Despite many discoveries and proposals for rules for the ancient board game known as the Royal Game of Ur (RGU), no mathematical analysis has yet been performed investigating those rules. In an attempt to fill that gap, this paper presents an initial mathematical analysis of the RGU from an introductory point of view. The paper deduces the overall complexity of the RGU using a state-space and game-tree complexity analysis, allowing the RGU to be compared to the popular games Checkers, Backgammon, Ludo, Chess, and Go. The paper builds upon the fundamental laws of combinatorics and probability to improve the understanding of the game: what patterns should you expect, what moves increase your chance to win, and what moves should you avoid. The paper also presents theorems to predict the probability of future dice rolls and piece movements within the game, allowing basic inferences to be made about strategy in the RGU. The game is further examined by analysing three different influences when determining the best move: advancement and attack (beneficial to the player), and captures (detrimental to the player). These influences are used to deduce explicit equations for the advantage gained by playing each possible move from a position, which allows the formalization of a strategic algorithm to play the RGU.
Many corporations and agencies allocate a certain amount of their budget towards the creation of public artwork. For instance, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has funded nearly 300 permanent art installations since 1982 under the city’s “Percent for Art” law. If we question the effectiveness of the program, we immediately run into problems of measuring the subjective aesthetic value of the creations.
In December 2022, Adobe, through the Computer History Museum (CHM), released the source code for PostScript®, version 1.0. PostScript is one of the foundational technologies of the desktop publishing revolution of the early 1980s, along with laser printers, the graphical user interface of the Apple Macintosh, and Aldus PageMaker. PostScript is a programming language and a page description format for translating visual content into printed documents.
Adobe immediately enjoyed business success through licensing PostScript to laser printer manufacturers and it became the de facto digital publishing format. While multiple histories have studied this event through a business lens, what historical questions may be answered through the source code? Further, as software practitioners, what can we learn from the source code to apply to present and future designs?
We argue:
PostScript’s design and implementation benefited from a long lineage of other software programs (as Adobe has always admitted),
The software architecture aligned with the interests of creatives, printer services, and printer manufacturers,
Design choices, including modularity and semantics, added value to the product, and
Pursuing the “print anything” objective, rather than page printing throughput, yielded a superior implementation.