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Braess's paradox describes how building new roads can slo... | funfact.wiki | funfact.wiki
Braess's paradox describes how building new roads can slow down traffic. When every driver picks their optimal route, the collective result worsens. When Seoul's Namsan Tunnel No. 2 was closed in 1999, the city's average road speed actually increased.
  • Traffic
  • Paradox
  • Mathematics
  • Seoul
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Related Cards

If more cells mean higher cancer risk, whales and elephants should constantly get cancer. Yet they rarely do—less often than smaller animals. This contradictory phenomenon is called "Peto's paradox."
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Across diverse numerical data—bank balances, populations, prices—the first digit is most often 1 and least often 9. This is known as Benford's law, and accounting records that deviate from this pattern may indicate fraud.
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In 1939, American mathematician George Dantzig arrived late to class, saw two problems on the blackboard, and solved them thinking they were homework. His professor was stunned—they were actually unsolved problems in statistics. This story later inspired the film 'Good Will Hunting.'
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  • George Dantzig
  • Good Will Hunting
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In 2011, a 4chan user trying to watch anime 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya' in every episode order accidentally proved the lower bound of superpermutations, an unsolved mathematics problem. The proof went unnoticed for 7 years.
  • Anime
  • Mathematics
  • The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
  • Superpermutation
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In the 1982 SAT, only 3 of 300,000 students answered a circle rotation problem correctly. Even the test makers were wrong, and the correct answer was not among the choices. The key is the coin rotation paradox: a circle rolling around an equal circle makes 2 full turns, not 1.
  • SAT
  • Mathematics
  • Coin rotation paradox
  • Exam
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