November 20, 2010

Incoming Delivery

Hi, Corridor here.

No, this has nothing to do with the corridor theories, instead, this is something far more minor and semi-personal.
Usually I don't showcase my gifts(stuff that I receive), but well, this is a spe-

Let the pictures speak for themselves
Bask in the glory of both.

Sent to me by my uncle[who is an accomplished software engineer].

The book on the left is The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman. As much as I would like to elaborate more on the book, I fear my skills are insufficient to convey the magnificence of it. Do some googling yourselves. Simply put, the book puts the content of this blog to shame, but I (kinda)digress~

The box on the right needs no further introduction.
Some peeks at the inside.

Until next time.

November 8, 2010

Corridor Theory: Deux

As long as a stretch of land has the characteristics of a corridor, i.e. obeys the fundamentals, there is no reason why the corridor effect should be absent.

Relative to motion in a corridor, displacement is always measured in units of distance. On the whole, for an object/a person to travel from point A to point B in a corridor, the logical(and most simple) method to calculate displacement of the object is to measure the distance between the two points. However, as a corridor is linear in nature, to bring in vector quantities would cause a paradox and cause the final result in reference to the corridor effect to be undefined.

In a nutshell, it is safe to assume any sort of displacement must be determined by looking at the distance traveled. Theoretically, displacement can be obtained by just measuring distance between points, but sadly displacement is not a factor in the corridor(refer above) and cannot be brought into the theory.

On the other hand, to calculate speed of the object we MUST apply vector quantities to the equation. The question is, how fast a person takes to travel from one point to the other.

Example: Person A takes 10 minutes to travel from point A to point B because he passed through point C, which is way behind point A. Assuming that point B is a few units in front of point B, it can be deduced that the person wasted time and took a long time to reach point B.

Confused?

Bear in mind that the corridor is simply a pathway to enable a person to travel from one point to another. Any other distance traveled is irrelevant to the final result(arriving at the destination). Therefore any other directions of motion with does not correspond to the one in the direction of the target will be regarded as time-consuming and inefficient.

Example2: Person B takes 8 minutes to travel from point A to point B, however he travels in a straight line, with no other distractions.

In real life, this can be compared to a person who has superior abilities, yet diverges from the correct pathway, as wasting his/her talent away. In the examples above, it is clear that person A possesses superior speed compared to person B yet person B reaches the destination first. This stresses how important focus is to our daily lives and what happens if we overestimate our own abilities.

A (slightly inaccurate)version for children can be found here-
http://childhoodreading.com/?p=3

In comparison of the differing speed between two objects in a corridor(can be applied elsewhere too) provided one object is a significant distance ahead of the other, Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm may be applied to avoid mathematical impossibilities such as 'Achilles and the Tortoise'
Read more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd%27s_cycle-finding_algorithm#Tortoise_and_hare
[Note: Understanding this concept is unnecessary to progress in the corridor theory]

A corridor with rooms so long they can be considered corridors, i.e. branching corridors or a series of corridors can be considered as a maze.
Sight of the target is forfeited for more puzzle-solving intelligence and will result in a spike in the difficulty curve.

Disadvantageous, yes. Pointless, maybe.
However this makes reaching the target all the more satisfying.



Until next time-
(Ugly semi-mathematical part is out of the way)

corridor


Image from: Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3

-Not-so-fun fact-
Persona 3 is a game containing elements of the corridor and the Dark Hour with integration of mythology and was the main catalyst that ignited corridor's interest in various religions.