discovered the Web.

About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

— W. S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance, 1879

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abstract abstract data type
Ackermann’s function
Ada adjective order
affordance
algebra Algol
and P. W. Anderson antisymmetric relation
APL
ASCII art Asimov’s laws asymmetric relation
atheist
autopoeisis
awk

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B
BabbageFrancis BaconbagBASIC
BCPL
Samuel Beckett
big numbers
Bliss
Niels Bohr Boltzmann constant
Tycho Brahe Jacob Bronowski
Edmund Burke

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C c C++
calculus
censorship
G. K. Chesterton ChillChurch-RosserWinston S. Churchill
circle
Clarke’s lawsclassclassification Clean Arthur Hugh Clough CLU
Cobol Samuel Taylor Coleridge Comal Compton wavelength Confucius continuum hypothesis Coral
CPL
cradle

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Charles Darwin data abstraction Richard Dawkins
delegation Augustus De Morgan denotational semantics Antoine de Saint-Exupery René Descartes
Edsger W. Dijkstra Paul A. M. Dirac divisibility tests
Dynamo

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e
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Eiffel Manfred Eigen
electron mass/chargeGeorge Eliotellipse
Ralph Waldo Emerson
energy equivalents English
equivalence relation
estivate
Euclid (language) Euclid’s proof eugenics Euler ian path eumemics
evolution
exploratory programming

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Richard P. Feynman
Fibonacci series figures of speech
fleas
Forth Fortran
Anatole France Benjamin Franklin Freeman’s commentary Robert Frost
Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic

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G
German
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Ginsberg’s theorem
Goldbach’s conjecture googol(plex)
Graham’s number gravitational constant grok
Gypsy

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h
Ernst Heinrich Haeckel J. B. S. Haldane Beatrice Hall Monty Hall problem Hamilton ian path Richard W. Hamming Handel-C Leslie Poles Hartley Haskell
Patrick Henry
hibernate history Hite’s rule
Hofstadter’s law Horace A. E. Housman

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Icon
immortality
incompetent Robert Ingersoll inheritance Internet
irrational number irreflexive relation

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William JamesJavaJavaScript
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Jowett
Julia set

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k
John KeatsLynne KellyJohn F. Kennedy
Martin Luther King, Jr.Rudyard Kipling
Herbert Kroemer

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languages Pierre-Simon de Laplace laws
leap year Stephen Leacock Le Verrier C. S. Lewis
liberty speed of light line printer art Lisp J. E. Littlewood
logistic mapping logistics Logo Lojban
Lucas-Lehmer primality test Lucid

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Mandelbrot set Andrew Marvell Matlab
meddle Mega Megagon Megiston H. L. Mencken Mersenne primes metonymy Bertrand Meyer
John Stuart Mill millennium Miranda Mitochondrial Eve
ML
Modula model Monty Hall problem Moser’s number
multiple inheritance multiset

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network
Martin Niemöller Friedrich Nietzsche
Barry Norman

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Oberon object object based Objective-C object oriented
occam (language) Occam’s Razor
only ontogeny
operational semantics OPS5
orthogonality
C. J. Overbeck
oxymoron

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Thomas Paine Blaise Pascal Pascal (language) pattern
pedant perfect numbers Perl
Pilot
PL/1 Max Planck Planck constant/length/mass Plato pleonasm plurals
Political Correctness polymorphic type Pop Alexander Pope Karl R. Popper PostScript
Terry Pratchett prime numbers primitive recursive function probability paradoxes programming languages Prolog pronunciation proton mass
Pythagorean triple Python

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quotations

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rainfall random Random Boolean Network
Eric Raymond
reflexive relationrewrite rules
Theodore Roosevelt
RubyBertrand Russell

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SAS
Bruce Schneier
self self-organisation semantics
William Shakespeare George Bernard Shaw Percy Bysshe Shelley
Simple Simpson’s paradox Simula
Skewes’ number
sleep
Smalltalk
solar power generation
Snobol
species specification spelling split infinitive
Peter Steiner Robert Louis Stevenson Tom Stoppard strategy strongly typed Sturgeon’s law
subclasssuperclasssuperellipsesuperformula
Jonathan Swift
syllepsis symmetric relation synecdoche

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tactics
Tcl
TeX
Dylan Thomas Henry David Thoreau
transitive relation
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky
Turing
Mark Twain
Tycho Brahe type
Lao Tzu

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Unix

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violence viscosity
Voltaire John von Neumann

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Booker T. Washington
Web Rebecca West Hermann Weyl
Alfred North Whitehead Walt Whitman who/whom
Eugene Wigner Ludwig Wittgenstein

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William Butler Yeats

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Frank Zappa
Zeppelins zeugma
John Ziman