

You've heard of Markov chains. But who was Markov? - krg
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/01/an-idea-that-changed-the-world/

======
if_by_whisky
Markov was an atheist. In 1912 he protested Leo Tolstoy's excommunication from
the Russian Orthodox Church by requesting his own excommunication. The Church
complied with his request.
[Wikipedia.](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Markov>)

------
noelwelsh
I always assumed a Markov chain was some kind of Siberian drinking game. Hence
the interest in the running the chain to its stationary distribution.

~~~
noelwelsh
Odd that this was down-voted. It's a (bad) joke. Allow me to explain:

Calculating the stationary distribution is one of the main things people do
with Markov chains. That's all that PageRank is -- the stationary distribution
of the Markov chain constructed from the network of links on the web.

~~~
seclorum
{The odds are pretty high that this will get downvoted, on account of the lack
of vodka.}

Markovs is a natural law, proven, is it not? Well then, it will be found in
any system.

------
sagacityhappens
Being a true Markov, his history is irrelevant!

~~~
ScottBurson
Easily the best joke in this discussion.

------
vph
the reason why not many people know who Markov is is that sometimes he is
hidden. And a hidden markov can be quite elusive.

~~~
larsberg
I recommend first checking for him in Monaco. Monte Carlo, Monaco, to be
precise...

~~~
seclorum
Just be sure to always bet on black, 2 ..

------
freyr
> A “Monopoly” board has 40 possible “states”

Ah, just like chess has 64 possible states. Except that chess has on the order
10^47 states.

~~~
bcbrown
The [position of a player on a Monopoly board] has 40 possible states.

~~~
mturmon
But the transition between states in Monopoly depends not only on dice, but
also upon the configuration of Chance and Community Chest cards, which has a
much larger state space. Besides this, if you roll doubles three times, you go
to Jail, which increases the state space more. For more:

<http://www.tkcs-collins.com/truman/monopoly/monopoly.shtml>

~~~
bcbrown
Good point, you're right.

------
varjag
Russia used Julian calendar up to 1918. If that was a date marked in the
original calendar, it wasn't 100 years ago "this week".

~~~
sp332
This is also why the October Revolution happened in November, depending on
what calendar you use. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_revolution>

------
jckt
Slightly off-topic, but Brian Hayes (mentioned several times in the article)
has a very good blog here: <http://bit-player.org/>

------
hhuio
Even today wikipedia mentions nothing of interdependence on probability...

