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Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Representation Of Coin Tosses Using Colour Gradients

I was recently watching a video on a Youtube
channel named Numberphile, about the illegal
use of numbers in transferring classified data.
Then, Dr. James Grime, who appeared in the
video, discussed the problem about the number
itself becoming illegal, that is to say that any use
of that number, whether intentional or not, would
bring with it a legal penalty. He also spoke about
some users online, who reacted to the insistence of
companies like Sony, to file lawsuits against people
who shared the xbox encryption codes online, thus
letting people download games for free, causing Sony
to suffer a loss, however small.

These people then converted the codes to hexadecimal,
which computers use for generating colour gradients.
So, the encryption could be turned into a flag, with
colours on it. Then, the problem arises on whether the
flag is illegal. Would a newly formed country not be
allowed to have a flag with those colours on them?
Suppose a t-shirt had a design of stripes in different
colours, and those stripes happened to represent a
nuclear launch code. Would the t-shirt have to be
disposed of? Would the manufacturing company
be heavily fined, for not having the imagination
to design a t-shirt without striped colours?

Ignoring the real-life implications, I focussed
on one particular part: Conversion to base 16,
and colour gradients. In mathematics, and more
often in science, results are shown visually, for a
richer understanding of the subject. This method
activates the visual cortex, and thus leads the brain
to be more involved in the activity. In math, the only
time this happens is when dealing with data handling,
and function-graphs. Concentrating on only two areas
of maths can become a little boring. So, I then decided
to shift my focus to probability. Now, although my first
instinct was to simply convert numbers into colours with
hexadecimal, but then the people who devised the method
were trying to remove any possible obvious relation to the
original number. My choice of visual representation is the
RGB Colour Code. The computer generates a colour using
a mixture of Red, Green and Blue. The input values range
from 0 to 255, a total of 256 values, or 2^8. This will be
important for the visual representation.

256, is a power of two, so any number from 0 - 255 can
be represented by a set of seven binary digits, 0 or 1. This
means that using 21 coin flips, will result in a colour.

R= 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 = 125
G= 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 = 8
B= 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 = 234

R= 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 = 31
G= 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 = 93
B= 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 = 124
R= 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 = 213
G= 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 = 49
B= 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 = 116
R= 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 = 62
G= 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 = 155
B= 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 = 110


I got these results from Random.org. Each set of 3 rows,
represents a colour. These, were the results-





Any of the colours which appear too bright, or distinctly
coloured, which is to say that they can be distinguished
as a specific shade easily, is a result of a toss that is biased
towards a certain side.

I hope this has been an interesting, and enjoyable post.
If you have further questions, suggestions or corrections,
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