The Half-life of Hats
The half-life od a thing of the expected lifetime of that thing before it decays into another thing. It is determined by measuring how long it takes the average thing to decay into another thing.
I have, empirically, determined that the half-life of a hat is 3.5 weeks, after which it decays into a hat left in a cab when I am drunk.
Damnit.
You see, it's not that you lose hats at a uniform rate. Each time you get in a taxi drunk there's a *mumble* chance that you lose the hat. So imagine we buy you, say, a hundred hats. And you wear them all in order each time you go out (so the first time you go out you wear hat one, the second time hat two, and so on, till you get back round to wearing hat one again.) Some of the hats you're going to lose right away. Some will last for a long time (they will make up the so-called 'long tail'). The half life of your hats is the time it takes you to lose fifty of the hats.
This has been physics with hats.
Posted by Mark Fowler on Mon, 22 May 2006 at 10:11:50