blog Check splitter

potentially make a blog post descrbing it

JSFiddle and Github are probably in sync:

• http://www.learnfromdata.com/media/checksplitter.html
• http://jsfiddle.net/dchudz/j6rGN/

At a restaurant with friends, you could "split" the check by having one person pay, chosen with a probably given by that person's proportion of the bill.

You can use my "flip" button, or (if you don't trust me) flip your own coin and then click "left" or "right"

Changes

I'd like to make a couple small changes to this before making a blog post describing this:

1. Once it's known who pays, make it announce that fact.
2. Add a button for "flip until we know who pays".

Entropy

On average, each flip lowers entropy by 1 bit. (Is this true? Try computing the example with 3 individuals splitting evenly. Whats the change in entropy? Whatever it is, it's always the same.)

I think entropy doesn't actually decrease by 1 bit -- that's just the most it can decrease.

Combutable analysis

We're only computing our number with enough precision to answer our question. We're computing a finite number of digits (base 2, in this case) of our random number between 0 and 1. The perspective of computable analysis is that only properties that can be answered with a computable number of digits are meaningful.