December 2017
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Background: Every US state has a flag. But only a few states have an icon—something immediately recognizable (and ideally, easily drawn and memorable). For an example of icons, we can look at Japan’s provinces (or “prefectures”), nearly all of which are represented by a distinctive single-color icon (Figure 1). Proposal: The proposal is as follows:…
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New site feature: An index of all posts, available here Plus an archive page showing all posts, organized by month. Background: Historically, wedding rings in many Western countries have been a moderately reliable indicator of someone’s marriage status (Figure 1). The issue: However, as it has become more common for people to postpone marriage or not…
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Background: A lot of kitchen tools have a non-electric version that is hand-cranked: for example, a coffee grinder, ice-cream maker, mixer, or salad-spinner. Additional common hand-powered items include the can opener and pepper mill. The issue: Unfortunately, many of these tools are slow and inefficient to operate by hand. However, if there were some way…
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The issue: It’s hard to believe, but sometimes people are jerks. Most people are also bad at apologies. But, what if, after committing some transgression, you could apologize and easily demonstrate your sincerity? Proposal: The “jerk card” provides this opportunity: if you feel like you were a jerk, but aren’t sure how to apologize, you can…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 