Guides & How-tos · Worked examples · Real numbers

Do it right, with real numbers

Step-by-step how-tos, head-to-head comparisons and honest roundups — every guide worked through with current figures, then backed by a RECATOOLS calculator or AI-directory entry so you can act on it.

299 guides published 17 topic areas Latest guide Sep 2026

Tagged Research · 71 guides

All 299 AI & ML 60 Developer Tools 48 Finance 33 Chinese Culture 29 Cybersecurity 26 Science 16

A blue graduation cap and diploma folder lying on grass, with gold cords and two gold tassels draped across them.

Finance 6 min

What a Tuition Total Leaves Out

Our own calculator says a four-year degree costs $54,400, and discloses that it excludes fee changes between years. We m...

Sarah Chew

Pub. 18 Aug

The blue European Union flag with its ring of twelve gold stars flying from a pole against an overcast sky, with other national flags rippling behind it.

AI & ML 7 min

Can a Tool Directory Tell You Your AI Act Risk Tier?

We tried to tier all 1,370 entries in our own AI directory against the EU AI Act. A keyword scan gave 42 hits, 26 of the...

Priya Nair

Pub. 18 Aug

A magnifying glass resting on a clipboard of printed pages on a pale wooden desk, beside a phone, two pens, a laptop edge and a cup of coffee.

Science 7 min

How Much Faster Is Quantum Search, Actually?

We ran Grover's algorithm and counted the oracle calls. Over 4,096 items it looked 50 times against a classical average...

Kenji Tanaka

Pub. 18 Aug

A well-used orange and grey electric cement mixer standing on a building site, its drum crusted with dried mortar, beside scaffolding poles and a plastic bucket.

Home & Living 7 min

How Many Bags of Concrete Do You Actually Need?

Ask this site and you get 80 or you get 7. Both are right: one tool counts bags of ready-mixed concrete, the other count...

Eva Chin

Pub. 16 Aug

A desk calendar standing on a pale surface, shot from a low angle. Its wire spiral binding runs along the top edge and the month name FEVEREIRO — February in Portuguese — is printed vertically down the left side in white on grey. The date grid beside it is faint and almost empty.

Consumer Tech 9 min

What Is One Month After 31 January?

28 February or 3 March — both are in daily use, and your date calculator probably will not tell you which one it picked....

Amelia Wong

Pub. 16 Aug

Ink-wash drawing of a scholar's table: a corded stack of thread-bound volumes, one open beside them, with a brush resting on an inkstone.

Chinese Culture 6 min

What Links the 36 Stratagems to the Art of War's 13 Chapters

The two are separate books a thousand years apart, so a stratagem filed under a chapter is a reading aid, not a lineage....

Eva Chin

Pub. 13 Aug

A worn mid-century booklet of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, of the kind the collection first surfaced in.

Chinese Culture 6 min

How Well Attested Are the 36 Stratagems?

The Thirty-Six Stratagems are introduced as ancient military history. Reading all thirty-six origin texts end to end, tw...

Eva Chin

Pub. 13 Aug

An antique balance beam mounted on a wall beside a wooden measuring rod, its pan hanging empty — an instrument that only tells you anything when it is weighed against a known standard.

AI & ML 10 min

We Went Looking for What AI Is Bad At. We Found a Bill Instead.

Every business owner wants a map of where AI is reliable and where it is not. We built five task types — drafting to spe...

Kenji Tanaka

Pub. 3 Aug

A researcher at a laboratory bench, back to the camera, surrounded by rows of identical glassware — the shape of a controlled comparison, where only one thing is allowed to differ.

AI & ML 12 min

We Tested the Prompting Folklore — 474 Answers Later, Nothing Had Changed

Tell the model it is an expert. Offer it a $200 tip. Threaten it. Say please. Add "let's think step by step". We ran all...

Nadia Rahim

Pub. 3 Aug

Close-up of vintage wooden letterpress blocks spelling 'pleasure' on paper.

AI & ML 14 min

Why AI Cannot Spell — What Image, Video and Voice Models Do Instead

A language model emits one symbol at a time, in order. An image model starts from noise and refines the whole canvas at...

Kenji Tanaka

Pub. 2 Aug

Close-up of a vintage industrial control panel with multiple buttons and switches.

AI & ML 12 min

How to Spend Fewer Tokens — and Why That Is the Fourth Thing to Try

Every guide to controlling an AI bill opens by telling you to trim your prompt. We ran the arithmetic over all 27 models...

Kenji Tanaka

Pub. 2 Aug

Wooden closed sign hanging on a shop window, with blurred background outside.

AI & ML 17 min

Do You Need Fine-Tuning? Two of the Big Three Are Taking It Away

The usual case against fine-tuning is that it is expensive. That case is wrong — a small training run costs about four d...

Kenji Tanaka

Pub. 2 Aug

Showing 37–48 of 71 results

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