Teetotalers are free riders

You’ll occasionally find teetotalers at bars and clubs. While you order a £5 pint, they order a lime soda at less than £1. As your mind slows and your speech slurs, theirs stays sharp and quick-witted. When, tomorrow, you wake up late and dehydrated, they’ll already be up and at work. And yet the teetotalers still have fun! They laugh and joke with everyone else. They play along with other people’s antics and badly considered karaoke. They make as many friends as everyone else, and remember them after.

Does this make you want to go teetotal? Then you are in the same class as industrial polluters and anti-vaxxers. Alcohol has many costs, and teetotalers pay none of these.

What can computers do? What are the limits of mathematics? And just how busy can a busy beaver be? This year, I’m writing Busy Beavers, a unique interactive book on computability theory. You and I will take a practical and modern approach to answering these questions — or at least learning why some questions are unanswerable!

It’s only $19, and you can get 50% off if you find the discount code ... Not quite. Hackers use the console!

After months of secret toil, I and Andrew Carr released Everyday Data Science, a unique interactive online course! You’ll make the perfect glass of lemonade using Thompson sampling. You’ll lose weight with differential equations. And you might just qualify for the Olympics with a bit of statistics!

It’s $29, but you can get 50% off if you find the discount code ... Not quite. Hackers use the console!

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