Literary elements Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Literary elements - Essay Example The story revolves around the picture of the white elephant, which indirectly puts the situation of the girl into a simpler picture. A white elephant means that something is too expensive or too costly to keep up that it becomes a nuisance. The girl keeps mentioning the white elephant over and over the story, emphasizing that there is something that burdens them. But as can be seen throughout the story, hesitation can be seen in her voice when she talks about the simple operation that her partner is suggesting. This shows that the girl is torn between keeping the white elephant, or going through with the operation to get rid of it. The white elephants, then, becomes the symbolism for keeping the baby, which is obviously what the partner is trying to rid of. Throughout the story, we can see that the exchange of statements between the girl and the man is full of tension. The reader can feel that the girl is torn between going through the operation and not going through with it. We cann ot feel that she is scared but more that she is worried that the plan will not go through as simply as the man puts it. The man is insistent, almost sounds too pushy, when he mentions that the operations is just simple, just letting air in through and everything will be alright again.

Assignment 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Assignment 4 - Essay Example So pick a card, any card. Wouldnt you think that your odds of finding a number starting with 1 would be the same as finding a number starting with 9? Or 3? Or 7? (See Figure 1) After all, you gathered as many different numbers from as many different locations as possible, so they should all be evenly distributed, right? Wrong!!! Here comes Benfords Law, bitch! Benfords law says that the odds of obtaining 1 as the first digit of a number are much higher than obtaining any other digit. (See Figure 2) And nobody can really explain why! Creeeepy. But the coolest thing is that the broader the sampling of numbers, the more accurately they conform to Benfords law. For example, if you only examined the numbers in a New York City phone book, it wouldnt fit with Benfords law because your data would favor 2s and 7s (because of the popular area codes 212 and 718). But mix a phone books numbers with an almanacs numbers with an encyclopedias numbers and without a doubt youll start seeing a "Benfordian" distribution. Didnt I tell you this shitd freak you out? But the most important part of Benfords law (and partially why its so fascinating) is that it only works with numbers observed and gathered from the real world. So if you were to randomly generate a list of numbers with a computer, or by simply making them up, their first digits would most likely be evenly distributed from 1-9 and NOT in accordance with Benfords law. (See Figure 1 again). For this reason, Benfords law is used by the IRS to spot defrauders who make up phony numbers, because if the numbers dont follow Benfords law, they werent from real transactions. Fascinated by all this, I decided to test it for myself. Rather than spend years gathering numbers from all over the world, I decided to turn to Google - arguably the broadest source of data in existence. Seeing how many results Google finds for a number is a surefire way to judge how many times