Tag: best

The Best Illusion of the Year 2014 Award

By Anupum Pant

You probably know the static Ebbinghaus illusion – where a circle appears bigger around smaller circles even when it is of the same size. It’s static because it works without moving. Well, if you don’t know, you should because it helps you lose weight in a very subtle manner.

A slight variation involving movement of the Ebbinghaus illusion won the best illusion award for the year 2014. Yes, there are annual awards for the best illusions (I never knew that!). This one which won the award was submitted by researchers from the University of Nevada Reno.

The new variation is called the Dynamic Ebbinghaus effect. This is what happens in it…

best illusion animation

There’s an arrangement of circles, exactly like the Ebbinghaus illusion, but there’s just one of the sets from the static illusion discussed above. While this arrangement of circles move, the central circle remains of the same size and the surrounding circles change in size.

Now, if you look into the central circle, you’ll see that it changes size too. In reality, it doesn’t. This effect is weaker when you look directly into the central circle. To make it more pronounced, you can shift your focus to the side and look at it through your peripheral vision. It’s totally mesmerizing. No wonder it won.

It works even when you  know about it.

Stop Trusting Everything You See

By Anupum Pant

Background

Everyone who comes on this blog often knows that I’m a huge fan of Prof. Rischard Wiseman. If you don’t know that, well, I urge you to check out every other post where I’ve mentioned him (Yes, he’s the same man who makes videos for the YouTube channel 59 seconds). The man certainly knows how to play with your brain. And once again he has blown my mind with this amazing optical illusion that he shared on his blog.

This is probably the best optical illusion I have ever seen. That is because, it’s somewhat like the Mc Gurk effect (do check it out too) – in a way that, it is one of those illusion where even after you learn about it, you still can’t see through it. I mean, it will continue to fool your brains, even when you know the trick. It’s an eternal magic trick. Enough of the build up. Now, let’s see what this illusion really is…

Wash your eyes if you have to

In the image below, you’ll see a pinkish swirling image and inside it you’ll see that there are green swirls and blue swirls embedded. What if I tell you the green and the blue you see are the same colors? Just because I’ve written something that’s completely opposite to what you see with your own eyes, you’ll probably laugh on my face and call me mad. I did that. I trusted my eyes more than any one else’s word. So I had to verify it…

most amazing optical illusion

The Proof


greenblue2Ok, if you take my word for it, fine. If you don’t believe me, you could use a simple image editor, pick colours and check. Both the colours you see here, green and blue, have the same hexadecimal value: #00ff96.

Another thing you could do is, download the image, zoom it to a great extent, such that both the colours that you see are in the same frame and you’ll see that the colours are actually same. Here’s a picture of that zoomed part…
 bluegreenzoom

optical illusion proofHere’s an image I created where we have the #00ff96 coloured square overlapping the seemingly blue and green parts. If you, cover everything except the topmost corner first, look at it carefully, and compare it with the bottom-most corner, you’ll see that the colour of the square block perfectly matches that of both the “blue” colour and the “green” colour in both areas. And it is the same block.

The several other blocks in the middle are for you to remain sure that the colour of the block doesn’t change in between.

There’s another image in which it works…
Even here the blue and green colours are actually the same colours…

color_illusion

 

The Supercow of Belgium

By Anupum Pant

It’s hard to believe that naturally bred cows can grow enormous muscles. And yet, Dr. Patrice claims that by picking the cows with the best muscles over and over for generations, using selective breeding, they’ve been able to breed cows which don’t look like anything from the planet earth.

This gigantic breed of supercow they’ve been able to create has heavily developed muscles (not double muscles) and looks like a normal cow on steroids – with a sculpted and heavily muscled appearance (like in the picture). This breed of cows is called the Belgian blue.

To enhance the desirable characteristic of muscle mass in their beef cattle, the cattle farmers, for about a century, have picked only the cows with the most muscle mass, and have allowed them to mate, over and over. As a result, they now have the Belgian blue – a cow / bull that weighs a ton each!

via [Scidump]

 

A Mathematical Guide to Optimize Pizza Buying

By Anupum Pant

The logical engineer in me has always paid a lot of attention to how well my money is being put to use, or if something I bought was well worth it. So, before buying anything, I usually love to add in a basic mathematical calculation that would ensure the best logical use of my money. I used to do the same when I was studying engineering and had come up with a handful of tricks, which enabled me to eat the best food, in best quantities at the lowest prices.

Optimized Pizza Buying

Till date, I had relied on calculations for individual joints to buy the pizza that gave me the best value for money (irrespective of what my stomach could fit). In other words, I had never used statistical methods, as I always went to only 2 or 3 pizza places and never felt a need to do it statistically.

So yesterday, while skimming through blogs on NPR, I came across a post by Quoctrun Bui, where he had calculated the best valued pizza size using statistical methods. 

The final findings of his study based on 74,476 prices from 3,678 pizza places were condensed into a graph which depicted data as follows (here is the link to the article for an interactive version of the graph).

pizza guide

Conclusion

The above graph plots 74,476 data points to find the pizza size that gives you the best value for money. The y-axis plots price-per-square-inch – the lesser price-per-square-inch you pay, the better deal you score.

This basically means that buying the largest pizza gets the most value out of your money. As the size increases the value for money increases or the price you pay per-square-inch of pizza decreases. – Statistically speaking.

Adding value

I felt a need to add value to the study by finding how well ‘buying a large pizza’ to get the best value works in India.  So, I selected a popular joint Dominos (where I go all the time) for the test. I dug out their menu (probably an old one) to see if buying the large pizza always works in India. Here is a record of price you pay per square inch at Dominos for various sizes and categories of pizzas. (Click the image to see a better version)

pizza buying guide dominos
I did not pay much attention. Please point if there is a mistake.

Conclusion (Dominos India)

  • No, always buying the large pizza clearly is not the best option at Dominos in India.
  • A small pizza is the best option (economically) if you are buying from the categories: Simply veg, Veg I or Simply Non-veg.
  • A large pizza is the best option (economically) if you are buying from the categories: Veg II, Non-Veg I or Non-Veg II
  • Never go for the small Non-veg II pizza. It is the worst choice you can make.
  • Never ever get a medium pizza from any category!

I’d love to see someone doing the same thing for other popular pizza joints. Do get back to me if you have done it. I’ll add it to the article as an update.

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