Football Pools, Part 3
This is the third in a series of posts about pools used for betting on the outcome of football games (part one can be found here, and part two here). Let me briefly recall the setting, which is probably familiar to anyone who has been to a Super Bowl party. Typically, one bets on the outcome of a football game using a 10 x 10 grid. People can buy any number of the 100 squares on the grid, and when all the squares have been purchased, each row and each column is assigned a random digit from 0 to 9.
Suppose, for example, that you buy four squares, and after the rows and columns have been labeled, you find that you own square 3-7, square 2-5, square 9-0, and square 6-6. You will win money if, at the end of any one of the four quarters, the last digit in each team's score matches your pair. For example, if the score after the 3rd quarter is 13-27, you will win some money, since the last two digits are 3 and 7, and you own square 3-7. There are variants of this: some pools only pay...
e day?
If you come here regularly, you know of my complaints regarding so-called "math holidays" that get plenty of press, but rarely have anything to do with actual mathematics. The most well known is pi day, celebrated here in the states on March 14th, also known here as 3/14.
Aside from the mathematical arguments one can make for or against this holiday, there is a larger problem. It's all well and good to celebrate pi day on the date representing the first three digits of pi, but this is only possible if we write dates in the MM/DD format. Most of the world, however, uses the (more logical) DD/MM format, therefore depriving them of such a delicious play on numbers. Many loyal international fans of this holiday no doubt decry the fact that April has only 30 days, for otherwise they could simply celebrate pi day on 31/4. As it is, they are left with two options: Celebrate on 3/14 like those of us in the states, or enjoy a neutered version of this play on numbers by celebrating on 3...
Judge v. Justices
Just as you can't judge a book by its cover, it is not always easy to determine a person's mathematical background based on his or her occupation. Sure, a burger flipper at McDonald's may not look like the next Einstein, but how can you be sure she's not just working a summer job to afford university? Conversely, just because someone is highly educated doesn't mean he knows the difference between a prime and a composite number (although I'd argue that it should).
Case in point: Supreme Court justices may or may not know the meaning of the word orthogonal. Here's a snippet from the oral arguments in the case of Briscoe v. Virginia (courtesy of blog The Volokh Conspiracy):
MR. FRIEDMAN: I think that issue is entirely orthogonal to the issue here because the Commonwealth is acknowledging -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I’m sorry. Entirely what?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Orthogonal. Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Oh.
JUSTICE SCALIA: What was that adjective? I liked that.
A Mathematical New Years Game
First, let me begin by wishing a happy 2010 to you all. If you celebrate the holidays the way I do, then the past few weeks have seen you spending time with friends and family. And if you really celebrate the holidays the way I do, then some of that time with friends and family will have been spent with mathematical puzzles.
Very recently I was with a group of friends, discussing all that would come to pass in this new year. One friend, whose anonymity I will preserve by referring to him only as "Smith," was in the enviable position of being the only one among us whose age divided the current year (I won't embarrass him by revealing his age, but given that it's a divisor of 2010, this certainly restricts the possibilities). Once we realized this, it became natural to ask how common an occurrence this should be. In other words, how often can you expect your age to divide the current year? Of course, implicit in this is a choice of calendar - for our purposes, we will stick to commonly...
Math in Books: Logicomix
This past September, a very strange thing happened. The worlds of mathematics and comics combined to give birth to the graphic novel Logicomix, written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, and illustrated by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna. The book gives a slightly fictionalized account of Bertrand Russell's life, and uses this storyline as a gateway to explore the ideas in mathematical logic which were developed around the turn of the last century.
Combining mathematics and comics may sound like a recipe for disaster, but Logicomix has achieved a remarkable level of success. Not only has the critical response been exceedingly positive, but the book has also made the New York Times bestseller list. I'm assuming it was quite a popular gift item as well, because up through Christmas eve it was on back order at Amazon.com. It's certainly rare for anything so fundamentally imbued with mathematics to break into the mainstream.
Here's a video trailer for the book...
Math Gets Around: Breakfast
I admire the food blog Serious Eats because, as we've seen before, it's not afraid to get a little mathematical. This month they have upped the ante with a post on the delicious object now known as the Mobius strip bagel.
Named for the classical geometric object of the same name, the Mobius strip bagel (and its cousin, the Mobius strip donut) give an elegant mathematical spin on ordinary edibles. In addition to the aesthetic value, the Mobius strip bagel also has the advantage of added surface area, meaning that one can pile on even more cream cheese before stuffing one's face.
Mathematician George Hart has step-by-step instructions for the transformation from torus to Mobius strip here. I have yet to try this technique myself, but I can think of no better way to celebrate the holidays than by transforming breakfast food into mathematically themed breakfast food.
More on Nerdy T-Shirts
Recently I received an email imploring me to check out all of the "unique designs" available at a site called nerdytshirt.com. I'm not sure why I was the recipient of such an email - they could have found me through my university affiliations, or through this blog, but I'm not sure which.
If you've been reading my musings for a while, you may know of the problems I have with the intersection between mathematics and clothing. Most of what's out there is junk. As one might expect, I was therefore quite skeptical when I received this solicitation. At the same time, I'd never heard of this site before, and so I hoped that perhaps a company that understood my frustrations had come to fruition.
Have my prayers been answered? Sort of. Let's consider a few examples.
Despite claiming to have "unique designs," the shirts at nerdytshirt.com are all variations on one theme: put a formula on the shirt, and below that make a pun related to the formula. Sometimes the results of this pairing...
A Lack of Math in the Movies
Apologies for my absence - academic life has recently forced me to put the blog on hold. Things have cleared up now though, and I have a backlog of things to discuss, so let's get right to it.
Last month, Jennie Yabroff wrote an article for Newsweek discussing the new film Precious. I haven't seen the film, but this trailer makes a fairly strong impression:
The film has received a nearly unanimous positive response from critics. The main character, Precious, begins the film as a 16 year-old illiterate middle school student, but after transferring to an alternative school, she is able to find hope with the help of a teacher who encourages her to keep a journal and write in it daily.
The theme of finding redemption through writing is certainly not new to this genre of film, as Yabroff points out. Films such as Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers have explored this territory before, although perhaps with less success than Precious. However, Yabroff wonders if all this time spent...
Happy Birthday, Riemann Hypothesis!
Big ups to Liz Landau for bringing attention to one of the most important unsolved math problems of our time, the Riemann Hypothesis. Over at the CNN SciTechBlog, she has written a nice article on the problem aimed at a general audience.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Riemann's manuscript, where he proposed the now famous conjecture on the zeros of the Riemann-zeta function, and November was the month in which it was published. However, as Landau points out, the exact date of publication isn't known, which makes having a birthday celebration a little tricky. The American Institute of Mathematics picked today to celebrate, and in honor of Riemann talks were held all around the world.
The Riemann Hypothesis has held the attention of the mathematical community for a century and a half, but it's also made occasional forays into the realm of popular culture. For starters, there are quite a few books on the conjecture that are aimed for a general audience...
Debating Superfreakonomics
Last month marked the release of Superfreakonomics, a sequel by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner to the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics. The fanfare surrounding this prefix-enhanced release has been marred, however, by controversy surrounding a chapter on global warming. Starting with this entry on ClimateProgress.org, the debate has drawn a few responses on the Freakonomics blog, but nothing has seemed to blunt the allegations that Dubner and Levitt wrote the chapter from a contrarian perspective without understanding even the fundamental principles of climate science, and as a result, what they've written is garbage.
Much of the writing back and forth has been quite heated, and being a student of mathematics I am averse to conflict. However, one response resonated with me a great deal, and as a case study of the arguments that can be made using only simple calculations, it's quite effective. The response in question comes from RealClimate.org, and is titled "An...
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