Skillz

Shaquan Ian Lewis, also known as Skillz (formerly Mad Skillz), is an American rapper known for his acclaimed 1996 album From Where???, a reference to his origins in Virginia, not the stereotypical New York City or Los Angeles rapper, and he's also known for his yearly "Rap Ups," which he has done annually since 2002 (except in 2013).

Biography

Skillz was born in Detroit, Michigan, and after spending his early childhood in Fayetteville, North Carolina he then moved to Richmond, Virginia at a young age. He credits Run DMC for getting him involved in hip hop as a child. He fell in love with the culture and immediately began to practice all four elements religiously. He first made a name for himself by finishing in second place (Losing to MC Supernatural) in a national freestyle competition, which eventually resulted in a recording contract with Atlantic Records. At this time he went by the stage name Mad Skillz rather than just Skillz. Mad Skillz' Atlantic debut album, From Where???, and its single, "The Nod Factor", were released in 1996, but neither received much commercial or critical attention. The album's title was a reference to the regionalism in hip-hop, and at the time the state of Virginia did not have a large hip-hop scene. In the late-1990s more of a Virginia scene emerged, and he allied himself with fellow Virginia natives Missy Elliott, Timbaland, and The Neptunes. He made appearances on Timbaland's albums Tim's Bio in 1998, and Indecent Proposal in 2001; Timbaland made plans to sign Skillz to the Blackhand label he was developing; however, this label failed to materialize. He along with Danja Mowf, Lonnie B, and Kalonji The Immortal, members of Skillz' Supafriendz collective, also appeared on a remix of Aaliyah's hit single "Are You That Somebody" in 1998.

Skillz (company)

Skillz is an online multiplayer competition platform that can be integrated into IOS and Android games. Skillz operates cash competitions and free-to-enter virtual currency competitions in mobile games of skill. The company launched in 2012 in North America in stealth mode under the name Lookout Gaming.

History

Skillz was founded by Andrew Paradise and Casey Chafkin. Both are veterans of AisleBuyer, a Boston-based mobile checkout tech startup which was founded by Andrew Paradise and acquired by Intuit in 2012. Skillz has offices in San Francisco and Boston and has raised $10.3M in funding led by Atlas Ventures.

In April 2013, Skillz launched its platform on Android with ten titles and ten game studio partners. In its first two weeks, Skillz surpassed one million downloads and 100,000 real-money gaming registrations.

In May 2014, Skillz publicly announced the availability of its iOS SDK and reported that it has partnered with more than 300 game studios and has launched more than 150 games on the App Store.

Ordered pair

In mathematics, an ordered pair (a, b) is a pair of mathematical objects. The order in which the objects appear in the pair is significant: the ordered pair (a, b) is different from the ordered pair (b, a) unless a = b. (In contrast, the unordered pair {a, b} equals the unordered pair {b, a}.)

Ordered pairs are also called 2-tuples, or sequences of length 2; ordered pairs of scalars are also called 2-dimensional vectors. The entries of an ordered pair can be other ordered pairs, enabling the recursive definition of ordered n-tuples (ordered lists of n objects). For example, the ordered triple (a,b,c) can be defined as (a, (b,c)), i.e., as one pair nested in another.

In the ordered pair (a, b), the object a is called the first entry, and the object b the second entry of the pair. Alternatively, the objects are called the first and second coordinates, or the left and right projections of the ordered pair.

Cartesian products and binary relations (and hence functions) are defined in terms of ordered pairs.

A&B

A&B may refer to:

AB

AB, Ab, or ab may refer to:

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